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Guest Post: If Corporations Cannot Vote, Should They Have The Right To Spend Money In Elections?
Submitted by Damien Hoffman of Wall St. Cheat Sheet
An irony of Shakespearean proportions is unfolding as I write this: the Town Hall discourse revolves around complaints government is getting too big, yet in the quieter halls of the US Supreme Court corporations are on the verge of capturing the largest swath of power since they were ruled legal persons. Let’s take a closer look before we wake up in an Orwellian distopia:
The Issue: Whether corporations have a First Amendment right to spend money in election campaigns?
According to UC Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, the nation’s leading Constitutional Law expert, “Previously the Supreme Court upheld the ability of the government to restrict corporate expenditures in political campaigns. Now it appears there are five votes on the Court — Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, Justice Thomas, and Justice Alito — who want to overrule those precedents.”
Although corporations have stuffed cash into tons of loopholes such as Political Action Committees, a change in the current law would allow corporations to siphon off money from their wealth-creating machines and directly turn politicians into outsourced independent contractors. If you are pissed about the financial crisis and what Washington allowed to happen, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The proponents of expanding corporate speech insist the current law is an unconstitutional abridgment of First Amendment protected Freedom of Speech. However, speech is curtailed in instances where it can be an extreme detriment to our society (as opposed to our feelings). For example, we do not have the right to go into a crowded place and scream, “Fire!”
Before offering more examples of limited speech rights, this begs several incredibly critical questions about the society we are trying to create under the Constitution. First and foremost, should the legal fiction called a “corporation” be inherently endowed with the full set of rights entitled to human beings under the Constitution? If so, we are saying corporations are now equal citizens under the law and our society should boldly reflect their values and interests even if they compete with those of human beings.
I immediately wonder why corporations even need unlimited Freedom of Speech rights. They already have reasonable Freedom of Speech protections (First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978)). Further, everyone who works at a corporation and all the shareholders already have the highest level of Freedom of Speech rights protected by the Constitution. If we give corporations the same Freedom of Speech rights as humans, we are functionally giving extra powers of speech to corporate executives in the C-Suite. After watching how they ran our economy into a shitpit, should we allow this handful of business people to use their out-sized coffers to drown out the incredibly less financed individual citizens?
If we allow robots to influence elections, that society will reflect the values of robots. If you let corporations influence elections, that society will reflect the values of corporations. Unlike human beings, corporations do not have values. Instead, by law, corporations are legal fictions which operate solely to produce profits for shareholders. Therefore, human values such as life, liberty, happiness, health, spirituality/religion, kindness, relationships, the environment, etc. will all compete with the myopic legally mandated interest of corporations.
Given that the Founders never once mentioned the word ‘corporation’ in the Bill of Rights, I find it impossible to believe they intended to elevate businesses to the level of human being. Such an expansion of stature is like remaking the movie The Terminator and substituting the androids with C-Suite controlled parchment charters against which humankind battles for survival as we know it.
There are many other issues for you to chew on while daydreaming through your next meeting or commute:
Should corporations influence the electoral process if they do not have the right to vote and are not human beings?
Can corporations spend money supporting political persons and issues which conflict with the wishes of shareholders?
Is bringing corporations under the protection of the Constitution the most extreme example of judicial activism?
In the weeks to come we will address these questions with some exciting interviews. Until then, I highly recommend this quick read …
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big mistake when corporations were granted personhood IMO.
How does this impact we the people?
Nike claimed 1st amendment right to free speech publishing news releases stating they did not engage in sweat shop labor.
Wal Mart claimed the 14th amendment right against discrimination when communities did not want Wal Mart coming to their town.
Dow Chemical claimed 4th amendment right to privacy despite being caught polluting air with toxins from their plant.
Tobacco/Asbestos industry claimed 5th amendment right (not speak against itself) despite knowingly exposing employees to life threatening toxins.
Thom Hartmann breaks down how we got here and the importance of this case currently being heard..... short and sweet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUYPO2b2jDQ
If you think we have problems now with that corporation called "The Federal Reserve" see happens if corporate person hood is not repealed!
