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Supreme Court Rolls Back Corporate Campaign Spending Limits
lorenlal writes "The Supreme Court of the United States must have figured that restrictions on corporate support of candidates was a violation of free speech, or something like that." From the AP story linked above:
"By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states."
If the U.S. Constitution ensures the free speech rights of corporations, as the SCOTUS has judged, then clearly the Constitution is defective.
We need to replace the "conservatives" on the supreme court who don't understand that corporations should not have the constitutional rights of citizens.
Developers: We can use your help.
Right of free speech + right of association = right of groups, as corporations, to speak freely.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Your system already looks like 2 conglomerate's of wealthy men dividing the dough and the sweat of 99% of US' citizens.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Now your vote really doesn't count... if it ever did after creation of the electoral college. With unlimited spending the sheep who listen without thinking will just keep electing who they're told and never consider the consequences. Yay...
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
[Chief Justice] Roberts said he was not prepared to "embrace a theory of the 1st Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern."
But [Justice] Stevens and the dissenters said the majority was ignoring the long-understood rule that the government could limit election money from corporations, unions and others, such as foreign governments. "Under today's decision, multinational corporations controlled by foreign governments" would have the same rights as Americans to spend money to tilt U.S. elections. "Corporations are not human beings. They can't vote and can't run for office," Stevens said, and should be subject to restrictions under the election laws.
Maybe China now has something useful to do with the trillion+ dollars they have burning a hole in their pocket.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Corporations are voluntary contracts between individuals, and those individuals have rights, period. If some of you Slashdot commies fail to comprehend that, that is your problem and yours alone.
(More here.)
Since corporations are able to possess the 1st amendment as a whole body, are they not entitled the remaining amendments?
Ok, that IS crazy. But what isn't is that, come election time, I wouldn't be surprised if pink slips get issued in order to free up some money to run messages for/against our tastycrats and fingerlick'ans.
I have to agree.
Corporations and unions have been given the right to buy who ever they want without any back alley deals...as long as the money doesn't go directly to or is coordinated by candidate.
import system.cool.Sig;
I, for one, welcome our new psychopathic, immortal, politically empowered, corporate-person overlords!
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.
- V
The U(F)SA is now a de facto fascist state.
(citation needed)
Or, perhaps just a functioning definition of the word "fascist," which you clearly don't have. Idiot.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
A corp has no real responsibility, no sense of morals, and rarely ever is punished for many of its crimes. ANd yet, we equate it to man. That single warped logic is killing us.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
At issue is that under the Constitution, the Federal Government has no explicit power to regulate even political campaign donations.
This is my sig.
Yes, I'm sure that the Union's will be able to match the corporations contributions.
Actually, what will probably happen is that Unions will be made illegal after all of the government is bought and paid for.
*This* is what the second amendment is for. We apparently don't have a working democracy anymore.
... hi bingo
I haven't read the decision and the dissent yet, but I'm fascinated by how immediately negative the comments prior to this one are, especially the comments that try to argue that corporations should have fewer free speech rights than people. Part of the nature of free speech is that there's always some category that one would often not want to apply it to. For the Slashdot crowd that seems to be corporations. But the whole point of robust free speech is that you give it to any who want to use it. Concern over what this will do to elections is understandable as a policy concern but that's a pragmatic consideration that shouldn't impact such basic philosophical decisions. Moreover, what this really does is level the playing field between corporations. As it is now, Fox or MSNBC or any major newspaper can effectively push for a candidate or policy they want simply by the bias in their coverage. But a corporation that isn't involved in "news" or the like has its hands tied. And as for the impact this might have on elections: It should be apparent from the election of Obama that if a lot of people actually care about a candidate they can give in both time and money a lot more than even many large corporations. Of course, that candidate might then turn around and sell people out, but that's a separate problem...
If corporations want to be individuals, it's time we start taxing them like individuals.
Because remember, kids, "fascist" means "something I personally don't approve of."
[A U.S.] Supreme Court ruling in 1886 ... arguably set the stage for the full-scale development of the culture of capitalism, by handing to corporations the right to use their economic power in a way they never had before. Relying on the Fourteenth Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1868 to protect the rights of freed slaves, the Court ruled that a private corporation is a natural person under the U.S. Constitution, and consequently has the same rights and protection extended to persons by the Bill of Rights, including the right to free speech. Thus corporations were given the same “rights” to influence the government in their own interests as were extended to individual citizens, paving the way for corporations to use their wealth to dominate public thought and discourse. The debates in the United States in the 1990s over campaign finance reform, in which corporate bodies can “donate” millions of dollars to political candidates stem from this ruling although rarely if ever is that mentioned. Thus, corporations, as “persons,” were free to lobby legislatures, use the mass media, establish educational institutions such as many business schools founded by corporate leaders in the early twentieth century, found charitable organizations to convince the public of their lofty intent, and in general construct an image that they believed would be in their best interests. All of this in the interest of “free speech.”
