The United States of the Corporation

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

I don't believe news organizations should be exempt. I guess you forgot when I went off about the Tea Party Protests™ brought to you by Fox News™

Fine, but what about the New York Times and their endorsements? MSNBC?

The Constitution's 1st Amendment is very clear on this. Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. It doesn't say "EXCEPT in the case of elections".

But the fact that you believe that news corporations should also be banned from speech also violates that same amendment.

That 5 justices voted to overturn this law is not disturbing. What scares me is that 4 justices voted against them.

[Aramike]

Giving money is a form of speech, right?

Umm, no. I mean, how is giving money any form of speech?

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Aramike

The Constitution's 1st Amendment is very clear on this. Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. It doesn't say "EXCEPT in the case of elections"..

The 1st Amendment applies to people. Corporations are not people and should not be thought of as such.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Aramike

Umm, no. I mean, how is giving money any form of speech?

Buckley v. Valeo 1977

[August]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

The 1st Amendment applies to people. Corporations are not people and should not be thought of as such.

Nothing you just said implies that corporations do not have 1st Amendment rights.

[LobsterBoy]

Originally Posted by Aramike

Umm, no. I mean, how is giving money any form of speech?

Buckley vs. Valeo 1976 Limitations on the amount a campaign can spend (spending limits or caps) are an unconstitutional abridgment of free speech under the first amendment.

Spending money is protected speech.

The same decision holds that donations can be limited to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption.

For an opinion that overruled precedents from at least six different decisions, forgive me when I seem surprised that it stopped there.

For those who wish to delve into Citizens United vs. FEC:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

The 1st Amendment applies to people. Corporations are not people and should not be thought of as such.

Corporations are merely groups of people.

Like unions. Like media outlets. Like the Daily Kos.

And they are not considered people - corporations have no vote.

Oh, and by the way, where does the Constitution say that the first amendment is restricted in ANY way whatsoever?

In any case, however, you're intent is to restrict the speech of a group of people, ultimately. How is that Constitutional?

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by LobsterBoy

Buckley vs. Valeo 1976 Limitations on the amount a campaign can spend (spending limits or caps) are an unconstitutional abridgment of free speech under the first amendment.

Spending money is protected speech.

The same decision holds that donations can be limited to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption.

For an opinion that overruled precedents from at least six different decisions, forgive me when I seem surprised that it stopped there.

For those who wish to delve into Citizens United vs. FEC:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

Good response.

As such, corporations should be allowed to give directly to candidates, following currently accepted contribution limits.

In any case, the fact that they are NOT currently allowed to do so kinda lends the fail to mookie's argument that they shouldn't be treated equally as citizens. They can't vote. They can't give to campaigns. Citizens can do both.

However, after this ruling they CAN exercise their right to speech, just not in the sense of giving directly to a campaign...

...which means they are now on the same footing as, say, a labor union.

Mookie, please answer this: why do you think it's okay for a union to be able to exercise these rights and not a corporation? Both are merely groups of people...

Please tell me its not just that one side overwhelmingly agrees with your perspective, while the other does not...

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Aramike

Mookie, please answer this: why do you think it's okay for a union to be able to exercise these rights and not a corporation? Both are merely groups of people...

When did I say unions should be treated differently?

I don't care if a corporation is a group of people. It matters not. The individual people each have their right to free speech. They don't get to participate again as a member of a collective group. A corporation IS NOT A PERSON. It is an article on paper, a legal fiction. It is not subject to the obligations of an individual in this country, and thus should not enjoy the benefits.

Don't paint this as "Mookie wants to shut people up he doesn't agree with." That is completely dishonest and lends no credit to your argument. I want to reserve the rights for WE THE PEOPLE of this country. A corporation is NOT A PERSON.

Pragmatically, what good do you think is going to come from giving big business even more say in government? Jefferson saw the problem 200 years ago: “I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan. November 12, 1816

Good lord, these people spent the Bush years twisting the Bill of Rights around so that it didn't apply to people they didn't like. I find it amazing that they now are jumping through hoops to make it apply to non-persons now.

