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If members of a corporation would like to speak out in favor of a candidate they may do so - as individuals. Nobody's free speech rights are violated by limiting corporate speech.

Why should groups of people who believe in a particular issue be prevented from pooling their resources in order to get a bigger megaphone?

Why should a corporation owned by a single shareholder be prevented from using its resource to promote a particular issue or candidate? How is this different than a corporation owned by multiple shareholders?

the other distinction is that you have to willingly pay to see Micheal Moore's films. I suppose if Goldman Sachs bought MM's company, started funneling money into it and getting the films aired on network tv or showing them for free, then MM's llc would be comparable to non media corps

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Why should groups of people who believe in a particular issue be prevented from pooling their resources in order to get a bigger megaphone?

They shouldn't. As for corporations specifically, if 100% of the shareholders and workers sign off on a political viewpoint and want to speak out in that regard, then that would be OK with me too, I guess.

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Print the money and give it to the people.

Joe-Bob, what about whenthese shows are shown on TV? What about Television shows produced by media and entertainment corporations like 60 minutes, Fox, CNN and all the assorted political speech and spin that Liberals and Conservatives alike complain about?

What are the chances 3 hours a day of Fox News will turn a Lib into a Conservative? Or 3 hours a day of MSNBC will turn a Conservative into a Liberal? A popular retort may be 'you don't have to watch shows like 60 Minutes or Fox,' but the same can be said of any commercial you don;t like.

I've seen a gazillion Geico ads in the past yr. I think they're funny and clever. I'm an Allstate customer. See what I mean?

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Is that clean spot on your bumper where your Obamacare sticker used to be?

All the blah-blah-blah about "corporations" on this thread and elsewhere is so much hooey. It's a buzz word. In the real world, commercial interests work the back rooms -- something that KD's proposal is aimed at putting the kibosh on. And they tend to play both sides of the fence. Election results are too unpredictable to risk the bottom line in the partisan game.

It's the interest groups -- chambers of commerce, unions, the anti-abortion types, the moveon.org crowd, the gun rights folks, and the like who keep CONgress and the President up at night with paranoia about their reelections. So paranoid, in fact, that they've been willing to trample the primary form of speech the First Amendment was adopted to protect, namely political speech.

Campaign Finance Reform has always been a misnomer for Incumbent Protection Reform. And now the Supremes have called "bullshit." Good for them.

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They assume an authority which is nowhere so dangerous as in the hands of those who have folly and presumption enough to fancy themselves fit to exercise it. --Adam Smith

Thomas Jefferson:
"Those seeking profits, were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government. No other depositories of power have ever yet been found, which did not end in converting to their own profit the earnings of those committed to their charge. "

Vapor, what about Jefferson's quote and the press and the unions and the leftist trying to consolidate power and "converting to their own profit the earnings of those committed to their charge"

From an amicus brief filed by democracy activists:

The governance system of . . . corporations is highly successful for the pursuit of profit, making them important instruments in the economic sphere. But the very factors that make the corporate form an effective instrument of wealth accumulation are the factors that make it inappropriate for corporations to claim the full panoply of First Amendment protections for political speech and participation that are enjoyed by natural persons. Because of the way corporations are structured, corporate speech does not express the political views of any individual or group of individuals associated with the corporation. Moreover, the constraints that drive a corporation's political speech - the requirement that corporate actions all must be calibrated toward profit - directly undermine the notion that a corporation can be a free participant in the marketplace of ideas. And precisely because a corporation enjoys significant state-created economic advantages designed for the narrow purpose of furthering wealth-accumulation, corporate participation in candidate campaigns promotes market entrenchment and corrupts the political marketplace in a fundamentally undemocratic manner.

Thats it in a nutshell. Answer this argument karl. Your proposed weak "solutions" will do little because corporations will be able to spend unlimited amounts influencing the electorate with ads etc.

Damn that TJ, that commie! :)

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Print the money and give it to the people.

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They shouldn't. As for corporations specifically, if 100% of the shareholders and workers sign off on a political viewpoint and want to speak out in that regard, then that would be OK with me too, I guess.

