Corporate Money Will Reshape Politics
 

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What do you think?

I agree with the second response above. Having the corps be able to spend shareholders money on whatever the corporation wants whether the individual shareholders agree or not is a very dangerous precedent. Corps also have more money to spend and can reap greater rewards from influencing political policy.

To a certain extent this is a depressing conversion from de facto to de jure.

I'd argue that this...
...is a fallacy (there's not much chance of a corporate ad assisting an informed electorate), except for the fact that the media is corporate-owned, and usually (especially in television) doesn't provide much more depth than a political ad in the first place.

Maybe we'll get more balance if the unions can do what the corporations have been doing anyway.

Bleh.

In the past, Unions could not use dues for political purposes. That money had to come from separate voluntary donations by the members. I wonder if this affects that policy?
On the bright side, it may make what's been happening all along, more obvious/less devious and more transparent?
I'm reaching, aren't I?:(

yes you are, bruce. The more I think about this, the worse it gets.
Any of that Kool-Aid left? I could use a little right about now.

This is terrible. I have long felt that if 'corporations' really are 'legal persons' they should be treated as the rest of us are -- limit them to $2k in campaign contributions.

This goes in the worst possible direction.

Must be that Sotomayor's fault, being the newbie. :haha:
Is there a link to how they voted?

Wait, does this mean they can give the money directly to the candidate, or just campaign on their own on behalf of the candidate?

Thanks.

Your welcome, This is totally fucked up. How the hell can they make this decision? This goes beyond any sense, common or otherwise. :mad2:

Boosting their retirement fund?


Oh, and it's Bush's fault.

:haha:

WTF was Kennedy thinking???

Nah....Bush was only responsible for Roberts and Alito.

Daddy Bush gets the nod for Clarence Thomas and the credit goes to Reagan for Kennedy and Scalia.

:D

It does strike as odd. to say the least, that the conservative members of the bench, the more "strict" constitutionalists, believe the laws of the land should treat corporations as "people".

WE the people and corporations of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union....

I gather that Thomas wanted to also eliminate disclosure rules.

WE corporations, and the people we own, of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union....

:D

Gotta get rid of all that red & white, non-revenue producing, space.

Nah, that's the military-industrial complex and BigPharma.

WILL reshape politics? What, did you write this thread 200 years ago and just now got around to hitting "Post Quick Reply"?

For as long as I've been alive I've been aware we've been living in a Corpocracy.

I have long felt that if corporations really are legal persons they should be eligible for lethal injection in Texas.

Does this new ruling mean that multinational corporations can now pump money into the US elections by using their US branch? Are we going to have Chinese corporations donating money to US candidates by using dummy US subsidiaries?

I don't like it but I see how they made their arguement. I guess the only thing to do is count on the Congress to redefine the law and start over.

I would like to see all elected officials be limited to public funds only at a set minimum amount and the same limits on public corps and special interest groups.

Very good question. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds.

Donation limits to candidates are still in place.

But under this formulation, if corporations are people, and money is speech, any corporation, foreign or domestic, can now run their own ads for or against candidates. They'll only need dummy corporations if they want to be somewhat anonymous.

Are the limits for a single corp based on it being one corp or a corp "representing" x number of people?

The international issue is a biggie!

Any limits to donating directly to candidates (I don't know specifics on this, it may not even be legal at all) would be per-corporation.

But there will be no limit to the corporation making its own ad campaign, completely separately (wink wink nudge nudge) from the candidate's campaign.

Yep. This is ridiculous. I still cannot gather the mentality or logic behind this decision. To me its akin to separation of church and state.

I just don't see how this really has anything to do with the First Amendment. Refresh my memory, when did corporations become people again?

Thanks HM - that was more of a rhetorical statement ;)

The largest of the large corporations have had far too much power and influence of the government for the longest time and now with this ruling not only are corporations more people than people they truly can do what ever they want, and government only services a figurehead to the largest corporations now.

I like to think that this is the Supreme Court's sneaky way of forcing Congress to completely rewrite the campaign finance laws from scratch. That's what helps me sleep at night.

I'm so glad someone else knew corporations were defined as people a very long time ago. Still, the SC had ruled over and over to keep them in check in certain ways... until NOW. This is a DISASTER. Just wait and see. *heavy sigh*

:mad:

"Was that a gunshot?"

What he said!


Well, maybe they're just trying to even out the balance of trade figures. Gotta get some kind of money coming in.

Stand by for third party attack ads. "Candidate Smith denied any knowledge of the ads which portrayed Jones as a lying cheating pedophile communist atheist...."


Planetologists talk of "crater saturation". The moon, for example, is so pitted with craters that any more impacts don't make a noticable scar; it is crater saturated. The only positive thought I have is that maybe Washington is already slush-money saturated. While not good, this might not make much difference.

Good luck guys.

My only question is if you buy a politician and use a credit card, is it %1 OR %5 cash back?

Another 5-4 decision in favor of corporate 'rights'. GWB's appointments will be the gift that keeps on giving for the next 20-30 years.

Corporation are 'fictitious persons'. They can't be put in jail. They don't need or use public services unless they are programmed to 'care' or in those rare instances when they actually engage in long term thinking. So they don't go to PTA meetings or volunteer for the fire department.

