And now for our next trick, we’ll grant corporations the right to vote and habeas corpus
This is bad. This is really, really bad.
Corporations are people now, and money is speech. Dear god.
As Doug Kendall observes:
Citizens United blows away any notion that conservative judges, who profess to be “originalists” and “umpires,” are in fact faithful to our Constitution’s text and history or bound by reasoned precedent.
But of course we already knew that. Confirmation of that truth is the least of my concerns.
The real issue here is ohmygod. Ohmyfuckinggod.
66 Responses to “And now for our next trick, we’ll grant corporations the right to vote and habeas corpus”
-
Branjor says:
They just keep making it worse. And worse. And worse.
January 21st, 2010 at 6:14 pm EST -
ugsome says:
Democracy my pasty-white ass.
-
ugsome says:
And where’s all the whining now about ‘activist judges?’ The ones who made TEH ABORTIONZ legal?
-
votermom says:
Shouldn’t that be habeas corporatus or something?
Corporations have more human rights than humans.
-
Shannon Drury says:
I believe that only corporations will be allowed to receive abortions, if I read the opinion correctly.
-
votermom says:
Who’s in favor of a Defense of Personhood Act?
-
Adrienne in CA says:
Well, it’s very simple.
Today’s Supreme Court ruling must not stand.ReclaimDemocracy.org has comprehensive background, talking points and action plan.
Please learn more and spread the word.
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.or.....launch.php
*****A
-
jumpjet says:
Impeach John Roberts.
Or do worse to him.
-
votermom says:
Ya know, SCOTUS just handed Dems an issue to campaign on not linked to BO.
-
Adrienne in CA says:
Oh, isn’t this timely. Now that corporations have officially taken over, they can save the pittance invested in pretend liberal outlets. Wonder who’ll fold up shop next.
WaPo News Alert
05:05 PM EST Thursday, January 21, 2010Air America ceasing operations
Liberal radio network says it will file for bankruptcy and halt live programming operations this afternoon.
*****A
-
jumpjet says:
If corporations are people, we can execute them for capital crimes, right?
-
angie says:
Face it, corporations have been giving big $$ to candidates through back doors for a long time. All this opinion does is save corporations from having to go through the farce of making up names, logging in and giving “small donations on the internet” a gazillion times like they did for Obama last year. You didn’t really think his $1 billion came from actual people, did you? I expect to see “Obama brought to you by Goldman Sachs” replacing “Yes We Can!” in 2012. At least it will be the truth this time.
-
ugsome says:
The news about Air America no longer being useful idiots reminds me of this quote:
“”The illusion of freedom [in America] will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” –Frank Zappa
-
Gayle says:
Hold on tight people!
We’re circling the drain.
-
Violet Socks says:
What I’m really enjoying about this decision is that the same justices who joined it are the ones who oppose extending human rights to actual humans. These are the guys who oppose habeas corpus and due process for non-U.S. citizens. There was some recent decision (year or two ago) where they were all huffy about the Constitution not intending for aliens to have human rights. And now they’re arguing that the Constitution did intend for fictitious legal organizations to have human rights. Hi-larious.
These are also the same guys who don’t think women should have control over their own bodies. I love this.
-
janicen says:
Does this mean that the government can now start tapping corporations’ phones and reading it’s e-mails in the interest of national security?
-
janicen says:
its, not “it’s”. Sorry.
-
tinfoil hattie says:
Corporations have more human rights than humans.
They have more rights than women, that’s for damn sure.
-
Adrienne in CA says:
Hey, good news. Foreign owned corporations get to play, too!
Manchurian Candidates: Supreme Court allows China and others unlimited spending in US elections
Thursday, January 21, 2010
By Greg Palast | Updated from the original report for AlterNetThe danger of foreign loot loading into U.S. campaigns, not much noted in the media chat about the Citizens case, was the first concern raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who asked about opening the door to “mega-corporations” owned by foreign governments. Olson offered Ginsburg a fudge, that Congress might be able to prohibit foreign corporations from making donations, though Olson made clear he thought any such restriction a bad idea.
****A
-
lambert strether says:
From Citizens United:
By taking the right to speak from some andgiving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvan-taged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.
OK, corporations (speakers) are persons.
The Thirteenth Amendment:Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Slavery is the ownership of a person. Therefore, doesn’t that make corporate shareholders slaveowners?
