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

Fine. Ban GE and other corporations from owning the media.

Look, hard core right wingers see this as a victory for them and it is. It is a victory for the corporate elite and gives them even more power over the government and thereby our lives. Many folks liberal, moderate and conservative view the corporate elite as having enough power. Folks like to yammer about the Founders, but they feared the power of corporations and I don't think that can be denied.

 

books don't, but movies do?

 

Here lies the major issue, you believe books don't really affect a political campaign like tv ads and you are correct in that view and I agree with you. However, the case for free political speech is one in which the gorvernment shouldn't be allowed to regulate based on the effectiveness of one medium or another.

Now let's take this a bit further, the provisions inside McCain-Feingold specify that corporations cannot spend money on a campaign 30 days prior to a primary and 60 days before a general election.

The secondary issue is that before these time frames, a corporation can exercise speech without a problem. Therefore corporation X can spend whatever it wants let's say today in favor or opposition to any candidate that is running this November. However, once we are within 60 days of the election, the government can supress the political speech by banning tv ads, movies, DVDs etc...

That to my is violation of free speech, the government cannot dictate what is expressed during an election if the same speech is allowed 60 days prior to it.

The case itself was ruled based on the testimony of election commissionary who was asked the very simple question:

"Can you stop a corporation from publishing a political book during an election if the political message is identical to a tv ad?"

The official responded that in fact he could do so based on the current campaign finance rules.

This is what made the Justices cringe in fear of what was occuring was a complete violation of the 1st amendement.

Now my question to you is, would go as far as supporting the idea of banning a book if it carries the same political message as a TV ad?

If you can't ban a corporation from publishing a book then why should there be a ban on TV ads or movies?

I know many people are worried about corruption of democracy if a corporation is allowed to spend unlimited amount of funds. However, spending more money doesn't automatically win a seat. There is still a process by which we must vote for our candidate of choice.

Again I'm more interested in letting corporations exercise political speech and what we need to do is to regulate the disclosure and transparency of the speech. If Exxon wants to spend money on tv ads then the disclosure should clearly state "Paid for by friends of X candidate at ExxonMobil"

That is what needs to be regulated. Can you imagine any candidate having to justify the clear endorsement of a certain corporation?

This kind of transparency is much better than the secret funneling of money we have going on today where special interest groups use proxies to channel their money and no one has any idea of the source the contribution.

 

ghettocheese,
fundamentally, why should a corporation receive 1st amendment rights? Why were the founding fathers so cautionary about the role of businesses in the democracy? (Or can someone who occasionally votes for democrats even be allowed to refer to the founding fathers? )

 

but a movie, not advertising, was at issue in CU. how is a movie substantively different from a book, except for the medium?

 

steven's dissent notwithstanding, that wasn't the government's argument, as per GC above.

 

btw, the court specifically said it was not making the determination that foreign corporations could spend money on American campaign commercials with this decision:

We need not reach the question whether the Government has a compelling interest in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our Nation’s political process. Cf. 2 U. S. C. §441e (contribution and expenditure ban applied to “foreign national”).​

 

Sam has already addressed this talking point

 

Does anyone know how Cf. 2 U.S.C. §441e applies to multinationals with a strong US presence? They certainly can't be considered "foreign national."

 

i'm not even sure why Obama made such a big deal out of foreign contributions. during the campaign they disabled security checks on their CC software such that foreign contributions were allowed. it's fairly well known that much of Obama's record horde of cash came from overseas.

 

Even if the birther nonsense about overseas cash in the past was true, (less likely than me playing in the NBA this season), this thread is about a present ruling and future elections.

 

including George Soros'?