Citizes United Unlimited Corporate/ Money in Elections

That's where you're both wrong, corporations are artificial beings created by operation of law, they can be created, they can be dissolved - purely as a matter of a state license. They can have rights granted and taken away, it is indeed that simple. Corporations can even be "killed" by having their certificate suspended - with no recourse.

 

You're still oversimplifying. Corporations still have rights that can't be stripped, the government just can't do whatever they want to them without recourse. I.e. the government can't force a soluble company to surrender all of its assets. OR to not produce widgets. They couldn't tell Fox News not run certain newstories or tv shows without some sort of valid justification, i.e. the FCC regulating. The FCC couldn't arbitrarily cancel the Simpsons because its not funny anymore.

That's the question being resolved in Citizens, is whether the regulation went over the line. I think its a perfectly intelligible and debatable question, and I tend to think the court got most of it right in this instance.

 

Here are examples from Justice Kennedy's opinion of the things McCain-Feingold would ban:

"Thus, the following acts would all be felonies under §441b: The Sierra Club runs an ad, within the crucial phase of 60 days before the general election, that exhorts the public to disapprove of a Congressman who favors logging in national forests; the National Rifle Association publishes a book urging the public to vote for the challenger because the incumbent U. S. Senator supports a handgun ban; and the American Civil Liberties Union creates a Web site telling the public to vote for a Presidential candidate in light of that candidate’s defense of free speech."

 

Should they be allowed to vote, too?

 

Yes it can. You are forgetting that a corporation owes its very existence to the state. Every action being taken by a corporation is effectively done under the sanction of the state as the entire entity is the grant of a state license - if Texas decides that it no longer wants to allow corporations, it can repeal its corporation code. Boom, Texas corportaions no longer exist - it really IS that simple, it's entirely a creation of state law. If a corporation decides not to pay franchise taxes their charter is revoked, and once again, boom, they no longer exist.

Contrast this with an actual person. Could a state murder somebody who doesn't pay their taxes by administrative action? No....why? Because a person is fundamentally different and is entitled to the full panoply of rights, not an artificial person created to be able to enforce contracts and thus encourage commerce.

 

I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords

 

One of the principles of Buddhism is to seek the Middle Way. Regarding my post though that has nothing to do with the Middle Way but recognizing the structure of our government. While I don't agree with the Citizens United decision it is the law of land. I don't think that the USSC got it wrong but their interpretation is certainly different than mine and one that goes against precedent.

 

A lot of this was discussed in the original thread that I linked to on page one of this thread. To follow up from that earlier discussion, corporations are totally creations of the law and in that sense you can't say that they have inalienable rights under natural law as they aren't natural. In this sense any rights granted to a corporation are truly granted by the state. Under that understanding I don't think it is anyway unreasonable to argue that limits can be placed on corporate rights. Following the the history of corporate law a few court cases have recognized that.

 

Kennedy upholds a ban on quid pro quo contributions because corporations can't give money directly to candidates. That part of the statute isn't even questioned.

The case is complex, and I don't know if it is hard to understand without some legal background, but its worth a read if you can slosh through some of the supreme court jargon.

From the opinion: "Citizens United has not made direct contributions to candidates, and it has not suggested that the Court should reconsider whether contribution limits should be subjected to rigorous First Amendment scrutiny."

 

So you are arguing that the federal government can wipe out all major media corporations based off of a state's power to regulate the terms of incorporation? I'll give you that you are being logically consistent, but it just doesn't square with what the court has said about the rights of corporations, the limitations of the necessary and proper clause in administering elections and thus government, and the precedents of the courts with respect to political speech, even in light of the overturning of Austin, which had been the law for about 4 years. I didn't see you get so upset when the court overturned Bowers v. Hardwick. Add it all together and the Court's reliance on Bellotti and Buckley is more consistent with free speech norms.

 

Maybe - I don't know, but obviously but a state legislature can. Or a state court or a state administrative body. They are entirely creatures of state law and exist entirely with and because of state sanction every second of their existence. Every. Single. Second. People think of corporations as "groups of people" - that's entirely wrong, it's more like a driver's license.

A state legislature can alter, repeal, or amend a state's corporation code at will, that is undisputed, and can fundamentally give or take rights away from the corporation on a whim (as it has been established that every section of a state's corporation code is implicitly adopted in a contract ). And fittingly that's the way the vast majority corporations actually exist...not as "groups" of people or employees or factories or shareholders, but as pieces of paper on file at a registered agent's file cabinet in Dover or Hamilton or Grand Cayman. Their recognition as legal persons has been granted largely in order to allow them to enter into and enforce contracts, nothing more, nothing less.

As we've already recognized that they aren't persons in the normal sense, there's simply nothing, constitutional or otherwise, that demands that we continue to roll out the full bill of rights spectrum of protections for them (and nor, for the most part, do most of these corporations want or require it).

 

No, it's pretty simple to understand. A majority of Con justices went out of their way to make a ruling that would benefit the GOP and they made that ruling at the expense of legal precedent and the facts before them in the case.

Here's some of the dissenting opinion from Stevens with much of the lawyerly stuff left out:

http://yubanet.com/usa/Justice-Stev...zens-United-v-Federal-Election-Commission.php

 

Some more from the Stevens opinion...

 

And the conclusion...

The whole thing is a fascinating read and Stevens lays out a huge number of legal, historical, and common-sense arguments against the decision while demonstrating how the majority went way beyond precedent to reach the conclusions they wanted politically. I think you call these kinds of people "Activist Judges."

What we have here is the most egregiously political decision since, well, Bush v. Gore. It's clear the majority is serving a corrupted ideology instead of Constitutional principles.

I don't understand how anyone can read this very conservative dissent and not recognize that a group of activist judges went out of their way to change the rules of the game in a way that favors massive monied interests.

I don't understand how anyone well-versed in conservative philosophy and the rights of man could support this decision.

I don't understand how some people can get frothing mad at TARP and bank bailouts and such, yet turn around and fully support this decision. It is wrong, it is corrupting to our nation's soul, and we will pay a huge price for this travesty.

 

Holy crap. And now it will take a Constitutional amendment to change this travesty?

 

Or congress to pass laws to severely restrict it or expand transparency.

 

A very depressing article from today LA Times --

Corporate campaign ads haven't followed Supreme Court's prediction

Reporting from Washington —

The Supreme Court sent a wave of corporate and union money flooding into campaign ads this year, but it did so with the promise that the public would know — almost instantly — who was paying for them.

"With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in January. "This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages."

But Kennedy and the high court majority were wrong. Because of loopholes in tax laws and a weak enforcement policy at the Federal Election Commission, corporations and wealthy donors have been able to spend huge sums on campaign ads, confident the public will not know who they are, election law experts say.

 

The dispute between Stevens and Scalia not withstanding, the Kennedy's opinion simply doesn't state what you are imputing it states, that corporations can give money directly to candidates. The holding is very limited, the ability of corporations to fund ads within 60 days of an election is a restriction on political speech.

From the WSJ about the article mc mark cites: "Also pointed out by Savage: that on that same day, an 8-1 majority upheld laws mandating the disclosure of campaign contributions.

But that part of the ruling has gone largely ignored.

The reasons, said Tara Malloy, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, are “weaknesses in the tax law, radical under-enforcement by the FEC and the failure of Congress” to enact a new disclosure law." from http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/10/27...izens-united-uninformed/?mod=google_news_blog

And also, since when did helping out unions classify as a boon to the GOP?