Bob Fitrakis is a journalist, attorney, and professor of political science at Columbus State Community College. He spoke with WCRS on Jan 20 at Occupy the Courts, a rally and protest against the US Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling on the second anniversary of the decision. Activists gathered said corporations are not people and money is not speech.

“ Many other democracies don’t have these problems. For example, you could require elected stakeholders, workers on every corporate board in America. Like Germany, we could require the larger ones---with more than 5,000 employees---- have half of their boards elected by their workers; and that if it’s a tie between their workers and the representatives of management, the workers get to break the tie.”

Fitrakis said corporate personhood is part of a broader issue.

“It’s the fact that our corporations are absolutely undemocratic. You got 12 people. Often these corporate directors are responsible only to a bottom line, not to the country, the community, or its workers.”

He calls for democratizing corporations.

“The first step is to say they are not people; they are legal fictions…Conservatives like to talk about states’ rights. But in the old days, you could pull a corporation’s charter if it was acting outside of what you chartered it to do.”

Fitrakis said in the past corporations existed for a period of time and then went out of business.

(See also EcoWatch

Danny Berchenko of 350.org Ohio said Speaker of the House, John Boehner is touting false numbers as part of his conflict-of-interest, due to his investments in big oil companies, and due to the $1 million the Republican Congressman has taken from the fossil fuel industry during his time in office.

“He’s claiming 20,000 jobs will be created. Those numbers are from a biased study by the company that will build the pipeline if the permit is approved.”

Berchenko said independent analyses show that building Keystone XL would create, at most, 5,000 temporary jobs and only 50 permanent jobs.

“It very well could kill more jobs than it creates, because the pipeline would run over sensitive farmland in the nation’s heartland and a key aquifer that feeds farms irrigation water.”

Berchenko said the Keystone Pipeline (not to be confused with its proposed extension, Keystone XL ) has leaked 12 times in as many months.

“Rather than if, it’s when the pipeline leaks, that will affect farmers and farmers will see their livelihoods lost and we’ll see other jobs lost from this as well.”

Berchenko said clean energy legislation would lead to incentives for the creation of millions of renewable energy jobs.

“We have so much more potential…thru building solar panels and windmills right here in America and thru retrofitting our buildings. Those are jobs that can’t be shipped overseas. We can’t uproot a building and send it to China to be retrofitted.”

Originally recorded winter 2008-2009. Re-released winter of 2012, nostalgia.