Citizes United Unlimited Corporate/ Money in Elections

I was just recalling didn't Samuel Alito say "Not true." at the State of the Union when Obama said that the Citizens United ruling opens the floodgates for corporate money?

I wonder what Alito would say now.

 

I don't think he cares... it's too late to get a legislative fix and if Repubs have control over one or both Houses, it will never happen.

 

275 Investors Demand U.S. Chamber Disclose Funds And Stop ‘Punitive Campaign’ Against Health Care Law

Last week, a coalition of 275 institutional shareholders with $100 billion in assets under management from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) sent a letter to company directors who are members of the Chamber to express deep concern over the Chamber’s “extremely antagonistic position” on the Affordable Care Act. Concerned that the Chamber’s pursuit of an anti-health care agenda — especially with the possible use of “foreign monies” — may damage their reputation, these investors are demanding the Chamber reveal whether company dues are being used in this “ill-conceived strategy,” and that company directors withhold all dues or withdraw membership “until the Chamber refrains from further investment in negative advertising”

 

We are not a democracy. We are not a republic. The people no longer are the ones who run this country.

Corporatocracy

 

obama taking the money
i don't blame him

 

Obama denounces himself.

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bB_OnZJazkw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Alito faints.

 

When you have a couple of individuals who, alone, have promised to spend half a billioin dollars to defeat you (we have no idea where this money is coming from), you're damn right you'll play the game as it's written.

 

You are being willfully dishonest and you know it.

 

FIFY.

 

It really baffles me how anyone can be in favor of this ruling.

 

can't outlaw speech

 

so money = speech?

 

Let me rephrase that, does one person's $500 million dollars = millions of people's opinion?

 

no but that's irrelevant

$500 million worth of speech is still speech

every news show you watch is corporate funded speech

Colbert's speech is louder than most people because a corporation spends millions to broadcast it, but it's still speech.

 

First amendment protects all speech, certainly political speech. That's what is meant by "speech is speech". You can't decide to protect some speech and not others, that's not what the Constitution says.

How could one corporation own all media? That hypothetical doesn't even make sense (and isn't remotely true, the media is more diverse today, not less) If I start a media outlet, I don't have to sell it to anyone.

You can be accountable for the consequences of your speech (libel, shouting "fire" in a theater, disturbing the peace, etc.), but the right to free speech is still protected.

 

Yeah, because corporations truly are "citizens" who have to be protected.

Corporate personhood. It's time to grant the 5th Amendment to corporations! Screw you, United States of America v Steve Sourapas and Crest Beverage Company. Hell, let's give them the whole shabang. Corporate citizens, they are us! We are them!

While we're at it, let's ask what a pure orginalist should think---they of the time machines and ancestrial insight!

Justice Rehnquist's Dissent in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti

nothing can ever go wrong with giving constitutional rights to artificial, overwhelmingly powerful citizens already accorded special priviledges through force of law!

 

Northside, what's the difference between applying that thinking between the First National Bank of Boston and applying that thinking towards the New York Times again?

 

No. That's why donations to candidates are still very limited.