— Richard Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999), p.100
Personally, in my opinion, that's where it went downhill. A corporation doesn't need rights as an individual. If a corporation needs to speak it has many members which can be enabled to speak for it.
The problem is that the voice of a business has no bearing on the amount of individuals it represents but merely by the amount of money it can throw. If a business representing 100,000 employees only has $100,000 to contribute it won't even be registered against a tiny company of 5 people that can contribute $1,000,000,000.
If there were reasonable caps to contributions, say, $1,000 per person (people) and _no_ corporations were allowed to contribute, then the people get the power back. If a large corporation wants to push an issue, they can lobby their own employees to contribute to their cause, but the choice would again be with the individual people.
I mean honestly, if I have $300 to contribute to a politician I support, how in the world is that going to compare to a $10,000,000 contribution from Big Media when they are leaning in the opposite direction on an issue?
I'm not saying "the people" have had any real power for a long time (when compared to big business), but this just skews it even farther away from us.
Sad day to be an American...
Why do you draw a distinction between "free speech" and "political speech"? Surely our founding fathers wanted to talk freely about politics. That's the whole point. (I'm sure there's a reason you said that, I just don't see it.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Just to be clear: we're giving one set of institutions which do not have a mandate to respond to individuals (corporations) control over another set of institutions (government) which, uh, used to. And we're doing this in the name of... more liberty for people? Let me know how that works out for you...
Have you ever heard of the AFL CIO? In 2000 they spent 4.1 million on federal campaigns.
In other words, an organization representing FIFTY SIX different unions and 11 million workers, donated about the same as a single large corporation would? I think you just proved the point you were trying to disprove.
...as in "end of the Republic" horrible. We just greased the slide to a complete fall into Fascism.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
And at the moment, a number in a bank account sure is wealth.
It's just that people have forgotten that money can't replace the goods it buys. Take away all the goods and your money is useless; it was more a philosophical question than critique ...
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
You are close to the mark, but this is potentially worse than fascism as we have known it. It opens the possibility of an entirely new form of tyranny that the human race has not yet experienced.
If you study the history of fascism, the various ideas that "fascists" have become confusing, until you realize that fascism isn't an ideology. Fascism isn't about ideas, but achieving a specific effect: maximizing the power of an individual or group of people who have control of the government. Where it serves that purpose, fascism will embrace extremes of spiritualism or materialism, or even mix the two. Consistency doesn't matter. Authority does.
What is different about this is that we aren't talking about putting the power of the State in the hands of an individual or group of individuals. We are talking about putting it at the disposal of artificial entities; immortal profit making machines with a capacity for accumulating wealth beyond that of any individual. This is like *Colossus: The Forbin Project*, only with machines we've already built and operated.
It's not that making a profit is evil. It's that the very definition of evil (see Saint Augustine, or even Kant) is making one sided decisions. Human concerns like ethics are not part of the design of the institution of the corporation. Ethics are forced on corporations by two things: the individuals working for the corporations, and by law.
But the ethics of the individual are always under pressure in a corporation. We've all seen that. There's always the question of whether we can push the limit just a bit, and if we try it and get away with it, we suddenly have a new conception of what "normal behavior" is. We know that "everybody does it" doesn't excuse something, but we don't act that way. The law is what makes it possible for people to remain ethical. They can always say, "we will go to jail if we try that," or "we'll be fined," or even "we'll get bad publicity," which of course depends on individuals having rights that are respected under the law.
Corporations have inappropriate influence now on government, but that doesn't make a dystopia. Life is still good for most of us. But we can't extrapolate that to giving them unchecked power to make laws for their own benefit. If we do that, the safety net provided by individual ethics won't matter. Once corporations are above the law, any corporation that fails to take the profit maximizing step regardless of the other consequences won't survive.
Allow the power of corporations to grow without any check, and for the first time in human history human affairs will be governed with absolutely no regard to human welfare.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm glad you said this. I'm also shocked by how many misconceptions are apparent throughout these comments.
People seem to go on and on about 1886. Corporations are certainly not people strictly speaking, they are just groups of people. Those people have individual rights, and by extension, a group of people also has the same set of rights. And by rights, I simply mean things that the government is restricted from doing to those people.
Why shouldn't corporations be entitled to free speech, just as any person who is a part of that corporation is entitled to it? If I speak as part of a company, do I suddenly lose my right whereas if I take off my "Exxon" cap I get it back? Doesn't really make sense to me.
I think overall this ruling is excellent for many reasons. One, it upholds the Constitution as opposed to reinterpreting it...that's really great. We need more rulings like this. Second, it forces people to rethink their approach to this problem. Yes, it is a problem that corporations and other groups of people can essentially "buy" elections. As opposed to restricting their ability to spend money on speech though, what we should instead be focusing on is the motivation behind why these groups of people find it in their best interest to spend millions of dollars on campaigns. The real problem is that the government makes decisions that redirect billions of dollars from one group of people to another. These groups have incredible monetary incentive to spend billions to ensure that the pot goes to them and not to the others vying for it.