It was the right decision. It levels the playing feel between the rich and poor.
Simply the next logical step towards Fascism.
What about corporations with facilities and markets in other countries? On whose side will they stand in international disputes and wars? Will they have to move their headquarters back from the Caymans? Will US corporate citizenship mean that they can no longer avoid US regulations and laws when they are operating abroad? So many cans of worms?!
All of the complaints about corporations, special interests, etc. miss the heart of the problem—the regulatory-welfare state. No one would lobby a government that can't get them money or favorable treatment.
+ 1000
Damn right.
Why can’t corporation speak up? A lot of corporations represent millions of Americans that can’t represent themselves. From farmers to disables to retired citizens to gun rights, etc. The law was put in place to shut these corporations out. The law itself is unconditional.
People get so high and mighty that they missed the big picture. It’s about free speech for a lot of Americans that can’t speak for themselves.
Thats BS.
The way the law is currently written they can already do that, this decision has nothing to do with that at all, its about influencing elections directly.
Read up on the Robber Barons in the late 1800's in the US and the Gilded Age Political Machines if you want to see just how badly this will be abused. We have not seen corruption of this magnitude since that time.
We may not have seen it but it has been happening:
http://www.crudethemovie.com/
On our soil it is our financial and policital landscape that the corporations and elite are ruining.
Show me one for profit corporation that speaks for "disables", retired citizens or gun rights.
As a retired, 100% disabled veteran and strong proponent of gun rights I have to find any.
You are completely ignorant. EVERY person on our soil is protected by the Freedom of Speech clause in the Constitution. Why can they not speak for themselves? That is completely absurd. If they have a mouth, they can go to any public place with their issues and speak. They can also go to their elected representatives and grieve.
People like you are the reason you'll one day wonder why your local rep won an election even though he stood for interests completely opposite of you and other well meaning human beings.
Go start a new country that includes abstract entities in their Constitution, lay down with your Grand Inquisitor, and beg him to feed you ...
ditto
Of course they would ... they would "lobby" (i.e. bribe) the government to give them money and favorable treatment. It is you who miss the heart of the problem. The rule of law becomes the enemy of freedom when corporations write the law. I don't care how carefully you crafted your laws, they would become corrupted by into a corporate welfare state over time by the influence of big money.
As a criminal mastermind I generally don't like to express an opinion that might inhibit my access to illicit profits and corrupt politicians.
As for corporations spending money in elections as a 'person', I'm all for it as long as that corporate 'person' can pick it's ass up and head down to the voting booth and pull the lever for the corrupt politicians like the rest of us.
I just can't imagine seeing corporate 'person' Goldman Sachs standing in line waiting to vote with all the other riff-raff when they can just contribute to some corrupt politicians' political action committee and buy the votes they need that way.
But, as my favorite corrupt politician said when confronted with the fact that the voting precincts were running out of ballots during an election in the movie 'The Gangs of New York' -
BOSS TWEED: “Remember the first rule of politics. The ballots don't make the results, the counters make the results. The counters! Keep counting!” (Source IMDB)
Now that's the kind of Uber Corruption any Uber Villain could love.
The ICP, International Corporatist Party is ascendant. To our supreme misfortune.
Right is wrong now. Shut up you big lie. - Dave Matthews
http://davematthewsband.tv/last-stop-live-video-and-lyrics.html
Ummmm. If corporations are persons, when are they going to pay the same tax rate as I do?
Hey, you missed the big one. Forget taxes; why aren't they subject to imprisonment and/or death?
And I don't mean the officers. I mean their incorporation.
Corporations that as a matter of doing business engage in activities that cause harm, theft or loss of life should and could be held to the same penalties as everyone else.
To toss a corporation in jail for theft, you would simply lock them down in place. Suspend their activities. Suspend their access to resources. Suspend their rights to move freely. Not the officers, not the lawyers, but their operations. No operations -- period -- for the duration of their incarceration for crimes against the people. No contracts, no sales, no payroll, no anything until they've done their time. Just like the rest of us, they'll emerge broken and tainted but (as is the purpose of the penal system) they will emerge better citizens.