The only way corporations can be punished is by government regulators or by courts awarding punitive damages. Depending on the administration, government oversight can be spotty and with the move towards tort reform, any caps in place might weaken the last inhibitor of corporate misbehavior.

We may be seeing memos like the infamous Ford Pinto memo.

It ended up costing Ford a lot more than that in reputation alone.

That is the bottom line. Freedom of Speech is an individual right designed for human beings. We must find a way to eliminate organizations from the equation. No PACS, Corporations, or Unions just individual contributions with full disclosure.

Right, union leadership doesn't speak for all the members. Corporate heads don't speak for all the stockholders. But by controlling the money & microphone, they would have the combined power.

I think it's awesome how an issue that is about money can be spun as an issue of Free Speech.

Nothing matters in the world except money. I repeat, *nothing* matters in the world except money. Not human life, not national boundaries, not spiritual beliefs, morality...nothing.

Sex? ;)

I think for me the biggest issue is that it's relatively easy to create a corporation. It's much harder to create a new person and then obscure the fact that you're giving them money to give to someone.

It seems like this just opened a huge loophole. If you have a for-profit religious group, can you donate to political causes? Or do you just have to go through whoever already happens to own a business?


I'm curious, though, about the "spending is a protected form of expression" concept. It seems as though that would invalidate, or raise amusing counterarguments, against prohibited forms of commerce. Suddenly complicating those situations where something is legal to own and legal to produce, but not legal to buy or sell, by making the transaction a first amendment issue. "I'm sorry officer, I was just exercising my right to financially express my support of drug dealers."


Also, from the "maybe there's a silver lining" dept.: we live in a very, very media-saturated world. This is a recent change (100 years or so? exponentially since radio.). Saying "corporate-backed advertising will control the country" is predicated on people staying as media-literate as we are today: being consistently passive and fairly trusting. This is probably not true, and in fact maybe a huge influx of corporate-backed politicking will form the impetus for us to become critical of advertising.

The funny thing is, I believe that there was a law passed (by Republican Congress) that restricted a Union's right to use members money for political ads without their express permission.

I think that something similar is being proposed for corporations, but I think with what's in place right now, the unions are more constrained than corporations.

This is just a guess. I'm too tired to fact check right now.

BTW, what's really annoying is how states race to the bottom in providing 'corporate friendly' laws and use the commerce clause to force someone in Idaho who gets screwed to sue the company in Delaware. The reason that there is no limit on credit card interest rates is due to a combination of the Supreme Court and the state of South Dakota.

That's a good point! I was thinking that a corporation that pissed people off with political shenanigans, would face backlash in the marketplace. But one guy with a couple of bucks, and a lawyer, can form a corporation in a heartbeat. Plus I think if it's privately held, only minimal information about who owns it, who's part of it, income sources & expenditures, have to be disclosed.


Yes, they can't use regular dues, only money donated by members that's specificaly earmarked for political use.

I can't see this ever being reversed anyhow anyway. And unless it happens soon I'm out.

From the Washington Post of 13 March 2010 is what is now legal - as long as the corporation's officers are old enough: How old does a corporation need be to register to vote. And when the spread sheets spin off bad debts into private companies, can those SIV shell companies also vote?

We could Incorporate names and "Domain squat" them for 20 years, then sell them to people that want to start a company that can run right away.

Reductio ad absurdum. Nicely played.

Excellent work, sad reality.

Forgive me if this was already answered, but how much are coorporations now allowed to spend in elections?

How much they got?

You're joking. Please tell me you're joking.

If a corporation has the right to free speech. I think it also has the right to serve in the military. Bring back the draft and send all those corporations on highly dangerous anti-terrorism missions. With any luck, none of them will return.

Yes I was joking. I have no idea and that would be a political discussion which I am refraining from getting into.

In fact this post you are reading isn't me, its my cat channeling my thoughts to you.

You may have been joking, but you weren't wrong.

The interesting thing to me is the near universal opposition to this nonsense which isn't reflected in the Supremes or Congress.

Money talks, opposition walks.

Depends on which tricks are being implemented. Back when regulation existed, First Energy has a potential Three Mile Island failure in their Davis Besse reactor. Two other plants with the same defect were ordered shut down immediately. But First Energy wanted to run another four months. So First Energy organized a $450,000 fund raiser for Bush Cheney. Then the NRC did not impose a shutdown of Davis Besse.

Well, when they took the cap off, that was the reactor that had a hole eaten completely through the containment dome. Had that Three Miles Island failure occured, there was no containment to hold that 60 pound per square inch explosion.

$450,000 - chump change now that corporations have no limits.

John McCain sat in the Supreme Court during oral arguments. Said that a few justices had clearly decided long before hearing any arguments. That implies a political agenda. And also said there is nothing that can be done. According to McCain, the Supreme Court virtually made it impossible to restrict corporate purchasing of politicians.

Then he made another interesting point. McCain wished someone on the bench had previously experience in politics as a Sherriff or something equivalent. Of course they would not understand pressures put on politicians to be bought and paid for. None had every held office where they would understand these pressures that made corruption so easy.

There is very little the other branches of government can do especially when government has never been so obstructionist due to so many wacko extremists. Campaign finance reform has been all but destroyed. Earmarks are now virtually for sale with no restrictions – no matter what Alito thinks he knows.