[CaptainHaplo]

As often as he and I disagree - Mookie is correct on this one.

What you have to do is look at the whole REASON for the Bill of Rights - which included the Right to Free Speech. The purpose for the Bill of Rights was to provide specific and clear protections to the rights of the CITIZENRY - the Rights of the INDIVIDUAL.

Current law and SC rulings regarding this Free Speech have ignored its purpose. By extending free speech to entities OTHER than the individual, it has allowed corporations, unions, PAC's and lobbyists to drown out the voice of the citizenry (using money), thus perverting the purpose of the enumerated right.

[LobsterBoy]

Originally Posted by Aramike

As such, corporations should be allowed to give directly to candidates, following currently accepted contribution limits.

I would be okay with that, except that this decision allows direct corporate and union spending on advertising to expressly elect or defeat a named candidate. This is separate from issue advertising. Advertising to expressly elect or defeat a named candidate is essentially a donation to the candidate because they are doing the work of that candidate. This is now unregulated, giving corporations and unions much more say than the voting citizen.

I find such a new potential influx of money into politics disgusting and find it hard to believe that it can be good for this republic.

Campaign Contributions should be maxed out at USD 100, and lobbyist "contributions" should be outlawed.

Mookie, I think the word you were searching for to describe corporations and unions is Ficticiouse Entity (en. sp?).

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by LobsterBoy

I would be okay with that, except that this decision allows direct corporate and union spending on advertising to expressly elect or defeat a named candidate. This is separate from issue advertising. Advertising to expressly elect or defeat a named candidate is essentially a donation to the candidate because they are doing the work of that candidate. This is now unregulated, giving corporations and unions much more say than the voting citizen.

I find such a new potential influx of money into politics disgusting and find it hard to believe that it can be good for this republic.

Okay, fine - except here's the problem: UNIONS had that right previously; corporations did not.

Now the playing field is leveled.

In any case, I still disagree with your premise. Advertising is just that - spreading a message. Ultimately, it's up to the voter in the booth. No one but the citizen has that right.

In the end, it comes down to a simple dichotomy - either you believe that American voters are stupid and therefore advertising is more important than the electorate itself (as advertising is the primary source of voter information), or you don't. In the case of the former, if you actually believe that, please tell me why you then believe that the electorate is even qualified to choose ANY official for major leadership posts.

My opinion is simple: especially in the era of "one-click-information", anyone or any entity should be entitled free speech as protected in the Constitution. It's worked for decades prior to McCain/Feingold, and should be only more irrelevent a question considering that anything one needs to know is merely a web-address away.

Plain and simply, free speech is not to be abridged. That's what the Constitution says. If you don't believe in that, than why not just ignore voting rights altogether?

Besides, what's to stop individuals outside of corporations from simply banding together to purchase advertising time?

Oh, wait, nothing. They've been doing it for years as 527s.

At least we can now have some accountability.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

When did I say unions should be treated differently?

I don't care if a corporation is a group of people. It matters not. The individual people each have their right to free speech. They don't get to participate again as a member of a collective group. A corporation IS NOT A PERSON. It is an article on paper, a legal fiction. It is not subject to the obligations of an individual in this country, and thus should not enjoy the benefits.

Don't paint this as "Mookie wants to shut people up he doesn't agree with." That is completely dishonest and lends no credit to your argument. I want to reserve the rights for WE THE PEOPLE of this country. A corporation is NOT A PERSON.

Pragmatically, what good do you think is going to come from giving big business even more say in government? Jefferson saw the problem 200 years ago: “I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan. November 12, 1816

Good lord, these people spent the Bush years twisting the Bill of Rights around so that it didn't apply to people they didn't like. I find it amazing that they now are jumping through hoops to make it apply to non-persons now.

An excellent argument, mookie, and I tend to agree with you, but this line of resoning will not present a solution or even identify the real problem.
The only point on which I disagree is the idea that people do not get to voice their opinion again as a collective. We have the right to free speech, but we also have the right to assemble. If a bunch of people with the same opinion, no matter what entity they are a part of, collectively use their right to individual free speech there can be no truly constitutional, effective, or even desireable action taken against them.
Trying to prevent corporations or any other kind of common large-scale collective entity from exerting an undue influence upon politics is an excercise in futility. Even if you work around the constitutional barriers to free speech and assembly (which has been done, on more than one occassion), you will still only create an unenforceable system that doesn't fix anything.