And if they cause fatalities by knowingly polluting the envionment or knowingly creating a harmful or unsafe product, and can be found guilty of murder-for-profit -- then kill them. Not the officers, not the laywers, but kill their operations. Bankruptcy without recourse, all proceeds going to the victims or, if none survive, to the state.
They want equality with humans, they can have it. That and all the responsibilities and hazards that go along with being a human operating in the human experience of hazard to health and freedom, and the ultimate penalty of death.
Let's see how long they wave the 14th Amendment flag after one of their numbers is doing 10 to 25 in the corporate slammer for financial fraud.
cougar
Five unelected ayatollahs of the reich wing will decide if we, the ordinary people, can have any say in the affairs of this country.
When one reads what the Founding Fathers thought about banks and corporations, they gotta be spinning in the grave.
As opposed to five unelected ayatollahs from the left wing? If you think the right is evil but the left is your loving brother then you are incredibly naive! The founding fathers, and especially Andrew Jackson, have been spinning in their graves non stop since 1913 when the fed was created!
Andrew Jackson would have been brought down by the BATF, Waco/Ruby Ridge style, had he been alive in these most interesting times...
I'm just now reading Schlesinger's Age of Jackson. He was John Wayne before John Wayne was John Wayne. Titanium coated, diamond core, brass balls.
Corporations are not natural persons protected by the Constitution. Why should they have any rights at all, especially freedom of speech?
And had no standing before the bar of justice.
God gave you a brain I suggest you use it.
Michael, in all honesty, when was the last time you saw the Constitution being defended in a fair and just manner. As Baby ("W") Bush famously said "The Constitution is just a piece of paper." We need to understand that most of the "upper" class think about the great unwashed masses (aka the middle class and poor) differently than you or I.
We need to understand that the entire economic and political system was originally set up (and has now been refined even further) to protect the financial elite and political class at the expense of everyone else.
Period. End of sentence. Full stop.
It's that simple. All the little battles are simply background noise to keep us distracted from the big picture. We the people no longer run this country. I doubt we ever did but there is no hiding from this fact anymore.
The grand illusion is to give "we the people" the impression we have control and power when in fact we have none.
Corporations don't write speeches, and don't say anything. Only their respective representatives do. Lets not forget what freedom of speech actually means: It doesn't mean the freedom to say what you want without consequences. It means that the government cannot forbid you to say something. So, as a citizen, the representatives of any of the corporations can say whatever they want, and the government cannot stop them. But, people who own the building they say it in, the newspaper they print it in, the microphone they say it on, and the even the living rooms they hear it in, can do whatever they want to react to it, punish it, stop it, turn off the radio or tv, and stop subscribing to the magazines.
On the other hand, I don't think anyone, individual, corporation, or whatever, should be allowed to give money to a 'neutral' politician during a campaign. It's either self funded or non-funded. (No, I do not support public financing of campaigns either.)
Edit: Also don't forget that saying what you want, also encumbers you with the same obligations, and sometimes even more if you're selling something, to tell the truth (ie against making false claims, or slanderous and libelous implications, etc.)
So, based on your second paragraph, only those individuals wealthy enough to have the scratch on hand to toss at a campaign should do it?
Non-funded...how does this work, exactly? How does a campaign run TV ads, print media, etc to get their message out with no $$$?
If this means taking a bite out of McCain-Feingold, I'm all for it. Our wonderful laws didn't stop GS from donating 33 million last year, a good portion to the DSCC and Charles Schumer.
Corporations (and non-profits in name only like Moveon.org) exploit PACs and other loopholes in our disgraceful labyrinthine election laws with no impunity, but the moment a pastor brings a doctor to the pulpit to talk about the Obamination of a health care plan or a tea party collaborates with a political group, they muzzle them by threatening their non-profit status.
Our convoluted laws lend themselves to selective enforcement. I advocate civil disobedience to our unconstitutional election laws whenever possible.
Soon States that do not have the death penalty but do have the authority to revoke a corporate charter are going to be challenged for being inconsistent.
