Krist Novoselic, formerly of Nirvana and long time politico, is trying to help Steven Reynolds get elected to Oregon’s U.S. House District 1 Congressional seat. Krist recently wrote a piece for the Seattle Weekly on Reynolds, who he describes as: a 29-year-old veteran who graduated from West Point, and was injured while serving in the Army. He taught English in China for a year, then settled in Portland. There, he started associating with Progressive party folks, and eventually became the party’s nominee for this special US House race.The former Nirvana bassist, sat down with Reynolds for a Q and A on a variety of topics, including free speech- from Krist’s blog:
The whole anti-corporate personhood thing. So a corporation or a group will not have rights? Can a city like Springfield, Oregon could pass a resolution banning Nirvana CDs? Do you think they should have the ability to do that because Nirvana is on a corporate label and a corporation doesn’t have rights?
Well I think there is a distinct difference in that we’re talking about Nirvana’s label which is music and guaranteed expression of free speech. What we are talking about is corporations being able to spend money to affect the political outcome of an election. In the event that Nirvana starts spending money to influence elections, then yes I would say that they would lose that right to speech because our government is for the people. It is not for the business and when businesses have an interest in government, they need to exercise their influence in a manner that is fair. They have essentially unlimited resources. These mega-corporation do and you and I don’t. We have what we have and that’s it.