-
webapparition says:
No more worries for either party. their corruption has now been legalized! The more things change, the more they stay the same.
-
Topper Harley says:
Money has always been equivalent to speech WRT political campaigns due the (allegedly) tough restrictions placed on candidates regarding use of those funds.
Next time you’re at the library*, check pages 9-12 of Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics:
As it turns out, the same two candidates run against each other in consecutive elections all the time-indeed, in nearly a thousand U.S. congressional races since 1972. What do the numbers have to say about such cases?
Here’s the surprise: the amount of money spent by the candidates hardly matters at all. A winning candidate can cut his spending in half and lose only 1 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, a losing candidate who doubles his spending can expect to shift the vote in his favor by only that same 1 percent. What really matters for a political candidate is not how much you spend; what matters is who you are. (The same could be said-and will be said, in chapter 5 - about parents.) Some politicians are inherently attractive to voters and others simply aren’t, and no amount of money can do much about it. (Messrs. Dean, Forbes, Huffington, and Golisano already know this, of course.)
And what about the other half of the election truism-that the amount of money spent on campaign finance is obscenely huge? In a typical election period that includes campaigns for the presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, about $1 billion is spent per year-which sounds like a lot of money, unless you care to mea sure it against something seemingly less important than democratic elections.
It is the same amount, for instance, that Americans spend every year on chewing gum.*I own the book, but it was a gift. While it was an interesting read I wouldn’t exactly put it in the “ZOMG you must own this book” category.
-
Violet Socks says:
I strongly urge people to avoid anything published by those extreme misogynist creeps. Please.
-
Nina M. says:
Well, I’m going to be the lone idiot voice of dissent here but - the part of the law that the court struck down *was* really bad, people. Really bad. Most of us didn’t know it yet because it hadn’t been used to suppress truthful documentaries about important policy-related issues. But that time would have come - quickly.
It would have been a *very* short leap, legally, from suppressing that hateful anti-Hillary “documentary” because she was running for office (so under the law the film was construed as a paid political advertisement), to suppressing any factual documentary that made a strong case against an officeholder simply because the documentary would be shown in proximity to an election. And from there, it would have been another short skip to banning documentaries that criticize policies affected by a particular officeholder, because criticism of the policy could be construed as criticism of the candidate.
I don’t know if this is in any of the opinions issued today, but I’d be very curious to know how the law would have applied to Fahrenheit 911 if it was in theaters in the months prior to the 2004 election. The film made a strong case against Bush; the filmmaker is a known partisan; and Bush was running for reelection. Under McCain-Feingold, I think the govt. would have cause to suppress it, at least until after the election.
It seems like the court has opened up a window for chaos - I haven’t read the whole opinion so I”m not sure if its true. They may have just dialed back to pre-McCain-Feingold, which let me tell you would be just fine. That law didn’t improve things one whit - despite all the BS about how crucial it was that it pass.
Money does not always win elections, and there are dozens of ways to calculate how much is spent during a campaign season (the public finance groups can make the numbers looks like whatever they want).
The prospect of “corporations” (which include non-profit advocacy groups and labor unions) buying 30 or 60 second ads is NOTHING compared to the influence of the corporate owned print and televised media. That’s the real scandal - Jack Welch and Rupert Murdoch spray us with 24-7 propaganda with no restrictions whatsoever. (There’s a reason we hear not even a whisper about restricting the reach of the corporate-owned media).
Our side is wrong more often than it is right on this issue. Its our side that wants to give our government the singular power to fund - or not fund - campaigns, which is the very definition of making the fox the sole proprietor of the henhouse.
Exercise a high degree of skepticism.
-
Adrienne in CA says:
A better read:
the 5th edition of Influence - Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini.All of Chapter Two on Reciprocation is a must read. The section on politics starts on page 26.
*****A
-
myiq2xu says:
Money is not speech, and corporations are not people.
SCOTUS needs a dictionary.
-
Adrienne in CA says:
Nina M., the campaign finance law at issue, BCRA Section 203, wasn’t about censoring content, it was about limiting unfair advantage by big money participants. The electioneering communications cutoff is a mere 60 days prior to a general election, and 30 days before a primary. The idea is to prevent the multi-million dollar advertising blitz launched so close to election day that modestly funded candidates cannot respond. It proscribed only specific types of communication, applied equally to left and right, and if it would have delayed release of Fahrenheit 911, so be it.
