FINALLY! The Protest movement is targeting our corrupt/incompetent Supreme Court

the word - actually the syllable, to focus upon in your response is: one

one WHAT?

fictitious persons don't bear arms and get shot down on the beach.

Your post is confusing.
Y did u shift the focus from the First Amendment to the 2nd Amendment??

I don 't get your point.





David

no, sorry.

showing just one of the intrinsic distinctions between the burdens born by real, as opposed to fictitious persons (i.e. corporations, not a one of which have ever died in battle while serving their country).

but the rewards & privileges have, heretofore, been enjoyed equally.

=> adjustments needed.

Are you saying if a constitutional amendment were passed saying that corporations are not people and subject to bribery laws the Supreme Court would render it unconstitutional. How would they do that legally.

No.

Sonny Bono the little asshole had the copyright period greatly increased mainly for the benefit of the major movie studios with special note to those holding rights to major cartoon characters created in the 1920s and 1930s.

Copyrights was created with the idea of encouraging and rewarding people for creating such works and a large percent of the foundering fathers had have problems due to the lack of copyright protections in their own lifetime however running this period beyond even the likely lifespan of the grandchildren of the authors are not in the benefit of the people or the authors only for the benefits of corporations.

Let's assume everything you wrote about the financial disaster is true. The disaster wasn't caused by campaign finance law, although it may have been enabled by it.

Apparently you don't believe that adequate campaign finance laws can be passed as long as an argument can be made that corporations may enjoy the protection of the constitution as respects certain individual rights.

Frankly, all I really care about is whether or not there is a level playing field.

I'm sympathetic to the 1st amendment argument relative to campaign finance laws, but it doesn't animate me.

My concern is for a system in which corporations are prohibited from campaign finance but labor unions are not. That billionaires like George Soros might have a way to spend money, but the Koch brothers will not.

Wall Street spends a lot of money on Democrats, and as you know they spent a ton on Obama in 2008

If we can get all of the corporate and union money out of the elections without leaving loopholes one side can exploit better than the other, I won't fight it.

Unless the only way to do this is with the constitutional amendment you support, I'm suspicious of any effort that tries to alter the legal standing of corporations.

Finn,

I agree that the distinction (between citizen and aggregate, of any sort) should be across the board. The reform would be STRICTLY to enhance, or restore, if you will, the primacy of individual citizens in effecting the political will of the nation.

Because I don 't know his motivation
I cannot mount a just defense,
except to point out that he was enuf of a man to stand up for his beliefs and to DO something about them. Few r.

It is cowardly to insult a man who is too dead to defend himself.





David

Sorry but I had that opinion and had expressed that opinion before he ran into a tree at 30 MPH or so.

He was just another example of a congressman willing to sell out the welfare of the people as a whole for the benefits of special interests or at least that is my opinion.

Bill, he ran for Congress for the express PURPOSE of doing exactly what he DID.
He succeeded.

As I understand it, when that issue arose in committee,
he stood up and waved his waved his arms above his head,
back and forth, yelling: "this is IMPORTANT; this is IMPORTANT, people."
He got recognized, he asserted his point, made his arguments,
succeeded in convincing the other members of the committee
and he successfully got it enacted, thereby accomplishing his purpose.
I have NO information that he ran for that office for
"the welfare of the people as a whole" as u put it.

Maybe it is possible that if he were participating in this conversation,
he 'd say that it WAS; I dunno, but he ran to correct what he perceived to be
an egregious rong, individually and he DID it.
He was acting as an Individual; I think that 's GREAT!!!
Screw the collective! Everyone shoud be out for HIMSELF.
IF the collective benefits too, OK that 's acceptable.
If I ran for Congress, it woud be with that attitude.
I 'd lay out my principles before the voters, saying:
"if u support these principles, then vote for me; if not, vote for the bad guy."

With all my heart, my soul and mind: I support the Special Interest Groups.
The same as we need oxygen to live, democracy needs the special interest groups.
I belong to several of them. Without the special interest groups,
democracy coud not exist; it 'd be a joke. Government 'd be an oligarchy.





David

He was acting as an agent of the movies studios and if you think that is praiseworthy so be it.

To me he was a low life of kind that is destroying the nation and forcing us nearer and nearer to the need of changing our government by force if need be.

Special interests groups are not evil by themselves but when they almost completely control our government at all levels we had a problem that need to be address one way or another.

I'd like to clear up one potential misunderstanding about rights, specifically those in the Bill of Rights.

Not all rights in the Bill of Rights are individual rights. The Bill of Rights explicitly states when it is discussing a right to be enjoyed by the people. So, for example, the 2nd Amendment reads, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms," the 4th Amendment begins by stating, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons," and the 5th Amendment of "No person" tell us those are rights of the people, and they are individual rights.