Indeed: The Declaration of Independence, in 1776, freed Americans not only from Britain but also from the tyranny of British corporations.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3925.htm
Soon States that do not have the death penalty but have the authority to revoke a corporate charter are going to be challenged for being inconsistent.
Corporations are not people and not entitled to the same rights as people. A corporation does not have a bill of rights, if they want to make one it's fine by me, but the American Bill of Rights is for the people by the people.
Corporations are a conglomerate entity, a giant headless ambiguous monster, with tentacles and blood-money funnels, I don't think it should be allowed out of the house, much less to vote...
Wurd.
very hard to tell a corporation from a person in this day and age.
I agree with what you're saying but I want to hear solutions on how to implement this line of thinking in a more practical way.
Do you propose a separate bill of rights to groups of people (or whatever your definition of corporation might be)? A group of people may have a right to assemble already but the comes the question of hther the assembly should have limitations of their actions.
Hard to find a solution to this conundrum. It goes to the heart of the problem.
As a practical exercise in the current context or as a theoretical exercise in a from scratch situation?
Well we can't get there practically if we dont know where were going at least theoretically.
It's as simple as assigning retributions when the corporate individual is judged exhibiting psychopathic tendencies. Who benefits the most when our corporate brother behaves correctly should also be the beneficiary of assigned retributions.
So how do we quantify this or put it into law?
The so-called "strict constructionists" on the bench are ones really acting as activist judges. There's nothing in the constitution about corporate personhood. It came about through a court case in 1886, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. How's that for judicial activism? Now how about some common sense lessons from our current mess. The big banks played regulatory capture and the K Street game to a T. Unless you and your grandchildren want to bail out the next "too big to fail" bank, I suggest we let voters do the deciding not the plutocrats.
A corporation is a person the same way a person is a cell.
The current interpretation of the law sucks.
Being a CEO of a corporation makes it so that you have no skin in the game. If you don't give a sh!t about other people, you might give a sh!t about them taking your money, your home, and your stuff from you. You might give a sh!t about being thrown in jail for the decisions you make. Without consequences, you have what we call corporate culture. Oh yeah, and then when you f@ck up, we bail you out because, uh, why was that????
Vampire squids do not feel bad about fouling their nests or hurting the other creatures in the ocean. They just do what they naturally do, squidding and sucking about. Without consequences, mother nature cannot do her natural work and check those squids. The economy is part of nature, corporations are proving to be a malignant experiment so long as they are given the rights of personhood without the responsibilities.
The bill of rights was created for people. Having 5 judges deciding it belongs to man made legal creations is not being conservative. It is simply right wing as is their agenda. I feel sorry for the conservative citizens of the US when they see the country they get from this decision and the judges they so coveted.
Well it isn't right-wing either. It isn't any wing of a democracy.
It is Corporatist, and an important part of Fascist thinking. Musollini is created with having first described this.
cougar
Rather odd that you would say, "Given that the Founders never once mentioned the word ‘corporation’ in the Bill of Rights, I find it impossible to believe they intended to elevate businesses to the level of human being."
That is a misreading of the document and it isn't impossible at all. You should stop reading erudite law professors who argue cases as law instead of looking to holy constitutional writ. After all, the founders clearly knew how to use the word "person" in the context of the Constitution and did so several times. A brief, cursory gloss of the First Amendment shows that it is broad and intentionally so. The text is not so strict or narrow: "Congress shall make no law...." That alone is an indication that Congress was not to regulate speech at all--whether it applied to corporations or people.
Since a corporation exists as a creature of the state, however, I do agree that a state could regulate what a corporation does but that is not a province of Congress. That is clearly a state issue.
But the way you argue this post raises a much more troubling question about your conception of rights....I'd be curious to see how you address one's right to spend money on speech and whether you believe that right is as much a part of speech as the opinions that person might want to propagate. Personally, whether I choose to do so through my individual capacity or through the collective of a group (e.g., a corporation or unincorporated group) should be of no concern to you in the federal context.
You should have stopped at "propagate." One of the most influential arguments against over turning this statue is that there will be no choice, as you suggest, for thousands of shareholders as to what corporations do with their money with regards to speech.