Not satisfied to rule on that narrow point, the evil-acronymed creeps who brought the case were permitted to re-argue it on broader grounds, resulting in the court overturning 100 year old law and recent precedent that kept corporations from spending from their treasuries to directly influence elections. Now they can spend freely, saturation bombing us with pro and anti-candidate ads right up to election day. When they launder the money through other groups to protect their shiny, happy reputations, we won’t even get to see that Wal-Mart or Exxon or Monsanto paid for this advertisement.
Unions and non-profits can’t come close to matching the sums corporations command. Neither can independent businesses that also opposed the change. One percent of one year’s profits for the top 100 corporations is $6 billion. A minor investment considering what it can get them in return.
I’m all for limiting corporate influence on media, and yesterday’s ruling unchecked will make that much harder to do.
*****A
-
NullityPersonified says:
When they launder the money through other groups to protect their shiny, happy reputations, we won’t even get to see that Wal-Mart or Exxon or Monsanto paid for this advertisement.
Unions and non-profits can’t come close to matching the sums corporations command. Neither can independent businesses that also opposed the change. One percent of one year’s profits for the top 100 corporations is $6 billion. A minor investment considering what it can get them in return.
I’m not as sure that it’s as easy for corporations to “launder money through other groups” as you portray it to be. The new corporate accounting requirements mandated after the Enron fiasco make it a lot harder to funnel money in untraceable ways. And, if large enough numbers of citizens banded together to educate voters, rather than allowing them to be influenced by advertising, maybe we could change the way people decide who to vote for. Such an approach would take some of the power away from the media and return it to the people.
By creating a system to track corporate political donations, we could boycott corporations and candidates who accept large contributions from them. (Just because corporations are allowed to contribute to politicians doesn’t mean that there will be no regulations for how those contributions are made and recorded.) In addition, we should demand new laws to ensure transparency in corporate political contributions, with a view to permanently banning such contributions (through major campaign finance reform).
-
Adrienne in CA says:
Well, by “launder money,” I don’t mean illegally. Exxon can simply give millions to whatever PAC, say Citizens for a Happy Planet, who will then produce nasty hit pieces that needn’t mention Exxon at all.
Would love it if large enough numbers of citizens banded together to do anything. That would be nice.
*****A
-
Adrienne in CA says:
And the problem with passing laws to regulate corporate contributions, or treat their speech/spending differently from everyone else’s, is that Congress already did that with BCRA and this Supreme Court has said that’s unconstitutional.
So it’s hard.
*****A
-
gxm17 says:
Money may or may not win/decide elections. But it does buy politicians who then owe corporations and govern with their best interests in mind. Ultimately, campaign payola sabotages democracy and voids the will of the people. Just look at the current HCR debacle.
What I’m wondering is why no one has taken Citizens United Not Timid to court for hate speech.
-
Nadai says:
Is hate speech is illegal in the US? Other than if it can be construed as inciting immediate violence?
-
Nadai says:
Is hate speech illegal in the US? Other than if it can be construed as inciting immediate violence? I was under the impression we could say just about any vile thing we wanted here as long as it didn’t incite a riot.
-
gxm17 says:
Now that gender is included in hate crimes, an organization that exists to attack a woman and that goes by a gender-specific pejorative should be enough meat for feminist-minded lawyers to take aim at. Certainly an organization with an acronym for the n-word that was created to attack Obama would receive, at the very least, public scorn. Something feminists and like-minded folks should pursue is making anti-women pejoratives just as socially unacceptable as ethnic slurs.
-
RKMK says:
jumpjet says:
If corporations are people, we can execute them for capital crimes, right?
Along that line, would Jamie Lee Jones be able to press criminal rape, kidnapping, and torture charges against Haliburton?
-
phio gistic says:
I wonder if we are going to get to choose between the Nike vs Bud Light candidates, or the Bud vs Bud Light candidates.
http://freespeechforpeople.org/ wants to “pass a constitutional amendment of our own that puts people ahead of corporations.”
-
DancingOpossum says:
“an organization that exists to attack a woman and that goes by a gender-specific pejorative should be enough meat for feminist-minded lawyers to take aim at”
This is why I hate, detest, and loathe hate-speech laws. They are censorship and thought-crime, pure and simple.
-
Topper Harley says:
@23 James Watson is, arguably, a very smart guy when it comes to biology. His politics are awful: He’s sexist, racist, homophobic and pretty much all around non-PC. That doesn’t mean his results on the helical structure of DNA aren’t correct.