Such language is conspicuously absent from the Free Speech Clause of the 1st Amendment. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." The protection of speech in the 1st Amendment, unlike other amendments in the Bill of Rights, is not predicated upon a person speaking, or a collection of people speaking. Rather, the thing protected is "speech" regardless of and without consideration for the source or origin of the speech.

So it is accurate to say CU v. FEC did not create or extend individual free speech rights to corporations, because free speech in the 1st Amendment is not a right predicated upon personhood, like the rights elsewhere in the Bill of Rights. Rather, what the Court did do in CU v. FEC is found the corporations conduct to be speech, and since it is speech, and the 1st Amendment protects speech, then it cannot be infringed upon absent satisfying strict scrutiny.

Reinstitute the natural, real distinction between real persons and fictitious persons? Out of curiosity, is it your opinion Citizens United v. FEC ignored this real distinction by holding the company's use of its funds from the general treasury to make a movie critical of a candidate is protected by the 1st Amendment Free Speech Clause?(I chose this case as it was referenced in the opening post as an example of a branch of our government bowing to the will of Wall Street and moneyed interests)

Was this the Court's finding?

What specifically are you asking of me?

the problem arises in that, in quality, all entities should have the right to express themselves freely, but in QUANITY, or in effect - aggregates have the capacity to overwhelm public discourse, and corrupt officials,.

your point about the fact that some rights are explicitly understood in the constitution as personal, whereas others apply across all entities, is well taken, and it makes sense that such distinctions would have been made.

the remedy is for the instances where unfettered exercise of rights by the aggregate overwhelm the rights and proper expression of the individuals IN aggregate.

that's where the thing needs to go, IMO.

cheers, RR

Did the SC hold in Citizens United that corporations are provided the right to free speech irrespective of their status as opposed to finding that they are entitled to the indivdual right of free speech.

I ask because, the idea of amendment that draws a sharp distinction between corporation and individual would not then serve to counter the effect of Citizens United.

If that makes any sense.

"Campaign Finance Reform" was so unConstitutionally perverted,
so anti-Constitutionally twisted, that human citizens lost their rights of freedom of the press 60 days before federal elections,
and 30 days before their primary elections, unless thay were established news media, if thay rendered information
concerning a candidate for federal office. Communication by mail on this subject was a federal crime.

Special Interest Groups were rendered mute.
This began when Hillary 's health care plan was defeated in Congress
by overwhelming negative mail. Some liberals got mad about it.
( However, I must admit that RINO John McCain is not a liberal about everything.)





David

Yes. I quote from the majority decision.

"The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each...Under the rationale of these precedents, political speech does not lose First Amendment protection “simply because its source is a corporation.”...Bellotti, supra, at 784; see Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. v. Public Util. Comm’n of Cal. , 475 U. S. 1, 8 (1986) (plurality opinion) (“The identity of the speaker is not decisive in determining whether speech is protected. Corporations and other associations, like individuals, contribute to the ‘discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas’ that the First Amendment seeks to foster” (quoting Bellotti, 435 U. S., at 783)). The Court has thus rejected the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not “natural persons.”

We thus find no support in the First Amendment, or in the decisions of this Court, for the proposition that speech that otherwise would be within the protection of the First Amendment loses that protection simply because its source is a corporation that cannot prove, to the satisfaction of a court, a material effect on its business or property. . . . [That proposition] amounts to an impermissible legislative prohibition of speech based on the identity of the interests that spokesmen may represent in public debate over controversial issues and a requirement that the speaker have a sufficiently great interest in the subject to justify communication. "

All speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech. The First Amendment protects the resulting speech, even if it was enabled by economic transactions with persons or entities who disagree with the speaker’s ideas.

The Framers may have been unaware of certain types of speakers or forms of communication, but that does not mean that those speakers and media are entitled to less First Amendment protection than those types of speakers and media that provided the means of communicating political ideas when the Bill of Rights was adopted."

There is also Scalia's concurrence addressing the dissent's argument the 1st Amendment Free Speech Clause is applicable only to people. " But to return to, and summarize, my principal point, which is the conformity of today’s opinion with the original meaning of the First Amendment . The Amendment is written in terms of “speech,” not speakers. Its text offers no foothold for excluding any category of speaker, from single individuals to partnerships of individuals, to unincorporated associations of individuals, to incorporated associations of individuals—and the dissent offers no evidence about the original meaning of the text to support any such exclusion. We are therefore simply left with the question whether the speech at issue in this case is “speech” covered by the First Amendment."