So...if I am a conservative and I own stock in the NYT they should not be able to publish an editorial endorsing Obama.

Got it. When are you advocating they get shut down by the SEC?

Vapor wrote..

1) Corporations are organized to pursue profit for their investors. They have a fiducial duty to do so, and nothing else. Hence they will pursue speech and propaganda to the maximum extent possible in pursuit of profit. They have no interest in politics other than how politics affects their bottom line. How then does unlimited free speech for corporations advance the public interest? Monetary limits must be imposed on all corporations so that the few powerful cannot dominate the media and discourse.

So then there is no such thing as Freedom of The Press.

Last time I checked all (or essentially all) those newspapers were corporations.

Again - if you believe this you need to amend The Constitution. It specifically protects what you claim "must be limited", and with damn good cause.

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If Thomas Jefferson and our founding fathers were alive today - They'd be setting sail to discover another country and start over.

"Corporations" CAN have Rights, etc. AS GRANTED BY THEIR CHARTERS & LAW.

I Vehemently DENY that Corporations, etc. have CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS which I Assert are clearly reserved for Living/Breathing Citizens.

That Fact that an egregious error was committed by the SC over 100 years ago should in NO WAY bind us to their poor decision. Much of what has occurred in "this arena" over the past 40 years is a direct consequence of trying to 'Honor' that flawed precedent. It is Far Past Time to recognize the that the foundational precedent is/was in error and stop forcing "solutions" where none can exist because the original precedent is in error.

I will concur that much of KD's proposed "solutions" would be beneficial IF you accept the original precedent. I do not accept that precedent and believe we've already spent enough time (124 Years - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_p.... trying to accomodate this original error which has been the root of much suffering.

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So...if I am a conservative and I own stock in the NYT they should not be able to publish an editorial endorsing Obama.

Good point. On the other hand, the Press is mentioned specifically in the First Amendment, whereas corporations are not.

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Print the money and give it to the people.

"Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government." -attributed to TJ

Corrupt government, how exactly? By running political ads in which the sponsor has to convince voters? Hardly an efficient method. Meanwhile, there was no such animal as a political ad in Jefferson's day. No, the time-honored ways to corrupt government -- which are what he had to be talking about -- are bribery, patronage, and legislated competitive advantages.

In other words, the ways that CONgress never seems to get around to addressing.

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They assume an authority which is nowhere so dangerous as in the hands of those who have folly and presumption enough to fancy themselves fit to exercise it. --Adam Smith

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I Vehemently DENY that Corporations, etc. have CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS

Really? So...the Feds can just raid, say Goldman Sachs, without a warrant and seize all their property.

Sounds good to me. They don't have 4th amendment rights anyway.

i said bye bye yesterday....but i feel I'm owed a coda on this subject...especially as i was "banned" (free speech anyone?) from Breaking yesterday on this breaking topic despite many other "political" posts taking up space in Breaking...


First of all you ALL need to read this:
http://athenwood.com/uphistory.shtml

it concerns the origins of Corporate "Personhood".
it concerns one JC Bancroft Davis, former president of Newburgh and New York Railway Company (19th century Oligarch)
In 1883 he'd become Reporter of Decisions for the Supreme Court....
Acting as court reporter in the 1886 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case,

"Below is the letter from Supreme Court Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite to court reporter J.C. Bancroft Davis informing Davis that it didn't much matter whether or not he included a comment about the arguments before the court that corporations were persons "as we avoided meeting the constitutional questions in the decision."

The decision did not rule that corporations are persons: Davis added it in the headnotes (commentary) on his own, and subsequent courts have incorrectly based decisions since 1886 on the headnotes and not the case. (Thanks to Michael Kinder, who found this in the J.C. Bancroft Davis collection of personal papers in the National Archives in Washington, DC, where they had been sitting, unnoticed, for over a century.)

The letter from Davis to Waite asking if he got the comments right precedes Waite's response. Davis writes, after quoting language stating that corporations are persons, "please let me know whether I correctly caught your comments and oblige [reply]."


Karl said:
But with that said, I do believe there is a serious problem with campaigns and politicians - and corruption thereof.