@29 This is already permissible. There is a verb used to describe this particular type of advocacy based on something that happened to John Kerry in 2004: Swift Boating. Maybe you’ve heard of it?
So-called 527 groups have virtually zero limits on fundraising, and the only significant limit to their speech is that they can’t directly advocate for or against a candidate, and, allegedly at least, they cannot coordinate with candidates.
What I fail to see is that on one hand, corporations are so short sighted that they won’t fund R&D, they don’t make long term decisions, etc. etc. However, these same short-sighted, greedy institutions are going to turn around and pump billions of dollars into an election on the chance that their candidate might win and she or he will owe them one.
-
sam says:
This is why I hate, detest, and loathe hate-speech laws. They are censorship and thought-crime, pure and simple.
huh?
-
Violet Socks says:
@23 James Watson is, arguably, a very smart guy when it comes to biology. His politics are awful: He’s sexist, racist, homophobic and pretty much all around non-PC. That doesn’t mean his results on the helical structure of DNA aren’t correct.
And what does that have to do with Freakonomics?
If you’re suggesting that Freakonomics is a text whose value is on par with Watson’s work on DNA, then you are, um, wrong. Freakonomics is just a fluffy popular book (fluffy except for the grotesque misogyny, that is) the sole purpose of which is to make Steven Levitt and his little friend Dubner a shitload of money. Buying that book doesn’t represent some kind of contribution to or endorsement of valuable work in economic theory; it’s just putting money in Levitt’s pocket.
-
Violet Socks says:
Also, Steven Levitt is an economist. Economics isn’t just math; it’s about human behavior. Since Levitt is unable to grasp that half the human race is, in fact, human, his analytical skills are severely compromised. I don’t know how anyone can read his garbage about women and still think he has anything to offer. I mean, sure, he might do great as an economist for an imaginary race of androids or something. But not human beings.
-
Nina M. says:
Nina M., the campaign finance law at issue, BCRA Section 203, wasn’t about censoring content, it was about limiting unfair advantage by big money participants. The electioneering communications cutoff is a mere 60 days prior to a general election, and 30 days before a primary. The idea is to prevent the multi-million dollar advertising blitz launched so close to election day that modestly funded candidates cannot respond. It proscribed only specific types of communication, applied equally to left and right, and if it would have delayed release of Fahrenheit 911, so be it.
Adrienne, I love you, but you’re wrong.
1. This is about censorship. This provision of BCRA used a notoriously vague standard to determine whether or not the content of an expression could be “reasonably” construed as electoral advocacy; based on this determination (made by a small group of political appointees *not* accountable to the public), the expression could be categorized as a communication on behalf of a campaign, making it an in-kind campaign contribution; and if the cost of the communication exceeded the $5,000 per election cap on contributions, the excess amount would be considered an illegal campaign contribution - leaving the authors / sponsors of the expression liable for jail time.
In other words, people would go to jail if the elections commission didn’t like what they had to say, or when they chose to say it. So censorship of the content of speech is at the very heart of the matter.
2. “The idea is to…” Sadly, this is one of those cases where the sponsors of the legislation promised one thing and their legislation said something else. What you describe is one way it was *hoped* the law might work, not the way it would actually work.
This provision of BCRA would not have prevented mega-bucks ad blitzes against underdog candidates. It would have prevented practically all paid television and radio communications about every candidate during the critical weeks leading up to an election. The theory behind this is - if everyone is silent, no one has an advantage. But this theory is fatally flawed, because BCRA doesn’t silence everyone - it exempts our most powerful corporations: those who own our television, radio, and print media (and by extension, the corporations who provide most of their advertising revenue). Now, do you really think if all political ads by “corporations” were pulled off the air, GE would suddenly decide it loves anti-establishment candidates and order Tweety et al to give them unbiased coverage? Or do you think MSNBC would continue to give underdogs the shaft in order to please its advertisers and almighty Jack Welch?
Do you think Roger Ailes would suddenly see the light and give “fair and balanced” coverage to progressive women, or do you think he’d continue to favor candidates who please his boss Rupert Murdoch?
You know, there’s a reason the mainstream media is telling you that the republic will crumble unless their voices are the only ones voters are allowed to hear!
