Who's drowning out your voice?

Jan. 21 is the 14th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision to allow unlimited spending by corporations on electioneering communications.

We all want to live in a country governed by the voices of the people, not corporations that want to remove obstacles to raising prices, lowering wages, manipulating the stock market to their own advantage, disregarding threats to our health and our lives and avoiding taxes that pay for education, infrastructure and social safety nets.

Maybe "that's just business, it's not personal," but for businesses to survive, they need living, thriving customers. That can only happen when there are counter-balancing voices to keep rules and enforcements in place, which won't cost corporations more than they're spending on politics now.

It's notable that unlimited political messaging by corporations was unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court shortly after the first time a U.S. president was elected through thousands of small online donations. Now our letters to the editor, calls to our officials, social media posts and relatively small donations to candidates allowed for individuals, are being drowned out by Super PACs and corporate messaging.

To get back to allowing the majority of people to be heard (and to keep corporations from working against the interests of their own customer bases!), we need our legislators to do what it takes to keep corporations out of politics.

Amy Hartsough

Hoffman Estates