Shareholders, be they in 401K's, mutual funds, etc, will see their voice silenced and subservient to that of the corporate boards. The corporate voice will become far more powerful than the individuals and the playing field turned upside down for "choice" and for the individual.
Hmm... maybe. I'm not sure anyone is worried about shareholders.
The role of shareholders will be deemed passive; as with an election in a republic, they contribute once when they "vote" with their investment dollars. After that, if they don't like what the corporation is doing they can divest. Outside their initial investment they need have no voice. Certainly corporations are under no more pressure to listen to shareholders than would be an elected politician in a republic. It might be expected, but we know it doesn't always (ever?) work that way.
However the role of money is different than the role of a vote.
The problem is that one vote at the ballot box buys nothing, not even influence. A vote is not intended to be legal tender, and nobody is supposed to know who voted how. However one investment dollar buys something, and many dollars in aggregate can buy virtually anything. The collective "votes" of shareholders can be used to entirely overturn an elected government built by votes at the polls if those dollars are used for that purpose, for example to purchase an army (or simply to purchase a few strategic assassinations.)
Voting and investing are not symetric activities. But I very much doubt the SCOTUS will have the stones to see it that way.
cougar
Corporations are not human beings. If you want a bright line test that would help keep their economic power from overwhelming the political system, this one is pretty easy to apply. If not, be prepared to live with legisltation and policies benefiting the unadorned and unrestrained ids of a group of potentially immortal automatons, who do not have children, live in communities, or go to church or synagogue, who learn no ethics or moral lessons from their parents, feel no emotions such as empathy, love, patriotism, remorse or pity, and live only to grow bigger regardless of the consequences on "life," which is lived only by humans. Take your pick. It's a big decision, and one which, once made, will be hard to undo when the monstrous implications of it become clear decades from now.
Perhaps we should go beyond questioning the corporation's role in government. Limited liability entities are out of control in the United States.
Real estate investors whose only contribution to society is to borrow and own (questionable utility at best) cloak themselves in a labyrinth of limited liability entities.
Limited liability corporate status is granted by state governments. Why do states grant limited liability to people forming shell entities that pray on the state's own citizens? Why do we as a society grant this special status to people who borrow and own (and inevitably ask for handouts from us when their bets go bad) yet doctors have the courage to perform their tasks as men and women, individuals? Doctors perform risky useful tasks for society yet do not cloak themselves in a limited liability shell entity.
Should we restrict the states' insane automatic granting of limited liability status? The original idea was to give risk takers some protection so that they could take risks that are productive to society. Is gambling productive? Is real estate speculation productive? Are most LPs productive?
Do you derive a tangible benefit when a private equity firm LBO's your favorite restaurant chain thereby saddling it with crippling debt and forceing them to cut wages, employees, and quality of ingredients? Why give these people the special status of limited liability?
+1
Additionally
Another big problem people have when trying to co-exist with corporations is corporate immortality. I can't think of any good reasons for corporations to exist longer than three score and ten after which they should distribute their assets to their owners. This would 'level the playing field' in many respects.
Personhood is not the issue in this case.
The main point is that News Corp, GE and Disney are exempt from restrictions on corporate speech, while most corps, unions and non-profits have strong restrictions.
Legally, the problem is that Fox News can say something that Exxon or moveon.org cannot say.
I confess I've not given this subject as much thought as others, but clearly it's time for some kind of open discussion.
Corporations as entities certainly need some legal status and protection, access to courts especially, and in order to advocate their positions they need some kind of access to the political system. If corporations had no access to the courts, capitalism wouldn't be possible. But obviously they've become in essence a new class of giant rich people who can buy whatever political influence they need or want. I agree with a comment above that one immediate need is to reduce the power of government itself; if there is an institution that by definition has a legal monopoly on the use of force and is corrupted by rent-seeking, wouldn't you want to limit its influence on your life? I do.
If we act like sheep, we will be treated as sheep. There will always be tension between the rich and the poor and middle class. There will always be people who seek power and abuse it. In the old days fractional-reserve bankers that went bust were summarily hanged by mobs. Modern-day robber barons hide behind legions of lawyers and gated communities, just like drug lords. That doesn't mean they are out of our reach.