3. “a mere 60 days prior to a general election, and 30 days…” - are you kidding? These are the windows of time when incumbents pay the most (read: any) attention to the opinion of voters. Please tell me you don’t seriously believe *our* Congress wanted these windows to protect underdog candidates. What they wanted was to create penalty-free zones where they could vote on controversial issues without facing repercussions at the ballot box.
If these windows were operative, do you think Congress *wouldn’t* push their controversial votes into them? Now picture health care reform being pushed back to September-October 2012. Suddenly, the Dems spring a Stupak maneuver. You would hope that NARAL, or the ACLU, or someone would hit the air with ads alerting the public to what was going on. But under the now-defunct provision of BCRA, such ads *could have been* construed as intended to get the public to vote against certain electeds, which would mean the ads could be in-kind contributions over the legal limit, which would mean the heads of those organizations could go to jail for running them. Note: whether or not the FEC would have ruled that way immaterial. Do you think those ads would even be cut if that was the risk involved? No. The groups wouldn’t even try. They’d be non-starters.
Do. Not. Want.
4. “if it would have delayed release of Fahrenheit 911, so be it” Really? Do you really think that censoring political speech in the critical weeks before an election would somehow benefit the *underdog* candidate and help the public to be *better* informed?
Generally speaking –
There is so much disinformation flying around in this thread.
I beg you to read the ACLU’s amicus brief for this case, filed last summer - http://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs.....amicus.pdf
-
Adrienne in CA says:
@38 Oh, I’ve heard of them. The Swiftboaters were found to be in violation of FEC law as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....EC_FilingsThe FEC did, however, find for the joint complainants (Case #5511)[106] in that the SBVT failed to register and file disclosure reports as a federal political committee, and accepted contributions in violation of federal limits and source prohibitions. SBVT was assessed a fine of $299,500.
I guess it’s better to simply toss all attempts at regulating entities whose pockets are infinitely deep? No doubt you would think so.
*****A
-
Adrienne in CA says:
Nina M., you’re a dear to love me, but right and wrong are in the eye of the beholder. I’m glad you cited ACLU as your influence, because for a moment I was afraid you were working for C.U.N.T.
Look, FEC rules are a mess, confusing and costly both to comply with and to enforce. You’re right that the motives behind them, and behind anything Congress passes, should be suspect. I wish we could replace the whole shebang with sensible systems like the U.K. where corporations aren’t people, money isn’t speech, and Parliament can use their control over the airwaves to place reasonable across-the-board restrictions on how long confusion and disinformation may reign before an election.
Sadly, attempts of that type have been deemed unconstitutional here. I find it hard to believe that, outside of the confines of this case, ACLU is on the side of anyone and everyone spending unlimited cash to influence elections. So if they have suggestions on how to protect the rights of human citizens in a democracy, I would love to know what they are. Apparently, the US Constitution is no longer adequate in that regard, just as it remains inadequate to safegard the rights of women.
*****A
-
Adrienne in CA says:
And before I get a lecture on the horrors of the U.K. election system, I’m just using that as one example. There must be some way to limit the corrosive influence of money in politics, because right now money has the upper hand.
*****A
-
Adrienne in CA says:
Sorry for the thread hogging, but I’ll add one more thought. Happily, we’ll all soon know how dire or not this experiment turns out to be, since the Nov election is just months away. All those calling for a system meltdown may well get their wish.
Here’s to being pleasantly surprised. Regardless, the Freakonomics authors will pen another book about how it all came out just peachy in the end.
*****A
-
DancingOpossum says:
Nina, I greatly appreciate your analysis here. Certainly offers an interesting perspective that gives me serious food for thought.
-
Aspen says:
I second sam’s “huh?” regarding hate speech laws. Feminist bloggers are not infrequently threated with graphic rape and murder. What the hell do you have to say to qualify for hate speech?
-
Nina M. says:
Adrienne, the fact that I have two brain cells to rub together should be enough to suggest I’d have nothing to do with Roger Stone!
I don’t believe right and wrong are in the eye of the beholder - but then again, I’m not a moral relativist. So maybe we have a more fundamental disagreement!
Simply put, there is no Constitutional justification for the speech prohibitions in sec. 203. None. The Court was right to strike this language down, and I find it extremely troubling that our good judges were on the wrong side. I attended some of the oral arguments in the first round of FEC v McConnell, and it seemed to me that our judges didn’t really understand the way advocacy is carried out in the real world. They had a number of unfounded assumptions about why advocates say and do certain things. As for the evil judges having ruled the right way in this case, all I can say is that they hate regulations that control money, so in this one instance the stars aligned in our favor.
