Supreme Court Provides For Corporate Takeover of Nation

@parados,

The interesting thing is by not allowing Congress to impose restrictions on certain speakers it means that anyone including foreign nationals, corporations and foreign governments can't be barred from buying political ads.

It does raise an interesting point about when a Chinese corporation owned by the Chinese government buys an ad, who do they reveal as the purchaser? The corporation or the primary owners?

1 Reply

@parados,

parados wrote:

§441b’s prohibition on corporate independent expenditures is an outright ban on speech, backed by criminal sanctions.

... only because the corporation in question used the money to speak and publish their speech. That's different than saying, as amigo did, that spending money is itself the same as speech.

0 Replies

@parados,

parados wrote:

The interesting thing is by not allowing Congress to impose restrictions on certain speakers it means that anyone including foreign nationals, corporations and foreign governments can't be barred from buying political ads.

1) So what? Foreign nationals, corporations, and governments are already owning whole newspapers. Fox News, for example, is owned by Richard Murdoch, an Australian. The Washington Times is owned by Sun Myung Moon, a cult leader and citizen of South Korea. The Vatican, a foreign nation, owns numerous Catholic publications in the US. You might as well say: "The interesting thing is by not allowing Congress to close the barn, horses can't be barred from getting out." Trouble is, the horses have long been out of the barn already.

2) The decision isn't saying that Congress can't impose any restriction. All it's saying is that restrictions of free speech must pass strict scrutiny: They have to be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest -- and that this particular distinction fails the test.

0 Replies

@parados,

parados wrote:

§441b’s prohibition on corporate independent expenditures is an outright ban on speech, backed by criminal sanctions.

... only because the corporation in question used the money to speak and publish their speech. That's different from saying, as amigo did, that spending money is itself a form of speech.

0 Replies

Not having read the posts yet, my gut feeling is we are now slam dunk bought and paid for, whereas, prior to this, it was only a good question.

But, I'm also interested in free speech issues and will try to read past my bias.

Off hand, I can see that the populace could rail against all that orchestration of legislation paid for by moneyed interests from whatever point of view, but that would be, by the nature of the populace at large, unorganized and unable to do much except every so often with intense effort, even via the internet. I think the reaction in the congress would naturally fall, then, to paid for speech.

But, I'll read along.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Also, I don't think a corporation is a person. Corporations are formed, at least in some large part, to protect persons from being persons.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Ok, one more potentially annoying sentence,

property is not right. We got over that.

And now I'll quiet down and read the thread.

0 Replies

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

Advocate wrote:
Yes, basically! Corporations and unions were deemed to have the same rights as individuals do to mount a campaign for a candidate or an issue. The court said their spending money is tantamount to speech under the first amendment.

You and Thomas seem to have different answers to this question.

If a corporation is now considered to have the same rights as an individual, then doesn't it logically follow that they should be able to vote in elections, like an individual?

Good point! Maybe the corporations should get dependency deductions on their tax returns.

0 Replies

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Thats cuse youre a believer in libertarian chaos. There is a need for order and freedom.
Freedom without order, sorter defines you libertarians.

Kinda scary .

Yeah, scary, like going back in time to live as it was
under the EISENHOWER Administration. Was that a nightmare, Farmer ???

I loved the 50s.

If I were able, if I had a time travel machine, I 'd go back then.

Maybe u 'd be afraid to accompany me, Farmer,
because there were no campaign finance laws and CENSORSHIP
of free speech back then. The 1940s were good, too.
It felt different. Like when I leave the East Coast and go to Las Vegas,
it FEELS different; more freedom;
as if there were more oxygen in the air; more freedom in the environment.

Don 't torment yourself, Farmer.
If u coud take it in the 1900s, u can take it now.

David

0 Replies

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

-- C. Little

This is an exercise in political hysteria. Corporations have long been considered legal persons, or juristic persons, for a variety of purposes. That this was an unwise decision, and probably an unjustified decision, i would not argue with. But to suggest that this will lead to a corporate takeover is simple hysteria. To the extent that the power which derives from the control of huge amounts of money can be seen to trump individual rights, corporations have already taken over, just as wealthy individuals are able to use that wealth and its attendant power to control others.

This decision, however unfortunate, does not open some imagined floodgate of tyranny. However, i'm not surprised that the author of this thread would like to suggest that this is the case.

2 Replies

The sky is falling and has been for some time!

0 Replies

Does your constitution make reference to natural persons?
are corporations a person or an entity?

edit: just read setanta post

ya know, its almost like shareholders get a second vote.

0 Replies

I heard an interesting speculation this morning. The public in general is howling for some sort of corporate banking reform, so in theory, representatives should be feeling all sorts of pressure to "do something," but now representatives could be faced with extremely well funded opposition campaigns from Goldman Sachs, et al if they try to change regulations on banks. Those companies could completely swamp elections with money, especially state wide races where a couple of millions go a long way.