Legal rights for corporations is a pendulum that needs to be interrupted and jerked back in the other direction.
Here it is....
Changes that will turn the US in the right direction....
Govt....
End the two party system controlled by advertising
budgets and lobbyists...
To be replaced by the states....and directed by state mandates.
All voting will be centered on the internet....there will
be no media advertising allowed in any form....
Internet will provide the information and voting means....
The lobbyist system will be eliminated by default....and
replaced by the states....
The "pie" will come from a 15% consumption tax only....
No other taxes....the max Fed allotment....5%....
All Fed expenditures voted by state mandates only....
THIS IS THE FUTURE....even if "AFTER THE REVOLUTION".....
A very long article on corporations and the free market.
http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/block-huebert...
A corporation is a just a group of individuals, just like a choir or a band or Knights of Columbus is just a group of people. The point is that all action is performed by individuals. Collectives do not act. "The hangman executes you, not the state itself. The hangman works for the state." You call a corporation an "it" because it's more convenient than saying "they".
As MsCreant pointed out, for corporate stakeholders, there's limited liability in the corporate structure. In other words, humans who vote have unlimited liability in their daily affairs... whereas corporations have limited liability for virtually all their affairs and piercing the corporate veil is many times a futile effort.
Well, it seems to me we could offer corporations a choice. If you want to be a human, and accorded all rights and obligations thereto, if you decide to contribute to elections like a human, then you lose your limited liability status like a human. Puts an end to that shit in a hurry.
Aside from the fact that every corporation is simply made up of humans (and trading robots). Why would we necessarily need redundant protection? I realize "pooling" our efforts is generally a necessary requirement for change, but you also have to admit that there are middle men in the equation... that a political activist group takes your money and then sells it to a politician. As Obama showed in his campaign, individuals can meaningfully contribute in small denominations directly to the source... ergo, middle men are unnecessary to change.
"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
--Lawrence v. Texas, US Supreme Ct
Corporations do not fit the test. They don't have emotions, thoughts, gas, or anything that would define a person. The above phrase is as vapid and ridiculous as anything to come out of the pieholes of the Black Robe Mafia, and is quotable as appropriate to the vapid society we've become, but it does define, in its way, what a free person is.
And speaking of corporations, the case was about sodomy, so it seems appropo to the topic.
You can stop making them a person, but what you really have to do is get them to stop buying influence.
Corporations like to rouse the rabble against big government, but that just means they don't want anyone regulating them as they pillage the taxypayer and subvert democracy. They use anti-big government arguments and libertarian politics as a front-room operation so they can steal everything not nailed down behind the curtain in the back.
What proper thief wouldn't be anti big govt?
This is the big hole you could drive a truck through in libertarian ideology - no means of controlling corruption.
The run up to the financial crisis and aftermath laid out clearly how "big" government is really a coroporate oligarchy in disguise -- save the bankers -- let them float away from the ship they sank on the backs of the less fortunate.
They have and they will pursue short-term gain even if it means the ruin of our nation -- and in true drug-addict style, the ruin of the corporation.
If we simply opened our eyes, recognized the flaws of corporate regulation and tried to deal with it - listen to the Volkers and the Warrens and others who are trying to warn us of the shtstorm down the road, we might have chance.
The most important thing we can do is not let them control the conversation or steer us to the red herring of "big government" or get us in a war with each other tossing around vague, almost nonsensical isms (capitalism socialism communism libertarianism) as a way of racheting up emotion and hiding the truth. That's what they want you do do --and have highly paid spin machines urge you to do. So they can keep robbing us blind.
Actually, what if we let the law go in and after that we start suing corporations.
Instead of scapegoats that go to jail with millions in their bank accounts - we could jail the entire corporations. After all they are now with the same status as any human? Who want to be in one room with FED and play mommy and daddy :)
One big problem people have when trying to co-exist with corporations is corporate immortality. I can't think of any good reasons for corporations to exist longer than three score and ten after which they should distribute their assets to their owners. This would 'level the playing field' in many respects.
