Roberts Court Overturns Yet Another Precedent in Favor of Corporate Campaign Cash

When did corporations become citizens. Might as well give them a vote too. What a sham!!!!!

 

in Dartmouth College v. Woodward Corporations were recognized as persons for purposes of the 14th Amendment in an 1886 Supreme Court Case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate

 

I am certainly not thrilled on this ruling. I feel we need to lower the limits corps should be allowed to contribute.

I do understand the free speech aspect of the argument. You simply can not tell a business they are not allowed to exercise their voice. I believe its one of those necessary evils we must deal with as not to silence the wrong voice.

Personally I believe we need to work towards putting an end to the bribing/lobbyist aspect and that would force unions and businesses to reduce their role in campaigning.

 

No Sam, you formulate your posts around insulting the poster rather than understanding the content.

 

As interesting as SpaceGhost v. Fisher could shape up to be... as to the thread topic, this is incredibly bad news.

The minority opinion (written by Stevens, who originally defended McCain-Feingold in a majority opinion earlier) called it a "radical departure" from over 100 years of precedent. So how are we somehow smarter now than Teddy R and his colleagues about the potential great harm of letting companies buy elections?

I guess, in some ways, the blunts the frustration of healthcare reform. It really matters a lot less now. Once you have the House of Reps owned by insurance companies and the Senate owned by big pharma, they'd simply overturn any current reform measures anyway.

To hear the journalists this morning... there was just sort of a stunned monotone. People, it's really an oh **** moment here. Technically, our votes still count, but this is an enormous step back for our democracy, IMHO. Just huge.

EDIT: And by the way, since the Bush appointed justices led the charge here, the cry of "activist judges!" just became the latest hip way for the right wing to shatter irony-meters across the land.

 

Why not?

 

Very dissapointing. Roberts is turning into the anti-Souter. Both Souter and Roberts were somewhat unknown qualities but were considered conservatives. Souter once he got to the court dropped his ideological views while Roberts seems to have retrenched in his.

 

Great news for the the Obama and the Dem's big government corporatism under the lies of "progressive" reform that pander to the socialists.

 

Although later rulings did limit the nature of the personhood of a corporation in regard to how states could regulate them.

From the same link:
[rquoter]Later, in Northwestern Nat Life Ins. Co. v. Riggs (203 U.S. 243 (1906)), having accepted that corporations are a type of people, the court still ruled that the 14th Amendment was not a bar to many state laws that effectively limited a corporation's right to contract business as it pleases.

Two Supreme Court judges, Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, later rendered opinions attacking the doctrine of corporate personhood. Quoted here is the conclusion of Justice Black's opinion:

If the people of this nation wish to deprive the states of their sovereign rights to determine what is a fair and just tax upon corporations doing a purely local business within their own state boundaries, there is a way provided by the Constitution to accomplish this purpose. That way does not lie along the course of judicial amendment to that fundamental charter. An amendment having that purpose could be submitted by Congress as provided by the Constitution. I do not believe that the Fourteenth Amendment had that purpose, nor that the people believed it had that purpose, nor that it should be construed as having that purpose.

(Hugo Black, dissenting, Connecticut General Life Insurance Company v. Johnson (303 U.S. 77, 1938).)

Justice Black was not alone in his questioning of the legitimacy of corporate personhood. Justice Douglas, dissenting in Wheeling Steel Corp. v. Glander (337 U.S. 562, 1949), gave an opinion similar to, but shorter than, the one quoted above, to which Justice Black concurred. The extent to which the rights of personhood should attach to corporations has remained a subject of controversy.[14]
[/rquoter]

 

Mother****ing bs.

Well RIP democracy.

Hello oligarchy.

Way to go conservatives and alleged libertarians who voted for the folks who put these judges on the court.

I doubt it will be possible, except occasionally for we the people to be able to outspend, outpropagandize and therefor outvote the corporate elite.

I will start another thread one of these days about the question of how much inequality and frustration the American people can stand before they completely spasm out and go toward real fascism, violence or perhaps even a left wing revolution.

The corporations just don't care.

 

Not at all surprised. This "by the people, for the people" stuff has been a joke for about 150+ years.

 

Conservatives selling our country down the river... again.

 

Really? A conservative judge is nominated to replace another conservative judge, and he turns out to be actually conservative! Quelle suprise.

This decision overturns McCain-Feingold, correct? If so, woohoo. Absolutely splendid.

 

No, it throws out the law of the land in place since 1907, with McCain-Feingold as just a minor piece of the puzzle.

It is not conservative to make such a substantive change in the nation's democratic process. Would love to hear from weslinder and refman on this topic.

 

So Roberts legislates from the bench and no one cries a peep. You have to hand it to them, conservatives are politically so much more savvy then democrats.

It's a sad day...that corporations are given more power and the people less. And yet these tea-baggers are crying about health care and the Dems...they totally ignore how the country is being handed out to the very companies the f'd them over