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

Given the outrageousness of the S. Ct. decision, it is possible that the backlash will rebound negatively to conservatives and their corporate allies.

Only the hopelessly ideological such as libertarians and the conservative media addicts can support this decision.

I say start the process for a constitutional amendment. It should be a highly educational for the subjects of the Corporate United States of America

 

Why would you vote a certain way just cause some group of people told you to do so? Just cause a group of shareholders can give money to a campaign doesn't mean they control your vote. unless your a puppet.

 

As we have seen with Faux "News," if something is repeated over and over again, people will begin to believe it even if it is demonstrably false. If a corporation can saturate the airwaves saying "Senator X is corrupt and needs to be voted out," even if Senator X is the biggest Boy Scout in that body, then they can influence the election with lies.

 

Go back to what I argued on Page 7, which everyone ignored. You act like the corporations can cause a conservative to be elected in a liberal district, and can cause a candidate to not listen to the desires of his own district at all as long as he pursues the corporate dough. It is a paranoid line of thinking that has no basis.

 

The way it is already is for vested interests to play both sides of the table. This also allows companies to sandbag funds during an election in the event their candidate is failing or mismanaging his campaign.

Transparency is only good in hindsight. A bought senator with a 6 year term could spend several years repairing his image while being friendly in his benefactor's goals.

 

because these aren't direct contributions, but rather indirect, ads, etc. it's why the newspaper (editorials=ads) and free speech arguments carry weight.

 

You are apparently incredibly naive about the power of rhetoric and advertising propaganda. That is exactly what enough cash can do. If it didn't work, why do people even bother spending on ads in the first place? In your world, there seems to be a whole hell of a lot of inexplicable wasteful spending occurring every election cycle.

Both of the following ads almost single-handedly destroyed the opposition via effective appeals to emotion (one for each party, because it works for both parties):

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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BZkoKh_A5pw&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BZkoKh_A5pw&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

The way corporate cash destroyed health care twice is another recent example.

 

perhaps we should outlaw the use of personal fortunes?

 

Who did the Goodyear blimp give money to?

 

let's just give them an actual vote and get it over with. give corporations electoral votes based on their size. freedom baby!

 

I would like to marry the goodyear blimp, if I'm ever not married to Mrs. B-Bob.

I mean... the thicker the waist band...
So you gotta think the blimp's got it going on. Rawr!

 

Irrelevant. No matter whom is elected, they still have to listen to their constituents and can't just go will-nilly be the corporation's slave while ignoring the wishes of their district. That's the point I'm making.

Of course advertisements and money matter. If you have Candidate X and Candidate Y, and Candidate Y has more money, than Candidate Y should win provided all other things are equal. I do argue that people however massively overestimate the power of advertisements. Advertisements in and of themselves play off the conclusions and thinkings that people already have. Take a look at those two ads you hurled.

The Daisy ad helped to accentuate a point that many, many people already had with Goldwater, namely that he was felt to be a crazy nutjob who would needlessly hurl us into a nuclear war with the Commies. The ad itself didn't cause people to automatically decide Goldwater was a crazy nutjob.
I'll admit I don't know about the Tank ad, but what about the Bush ad regarding that serial killer towards Dukakis? That worked as an effective message because it simply helped accelerate a trend that people already had, namely the Democrats were soft on crime.
Advertisements can accelerate and strengthen trends that already exist, whether it is Barry's crazy, Dukakis is soft on crime, or Kerry is a traitor with the Vietnam stuff. But ads cannot create trends in and of themselves, and they serve to convince people further of things they already believed. If ads really could convince people to do things they never believed for a second beforehand, then the Edsel would have been successful.

But it's heavily dependant on other factors as well, which are if anything more important. If I ran for Mayor of San Francisco or any other leftist town, I would be defeated no matter how much cash I poured into running the campaign. A candidate has to have other things besides money, and that's the point I'm making. Money is a factor, but it's not the main factor by any stretch of the imagination

 

Corporations are not part of the Constitution either.

I would say companies shouldn't be allowed to start a youtube channel under the same restrictions as a TV ad,

Again corporations are not in the Constitution.

 

Corporations are not humans.

Even to take your argument that corporations are humans by your own standard that as Americans we are only obligated to protect American's rights to speech a multinational corporation would undermine that argument as non-Americans would then be entitled to the same free speech rights as Americans.

 

Well, we made it to page 10 before the H bomb came up.