While I don't believe that corporations should have been granted personhood, there is a strong argument, as made above, that if government activities were restricted to what the Constitution specifically states that there would be much less incentive to pay for favors by corporations. Where nothing can be granted nothing will be gained, so the argument for limited government, as stated in the Constitution, would help take the wind out of their sails.
Unfortunately I only know of one candidate that's EVER mentioned limited government and strict conformance to the Constitution.
We take the power of corporations for granted and find it hard to see another way of organising the economy, which is not surprising given corporate ownership of the media and suppression of alternative opinions by denying funding or funding ridicule.
But men who can't be ridiculed existed before the era of total corporate control
On the eve of his becoming Chief Justice of Wisconsin's Supreme Court, Edward G. Ryan said ominously in 1873,
"[There] is looming up a new and dark power... the enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching, not for economical conquests only, but for political power.... The question will arise and arise in your day, though perhaps not fully in mine, which shall rule --wealth or man [sic]; which shall lead --money or intellect; who shall fill public stations --educated and patriotic freemen, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital...." I think this question has been pretty comprehensively answered.
in 1888 President Grover Cleveland echoed Justice Ryan's sentiments:
"Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters."
The idea that an immortal being of size and resources that no human being can equal and immune to the punishments that can be meted on a citizen (a corporation can't be jailed and any fines come out of the shareholders pockets, not the executives unless they really flout the law) should have equal rights to a citizen is one of the most ridiculous ideas that western civilisation has ever thrown up and as such it took hundreds of years and vast amounts of treasure for the corporations to get this idea to be accepted.
This is one more directional move to give corporations the rights of individuals without the accountabilities of individuals.
+1 Exactly, when corporations can go to jail, then they can have the same free speech rights. The idea that coroprations should be allowed to have the same free speech rights we enjoy is absurd.
+1000.
Here's what I am for.
1. FULL disclosure. IF you gave money as a corporation, I want to know and see it on the corp's website, to whom and for what.
2. Get unions out of politcs!
3. End McCain Fiengold, repeal it. It is a joke.
4. Cheat Sheet, you did not give full disclosure on the context of this issue at all. Please reveal the full issue before you and us on this vital issue.
5. Partially, at issue, as I see it, is the question that Soto Sonya raised in response to this exact issue and was buried by the press, if solved against corp. and free speach, raises the viability of corporate law(s) in the America. This may seem like an oxymoron to some of you, it in fact goes to the heart of free enterprise.
Let them go whine in a Free Speech Zone
I agree with Alan Keyes on this point. (I hate to admit that). If you are not eligible to vote, you cannot contribute to political campaigns. If we need to enact a constitutional amendment to ensure that, I'm all for it.
This looks like it will give the corporations at lot of leverage if it goes. This will effectively cut out the people and their ability to influence their elected officials.
Americans - middle class, average Americans will be screwed again if this passes. America will be no longer a representative democracy, it will be facist, a corpratocracy.
How fascinating it is to see America's working people struggle for their last breath.
I believe they will be making their ruling known around October 5th. I will either be celebrating the survival of working people or I will be weeping for their death.
Laws don't silence people. Stupidity silences people.
The corporations are already doing this, indirectly (more or less), by their contributions to candidate X, Y or even W :)
The correct answer to almost all questions raised in this post is "Not just no, but hell, no."
The Constitution recognizes the rights of people. Corporations are not people.
The Supreme Court, in Buckley v. Valeo, conflates money with speech. Not only is this notion logically insupportable, it also fails to grasp the crucial difference between spending money to create speech and spending money to buy an audience. Only one of those actions is protected by the Constitution, and given the universality of the Internet, only one of them needs to be.
The law exists in significant part to hold people accountable for their actions. When it attempts to hold corporations "accountable," the result most of the time is that either no one is held accountable or else the shareholders are punished financially for actions detrimental to those same shareholders, actions for which the directors and/or officers should have been held individually responsible.