1 Reply

@engineer,

engineer wrote:

The public in general is howling for some sort of corporate banking reform, so in theory, representatives should be feeling all sorts of pressure to "do something," but now representatives could be faced with extremely well funded opposition campaigns from Goldman Sachs, et al if they try to change regulations on banks.

Again, so what? Why think so small? Even before the decision, the bankers Goldman Sachs could have bought their own TV network. That's what General Electric did with NBC. Alternatively, Goldman Sachs could have started up their own TV network. That's what Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation did with the Fox Broadcasting Corporation.

Speaking of Murdoch, though, I have a correction to make: If Wikipedia has it right, Murdoch was no longer an Australian citizen when he started up Fox News in 1986. The reason is that US law required at the time (and may require until today) that only US nationals can own American TV stations. So Murdoch became a US citizen in 1985.

Having said that, my correction actually reinforces my central point: The US government enacted this requirement under the Supreme Court precedents whose authority the Court has reinstated last week. It simply isn't true, then, that by returning to the pre-1990 line of precedents, the Court has emasculated the efforts of US federal authorities to protect American democracy against robber barons.

They still can protect it against foreign nationals by requiring American citizenship of its owners. They can still protect it against for-profit corporations by classifying speakers according to their profit motive. (As an added benefit, this also works against for-profit LLCs and individually-owned companies.) The only thing they can't use anymore are distinctions based on the speaker being a corporation.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Again, so what? Why think so small? Even before the decision, the bankers Goldman Sachs could have bought their own TV network. That's what General Electric did with NBC. Alternatively, Goldman Sachs could have started up their own TV network. That's what Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation did with the Fox Broadcasting Corporation.

It's matter of efficiency. Buying a whole network in order to gain limited access to the media market is inefficient. Now they can directly focus the money on the votes. Using 15% of its 2008 profits, Exxon could have outspent every Congressional and Presidential candidate (from both parties) combined. In any given race, that kind of money could use up all the oxygen in the room - buy out every major form of advertising and raise the cost of competing to the point where you couldn't compete without corporate backing. The 2008 Obama campaign was notable for both the amount it raised and the number of individual contributors. If Exxon had decided to spend 1% of its profits to support Clinton or McCain, it would have completely crushed that advantage. Of course, that support might carry a negative connotation in the election, but that's probably a small price to pay to have every media outlet carrying your spin on the campaign.

1 Reply

@engineer,

engineer wrote:

Using 15% of its 2008 profits, Exxon could have outspent every Congressional and Presidential candidate (from both parties) combined.

... and Congress can still make this illegal. It only has to change the classification on which it bases its restrictions. For example, Congress could outlaw Exxon's conduct because Exxon is a for-profit organization. In my opinion, this would improve the law dramatically: It would be more effective at curbing the power of big money, because now it would also cover LLCs and sole proprietorships that operate for-profit. At the same time, it would be more narrowly tailored to fight corruption, because it would no longer muffle political associations merely for organizing themselves into nonprofit corporations, as opposed to nonprofit something-elses.

I don't agree with OmSigDavid a lot, but in this case I do: In a year or so, this decision will have improved US law substantially. Perhaps even before the Congressional elections.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

You say that I and others are hysterical over the decision, but don't really explain why. I gather that you cannot.

Wealthy corporations, through a number of means, already wield great power to affect law and regulations. The decision will add to this power in a big way.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

I don't see why the Supreme Court would allow a for-profit clause to stand. That doesn't seem to address the crux of their argument. Plus it seems that any corporation could create a non-profit, completely funded by them, for the sole purpose of funding political speech. I don't claim any particular legal expertise, but I don't envision Congress acting as you suggest anyway. I think the only thing that will initially keep corporate participation in elections down will be fear of a backlash. After a few years, corporations will figure out how to add enough confusing layers to the funding sources to drive the campaigns when they want to.

1 Reply

@engineer,

engineer wrote:

I don't see why the Supreme Court would allow a for-profit clause to stand.

Why not? On what basis would the Supreme Court strike it down?

engineer wrote:

Plus it seems that any corporation could create a non-profit, completely funded by them, for the sole purpose of funding political speech.

Not in this case though. Citizens United, the appellant here, received only minimal funding from for-profit corporations. They had produced a movie critical of Hillary Clinton, and wanted to publish it through a cable TV provider as video on demand. The question was, does the Constitution allow Congress to prohibit this on the basis that Citizens United is a corporation? The Court said, no it can't. Does the Constitution allow Congress to prohibit this on some other basis? Yes, But since the law curbs the freedom of speech, the classification must pass strict scrutiny: It must be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest.

2 Replies

@Thomas,

That for profit corporations do not differ from not-for-profit corporations in terms of free speech rights.

1 Reply

Supreme Court Provides For Corporate Takeover of Nation

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know