I say unenforceable because people will coalesce into voting blocks no matter what you do, and those blocks will usually conform to some kind of pre-defined issue boundary, as I'm sure you're aware. If you cap corporate contributions or otherwise restrict the actions of members that comprise them they will simply take advantage of the aforementioned fact and use it to bypass the system. For example, let's say that EvilCorp International has an agenda that includes domestic drilling, and there is a candidate who supports it, but EvilCorp's campaign contributions have been capped or eliminated altogether. Since it can't contribute directly, it will just contribute indirectly. All manner or corporate literature will be disbursed to employees and the organization will host, fund, and otherwise assist non-corporate entities with the same agenda. Similarly, if it can't provide its own lobbyists it will simply fund lobbyists with similar objectives from non-restricted entites.

In fact, this has already been going on for quite some time now. A good example lies in the AARP, one of the most prevalent and infamous groups of citizens with a common agenda. It also regularly recieves contributions from companies in the medical field. Campaign reform or no, it is still a huge voting block, and a million 1$ contributions still equals a million dollars. And then, of course, we have political parties themselves. If companies can't get direct access to policymakers they will simply shift the party platform.

Even if the laws are made so restricitve that lobbying as we know it disappears alotogether we'd still be handing the advantage to big business because they already have a well-established structure with a vested interest in the survival of the company.

I say that this will not fix anything because to try to seek out and close down all the means by which such an organization could pressure the state is to violate personal freedoms in the process and ultimately fail, anyway. Powerful companies have legions of attorneys and accounting experts whose livleyhood depends upon achieving satisfactory results with the tasks they are assigned. There is no law or set of laws in the world that will stop them from ultimately accomplishing their objectives, unless we resort to an iron-handed state, which will only kill business along with lobbying for a short time before it resurfaces again in a different form.


Even worse, there will be multitudes of small companies crushed underfoot in the process. Small businesses often band together for political representation because they cannot compete with larger companies on their own. Restrictions placed upon large corporations are bound to affect small corporations as well, not only because small corporations are subject to the same laws but because big corporations have more money to spend on workarounds. Small business is vital to controlling the threat of monopoly, and in cases where the state is not involved it has done a remarkably good job, though such cases tend to be in secondary or specialist industries - the big ones have long since co-opted the state.
Most of all, however, the most dangerous thing about thinking that the political influence of big business can be controlled by any reasonable means is that it perverts the market. Reasonable free markets have their problems, to be sure, but they are nothing compared to the kind of damage inflicted when all kinds of state factors are introduced. Companies that can afford to do so will co-opt the state and use it as a means to defeat competitors outside normal market mechanisms. Others will simply move elsewhere. The latter is particularly prevalent in our increasingly globalized society. As transportation and communication grow more efficient the need for proximity to resources or consumners shrinks, and there are always a dozen nations with easily co-optable governments and poor, cheaply-employed populaces for every reasonably prosperous free nation.

Corporations may be legal fictions, mookie, but don't assume that just because of that they are not people; they are made of people and they will act like people. The same goes for governments. To treat either otherwise in the objective sense is to invite catastrophe.

The only way to way to ensure that the power belongs to "we, the people" is to give it to the people..... and no-one else. Each person should have the power to conduct their own affairs, neither hindered nor aided by the state, to paraphrase TJ. The state's responsibilities should be clearly defined, strictly limited, and vigilantly monitored by an armed populace so that it will not be cost-effective to try to manipulate it in any way unless there is a vast majority opinion.

Tylenol and Aspirin may help headaches, but neither kills tumors. While our nation wastes time quarelling over how much money should be spent on campagins or whether elections are fair or not we are ignoring the cause of our consternation; the fact that we have a vulnerable power structure. As long as the state has enough power to attract the ambitious we will never know peace or prosperity for long.