We’re lucky.
I don’t know the argument behind overturning Austin, but I know a lot of clean-up will have to happen to get a handle on who can give what to whom.
Question: who do you think will lead the charge to make sure the next round of regs work for the people? Advocacy groups. And what are advocacy groups? A type of corporation. And what will those corporations be doing? Communicating with the public about federal legislation and the actions of federal officeholders. Am I the only one who sees the irony here? If sec. 203 had stood, those same corporations would be prohibited from engaging in mass communications with the public on campaign finance reform or any other federal issue.
I am no fan of unlimited for-profit corporations spending wildly on elections. But the fact is that they already do this through our corporate media, and BCRA didn’t change any of that. BCRA didn’t even touch it.
I urge everyone to reconsider what they think they know about this issue. There is a lot of misinformation out there.
As for replacing our system with UK’s - they are a parliamentary democracy. We’re not. We might as well be on two totally different planets in terms of how campaigns are carried out.
-
Adrienne in CA says:
Nina M., I suspect that our more fundamental disagreement may be that in my world, reasonable people may disagree, where that’s apparently not the case in yours. I consider myself a pragmatist with a very strong (and if I may say, admirable) sense of personal morality, one that sometimes transcends convention or law, and which I sometimes find necessary to compromise when enforcement of some part of my moral code would result in greater violation of some other part, as judged, as such quandaries are, in my own mind. I suspect that at some point in your life, you too have felt compelled to submit with reluctance to moral compromise, whether you were aware that you were doing so, or are willing to admit to it here.
I did read the ACLU brief of July 2009, and I encourage everyone to.
http://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs.....amicus.pdfOf course the ACLU takes no position whatever therein on the constitutionality of corporations as persons, or the implications of freeing them from all constraint on election spending, only concerning itself with the First Amendment implications of limiting any speech in any way. Here’s the essence (is it alright if I decide that?) of their argument, from the summary on page 2:
The broad prohibition on “electioneering communications” set forth in § 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), 2 U.S.C. § 441b(b)(2), violates the First Amendment, and the limiting construction adopted by this Court in WRTL is insufficient to save it. Accordingly, the Court should strike down § 203 as facially unconstitutional and overrule that portion of McConnell that holds otherwise.
This brief addresses only that question. It does not address the additional question raised by this Court’s reargument order: namely, whether Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652
(1990), should be overruled. However, if Austin is overruled and the ban on express advocacy by corporations and unions is struck down, then the ban on “electioneering communications” in § 203 would necessarily fall as a consequence.Fine. First Amendment is ACLU’s charter. From that singular vantage point, they make a good case, though I can’t help noticing, a fairly self-serving one (i.e., since this would free ACLU to expressly advocate, we’re for it).
Alas, since for me, absolute freedom of speech isn’t the only issue at stake, and since I cannot reconcile enforcing that one principle at the expense of, as I see it, the potentially much greater harm of unleashing unlimited corporate money on the election process, I err on the side of the morally imperfect (and imperfectable) status quo.
I’ll also repeat my doubt that all the unions and advocacy groups in the country would come close to matching the influence purchasing power of Corporate America. As I mentioned before, we’ll soon find out.
*****A
-
DHM says:
I am surprised that everybody here seems to think viewing a corporation as a ‘person’ is something new with this court.
Six years ago a group I worked with informally was considering incorporating, and the way our lawyer explained it was that the corporation would be a separate person under the law. Wikipedia isn’t a great source, but if you look up corporation there you will find the same thing. Cornell Universities page on corporations says the same thing. In fact, just look up corporations are people under the law, or some variation, and see what you find.http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/corporations
Whatever you think of the ruling, the fact is that these justices did not create the legal status of corporations as ‘people’ with certain rights under the law because of that status. That has been the case for a very, very long time.
-
Adrienne in CA says:
No, corporate personhood is not new, and it was never a formal legal finding either. It’s based on a series of tricks, really, that began with the 14th Amendment to free the slaves. Corporate lawyers hatched the idea that they could use the reference to “persons” there to expand corporate power. Little by little, they began including this concept in legal arguments. In 1886, when deciding Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (the county had levied a railroad tax), the court discussed and declined to rule on whether the 14th Amendment applied to corporations. Before oral argument took place, Chief Justice Waite announced:
“The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.”