And here, I have a solution.

Public employees... should not be able to receive a campaign donation (in any form) from anyone except an actual constituent...

Let the corporations (and individuals), along with PACs, Unions and others buy all the issue and even candidate ads they want - so long as they honestly identify who is funding the speech in question.

But bar all public employees from receiving any campaign contribution from anyone other than a natural person who is registered to vote in the area represented by that particular politician, with violators subject to felony prosecution. If such an act is traced to a corporation the firm's charter is revoked"

These are NOT solutions. They are not current law. These "solutions" are not even on anyone's radar... Nor will they EVER be on anyone's radar as they threaten newly empowered and turbocharged Corporate "speech". They are, in other words, "pie in the libertarian sky".

As others have correctly stated, individual members of corporations are already protected under the 1st amendment.

Today, there is a divergence between the interests of U.S. multinational corporations and the interests of U.S. citizens. American multinationals are the principal actors in the transfer of wealth from the middle class in the 21st century and have been able to function without resistance from captured government agencies. America's founders and early presidents warned that the safety of the new republic depended on keeping corporations on a tight leash -- not abolishing them, but keeping them in check...


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Karl just said:
....o then there is no such thing as Freedom of The Press.
...Last time I checked all (or essentially all) those newspapers were corporations"

OK, now you've jumped the shark buddy....

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This is not capitalism. This is not American. This is crime.
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." Lord Act

Torgo,

You Missed the Primary Point ...

They Have RIGHTS as Granted by their Charters, Laws, and Regulations. Those are Different than CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS. Do they have Rights? Yes, but only as Granted by Law ... not an Inalienable Right.

That's How it Ought to Be.

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Good point. On the other hand, the Press is mentioned specifically in the First Amendment, whereas corporations are not.

But the biggest and most amplified Press are corporations ie NY Times, Fox, CNN, Washinton post, etc So do we extend the First Amendment to these corporations by counting them as Constitutional Individuals?

Also, what of the Film Producing LLC's that produce political speech and commentary? Are they Press too or are their productions more speech than press? How is it an entertainmant corporation can get 1st A. protection but not a mining corporation?

One corporation can make movies and TV shows that seek to influence public opinion and the corporations on the other side of the issue can't even run a 30 second commercial in response? WTF?

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Is that clean spot on your bumper where your Obamacare sticker used to be?

I did not. See what the Government was arguing in this case; it should really frighten you.

Great save by the Supreme Court, nice deflection after the MA rout. If fundamental human rights do not apply to a artificial person then it is no stretch to me (and others) that free speech be limited to natural persons. I do hope the consequences of this are as positive as its supporters claim but I'll wager the unintended consequences will reveal themselves in the fullness of time to be a redux of the whole Corporate person hood fallacy, a decision that was best summed as "a judgement that can be supported neither by fact, reason or logic."

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Carbon is a whore.

"the Press"

If 'they' can reduce it to writing they can say what they want. Broadcast media is not "the Press" as envisaged by the Founders.

The Nation has a long history of people & organizations being able to do (MOL) whatever they pleased as long it was reduced to writing. For instance, how many Newspapers, etc. are called "the Such'n Such Democrat" or the "Whose'n What Republican."

Again, the Written Word is Protected ... Broadcast is not.

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Broadcast media is not "the Press" as envisaged by the Founders.

Amazing. Just amazing.

They didn't know about the internal combustion engine either.

What's "Amazing." The Burden is on You to Prove Otherwise. For me, I go by EXACTLY what the Constitution Says.

"the Press" is referring to material produced by Printing Presses; the written word.


Edit; the Freedom to Own & Operate a Printing Press.

Subsequent to the enactment of the 14th Amendment, which the USSC ruled applied the Bill of Rights and beyond to acts of the states (by fiat I would add), STATES as well as Congress cannot limit speech. Yet the 1st Amendment only prohibits acts of CONGRESS. The Constitution is not your Great Great Great Grandfather's Constitution. It's now wax nose imposed on us by judicial activism. Thus a literal interpretation of the 1st would give states free reign to act as they saw fit to regulate speech. See why the strict contructionism goes nowhere?