And the cherry on this steaming sh*t sundae of constitutional jurisprudence is that it's the so-called "originalist" majority of SCOTUS who 1) are ignoring the fact that no statute or ruling (as opposed to a heading thereon) ever declared corporations to be "people," for the purposes of constitutional law, in the first place; 2) are raising issues in the Citizens United case that neither plaintiffs nor defendants initially raised; and 3) clearly intend to use this case as the opportunity to overturn a century's worth of jurisprudence that they happen to disagree with because it inconveniences their financial masters.
So the next pro-corporate moron to scream "judicial activism!" around me is going to get his skull split with a chipped gavel.
-- Lex
If Corporations have all the legal rights of people, they should also be subject to prison for committing any crimes.
Touché!
Already money plays too important a roll in politics. Fund raising is as important, if not more, to candidacy than a command of the issues. Corporations have an inherent advantage as they are in essence, concentrations of wealth. When it comes to issues, lobbyists funded by corporations sway public policy far more than individual interests. The two biggest lobbies in the U.S. are the finance and health care industries...surprise surprise. Finance must contend with the threat of regulations which may curtail profitability in order to promote systemic stability. Meanwhile, the health care industry must face the "threat" of everyone in America receiving the OPTION of fairly priced health insurance. OH THE HUMANITY! Is it any wonder that public discourse and these hugely important issues align with the status quo? Allowing corporations the right to directly spend on elections only further entrenches the unfair advantages that the corporatocracy has in shaping public discourse.
http://southpawpolitic.blogspot.com/
If corporate contributions were outlawed, the demand for couriers and brown paper bags in DC would explode.
I'm all for giving the corporation the same rights and responsibilities of person-hood, death penalty and all.
Since that will never happen, they must be relegated to what they are - legal organizations of individuals, and subsequently have any rights vested to them by our corrupt legal process stripped away.
The approximate contrary to that argument would be that, a corporation may assume the rights (and responsibilities) of an individual, if said individual relinquishes those personal rights and assumes the identity of the organization.
Then the corporation would be in ownership of a corporeal body or bodies and subsequently could be held accountable to the same degree.
I fear, however - in light of the historic atrocities committed in the name of corporate fascism, and the persistence of an honest judiciary system; there would be very few of us not pending our time in the gallows.
As it stands now, they enjoy many of the privileges but none of the caveats. By all definitions if the corporation were an individual, it would be incarcerated or awaiting death for any combination of tax evasion, murder, larceny, treason, war-profiteering, or just plain old insanity.
We the people will eventually have to insist on a new form of gov. There isn't enough realization or anger yet. But when it builds up to the torches and pitchforks level, hopefully we'll see these corporate goons get their comeuppance.
Also remember that Corporations have an infinite life span, seeming to violate the ZeroHedge credo..." on a long enough timeline" ... Corporations never die. To worry about their rights is as silly as worrying about a Robot's rights.
It would be a very bad idea to allow Corporations additional access to the political process.
We need to go all the way. Corporations can not vote, can not fund campaigns, and therefore should not be taxed. Only "entities" (citizens) that vote should be taxed. Then citizens would better understand the cost of government (instead of paying taxes through some back door, indirect tax on them via corporations). This would wipe out the majority of corporate lobbyists as well.
If you want to tax corporations, they are going to want some representation......it is that whole "taxation without representation" thing.
I'm down with that. We'll just tax individuals, and we'll tax earned and unearned income at the same rate (let the market, not the tax code, determine how people will make a living). Corporations are paying the lowest percentage of total tax burden right now that they've paid in decades, so it's not like we'd miss it much anyway, relatively speaking.
That said, only people, not corporations, have the right to complain about taxation without representation. Corporations have human owners (if you follow the paper trail far enough); those humans already have representation.
-- Lex
The Fortune 1000 pay little if any taxes as it is.
As far as taxation on citizens ... the US did well without taxes until its introduction the late 1940s when it was said by goverment officials that it would never exceed 3%.
"The Fortune 1000 pay little if any taxes as it is."
Perfect - then there will be no revenue loss to the Treasury and we can rip lots of pages out of the Tax Code. Lots of lobbyists will be sad.