That’s all it took. Even though the railroad lost the case, a misleading note to the effect that “corporate personhood” had been established was inserted by a clerk of the court, who was also a railroad company insider. The mistake was improperly cited in 1889 and propagated through court decisions ever since — precedent based on a lie.* A minor quibble in the end, since it had the same effect as a ruling, and even better, because no justice had to own up to having ruled in favor of something that at the time would have been thought bizarre. Now it’s common parlance.
The whole story is here:
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/pd....._blues.pdfRe suggestions about educating the public, here’s a nice 2-page primer/flyer to share.
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/pd.....istory.pdfBTW, Lambert, another play on the slavery angle is that corporations routinely buy and own other corporations, and if they’re persons, isn’t that slavery? Unfortunately those manipulating the legal process to play these games believe we’re the slaves.
*Thom Hartmann’s book Unequal Protection traces the whole history, names, cases, etc.
*****A
-
Adrienne in CA says:
Wikipedia turns out to have a very thorough entry on the Santa Clara County mentioned above.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....c_Railroad
I was mistaken about who won the case. The railroad did win, but not on the basis of personhood.
*****A
-
gxm17 says:
Well if corporations are legally “people” then shouldn’t they have voting rights as well? I’m assuming there are some limitations to the “personhood” of a corporation. Hmmmm, maybe the “pro-lifers” should start demonstrating whenever a corporation is in danger of being “aborted” in the form of a takeover.
-
AM says:
Adrienne, *thank* you for the excellently concise overview of corporate personhood history in comment 52 above. This is the basic overview that needs to be known by the majority of Americans before change can happen. I have been frustrated for decades now because such an overview has not been forthcoming in such a way as to seize the public imagination. But what’s happening now has the potential to change that, I feel. Just mulling it over this morning it occurred to me that, yes, we have a two-party system: the Human Party and the Corporation Party. The Human Party is badly divided (division enabled by the Corporation Party — divide and conquer).
-
bob coley jr says:
As a Zappaphile, one of my favorite quotations of his can be applied in many, if not most, places where the meaning of one’s words has, or may have, consequences beyond the original intent of the speaker. Such is the case, it seems, with the view of corporations as people. “The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe!” We always need to be mindful of what may be important but left out of sight, or disguised, or un-thought of as a possible component.
-
AM says:
adding to my comment 55 above: And maybe along with that, the message that corporations are at the root of most of what plagues us and the whole planet can be taken in by the majority.
-
Adrienne in CA says:
AM, well said about Corporations versus Humans. It’s really down to that.
Oh, someone please post historical perspective about how corporate power ebbs and flows. Remember how the railroad tycoons and robber barons were beaten back, and their Gilded Age mansions returned to the people as libraries and universities. That really happened, right?
*****A
-
bob coley jr says:
On Meet The Press today, McConnel (R) called for the equalization of the tax rate between corporations and individual people and then espoused the usual Republican mantra of lower taxes! WTF?
-
AM says:
Adrienne, yeah, down to that. The children spawned by mostly male linear thinking competing with the children of women. Men conceiving their own babies, by act of state issuing piece of paper, and growing them to maturity, with only linear dna.
And I cast a furry eyeball on the nonprofit corporations as well. They’re universally referred to as ‘a nonprofit’ these days; nowhere, *and I mean nowhere* does the word ‘corporation’ follow. Nonprofit has changed from an adjective to a noun. When push comes to shove, the corporate priorities rule.
-
Topper Harley says:
@40 I was pointing out the fallacy of ad hominem arguments.
IMO, if you want to debunk Levitt, you start with the science. Over the period that he examined (’72-92), there were 4350 federal elections*. Is 1000 a large enough sample? What about confounding factors? Does he control for “celebrity candidates”**? Does the analysis change when you only include the top two vote getters? Does the analysis control for incumbency advantage? Does the analysis control for party popularity?
The mention in the book is actually a summary of a paper submitted to a fairly prestigious economics journal (citation here, free if you’ve got access to JSTOR, $$$ otherwise).
Back on topic, a lawyer I know has read the decision and says that this doesn’t remove the restriction on direct contributions to candidates, nor does it remove the disclosure requirements, nor does it remove the prohibition on coordination. All that’s really happened is that corporations can directly make “electioneering” ads without laudering the money through a PAC or 527.
IIRC, 80% of political spending comes from individual contributions or party organizations. Are corporations really going to spend 5x as much as they have in the past? What about the practical concerns? Being seen in 11 zillion ads disclosed as “Paid for by Exxon Mobil” isn’t going to allow you to keep your cred with those who lean Green. Also, too much direct support for one candidate could backfire if said candidate loses.
* 10 cycles @ 435 elections/cycle.
** For example, in the Puget Sound area there’s a guy called “Mike the Mover” that’s run for just about every office. He’s not particularly serious about it, he just does it for the attention. -
DHM says:
Adrienne, thank-you for the additional history behind the ‘corporation as person under the law.’ It certainly sounded to me like most people here have misunderstood this, mistakenly supposing that the conservative justices who struck down portions of McCain Feingold invented it with their ruling, when, in fact, EVERY one of the 9 justices recognizes corporations as persons with first amendment rights.
The same thing happened on Greenwald’s blog, and he responded:
” I want to note one extremely bizarre aspect to the discussion yesterday. Most commenters (though not all) grounded their opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling in two rather absolute principles: (1) corporations are not “persons” and thus have no First Amendment/free speech rights and/or (2) money is not speech, and therefore restrictions on how money is spent cannot violate the First Amendment’s free speech clause. What makes those arguments so bizarre is that none of the 9 Justices — including the 4 dissenting Justices — argued either of those propositions or believe them. To the contrary, all 9 Justices — including the 4 in dissent — agreed that corporations do have First Amendment rights and that restricting how money can be spent in pursuit of political advocacy does trigger First Amendment protections.”It seems to me that if you want to change that ruling, it’s insane to go about changing the first amendment, as Public Citizen and other groups on the left seek to do. It would make more sense (to me, anyway), to work on changing the legal standing of corporations. Since Public Citizen is one, however, I can see why they prefer to change free speech rights for everybody else-those of us who actually ARE individuals, in other words.
-
Adrienne in CA says:
Agree, DHM. Maximize speech for all persons, and clarify that persons means humans. A group that’s taking aim at corporate personhood and money not being speech is:
http://www.movetoamend.org/Note that Justice John Paul Stevens’ dissent, presumably speaking for all four dissenting justices, did say explicitly that corporations should not have the same rights as human beings. Sotomayor is also on record in a prior S.C. case as calling the doctrine of corporate personhood into question. So they’re not all as corrupt as that bunch back in 1886.
*****A
-
Adrienne in CA says:
Topper Harley, the reason I’m a little exercised about this issue (and sorry again to everyone for thread-hogging), is that so many people seem to be shrugging it off as no big deal. They assume corporations have been buying elections all along, so nothing much has changed.
People, this is not so.
Since 1907, corporations have been prohibited from using treasury funds to influence campaigns (also unions since 1947). Under BCRA (aka, McCain-Feingold), yes, corporations could open a PAC, but the money into the PAC had to come from individuals or other PACs and there were strict annual $ limits ($5000/yr per individual, $10000/yr per PAC). Sure, corporations can get lots of wealthy people who favor their positions to donate so their PACs can raise millions of dollars. Here’s an example of high dollar PAC giving. Of course that much money, tens of millions per PAC accumulated from 1989-2010, has impacted voter behavior.
That was peanuts.
Since last week’s Supreme Court ruling, there are NO LIMITS to corporate political spending. If some billions-o-bucks corporation thinks it’s worth it to spend a mere $100 million directly out of its bank account to purchase election advertising, there is nothing to stop it. It can spend $500 million if it wants to, and there’s no constraint on what they can say about whom.
Money doesn’t have to go directly to a candidate. If some deep pockets corporation buys all a candidate’s advertising, that candidate will be more likely to win. Candidates who accept no PAC money, as some do, will be drowned out completely.
If corporations pool their interests, there will be no stopping them. As mentioned upthread, 1% of the 2008 profits of just the Fortune 100 is $6 billion — double the amount spent on campaigns for President and every seat in the House and Senate.
Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
*****A
-
Adrienne in CA says:
I take that last comment back.
Be informed, be very, very informed.
*****A
-
SlyRobber says:
Face it people, in the U.S.A. and all Reich leaning places it all come down to “Abeit Macht Frei” in american that would be “right to work” states. Rome will fall once again.
Not all fascists wear black.