The reality is that the only way to end this constant conflict between groups of men is to end the government's ability to determine who gets the pot by taking away that pot from the government to begin with. Let private citizens individually make decisions on how their money gets spent....not voters. The government's job and how it should go about it should be clearly defined and restricted by the constitution. It's ability to raise money shouldn't be arbitrarily determined by majority rules voting, but rather, by people voluntarily investing in it because of the results it produces. Only by sufficiently limiting the government's role in the economy and it's overall power will you be able to eliminate the corporations incentive to buy elections and profit from a process that is inherently and essentially unfair.
...when do we see the death penalty applied to them? The Ford Pinto's exploding gas tank and Union Carbide's Bhopal clusterfuck are merely the first examples that come to mind of corporations exhibiting depraved indifference to human life. Had an individual done these things he/she would be facing the death penalty; why should corporations be exempt?
We need MORE money in politics, not less.
The flaw in your argument lies with the fact that a single very wealth person could 'buy' more speech for a candidate that they favored, than a candidate that had broad grass roots support and more modest funding. This causes the candidate to give you much more influence over their agenda than a candidate that has broad grassroots support. Sure, your idea requires candidates to spend less time fund raising. They would all be solidly in the pockets of the rich, though.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
You are right. Anything done without any human involvement whatsoever should not be given the same protections as something done by people. When corporations act with no human intent or human involvement, their freedom is without conscience or merit.
When humans act, they have freedom. That freedom deserves protection. When they do it as part of a corporation, they maintain their humanity and the actions deserve to maintain their protection.
Corporations do not have first amendment rights. They cannot vote. They are not individuals. They have no rights at all.
Amendment 1 does not require a human being, nor does it grant anyone or anything a "right".
It states: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". It is a limitation on the power of Congress.
In this case, Congress made a law abridging the freedom of the press. Bad Congress.
Why the heck would we want corporations to be able to do this?
Because we believe that limiting free speech is bad.
Voting with your wallets only works if you actually have a choice in who you do business with and if you are fully aware of those companies' supply chains. In practice, outside of very narrow situations, neither of these is ever really true.
Let's say you want to buy a computer. Whether you buy it from Apple, Dell, HP, or some fly-by-night computer builder working out of his parents' basement, your processor comes from AMD or Intel... maybe VIA. It doesn't take much imagination to think of positions that two or three companies in a similar industry would support. For that matter, it's safe to assume that in any given industry, odds are good that most companies (if not all) will generally have similar political positions on any issue that impacts them. Therefore, more often than not, your only real option when a company supports a position you don't like is to not only refuse to buy from that company, but to also refuse to buy from any other company in that entire industry. This quickly becomes impractical.
And you're also forgetting about collateral damage. Let's say that UPS supports somebody you don't like. Any product you buy assembled outside the U.S. has a good chance of having been shipped by UPS or a subsidiary thereof at some point. Any product you buy that was assembled in the U.S. has about a 100% chance of having some component in it that was shipped by UPS or a subsidiary at some point. So it does no good to say "I'll only ship FedEx from now on" because you're supporting UPS anyway.
Finally, I'll go one step further. I buy a carrot from my grocery store. If the farmer worked for a corporation that supported someone I don't like, I can probably tell by the label. If my grocery supported someone I don't like, I can tell by the grocery store sign. But what about:
The number of companies involved basically increases exponentially the farther out you look. Each company gets support from multiple other companies, which get support from multiple other companies, and so on.
And that's just a couple of hops away from the original "manufacturer" for something as simple as a carrot. When you consider how many dozens or even hundreds of companies are directly involved in the manufacture and distribution of a more complex product like a computer or a cell phone, you should easily understand why avoiding doing business with a company who supports people you don't like is completely and totally infeasible unless you quite literally dedicate every minute of your life to the task, and probably not even then.
Quite simply, there is only one way to not support a company you don't like, and that is to refuse to give any money to any corporation. Short of living an entirely self-sufficient agrarian lifestyle without the use of modern tools or equipment (we're talking about using an ox an
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Everything you said is correct, and yet it's all wrong. I realize you could be speaking from the standpoint of the "Corporate Person" pun that got in this whole mess to begin with, but let's be clear that this is a fiction. A corporation is not a sentient entity. It does not have desires or interests of its own because "it" is not an entity capable of having them. The corporation can take no actions because it has no will. It is not immortal because it is not alive.
The desires of a corporation are the desires of its executives. The actions of a corporation are the actions of its executives and their subordinates taken in the corporation's name. They aren't separate, they are one and the same. The only way for a corporation to take an action that the executives do not desire is for one of the subordinates to disobey their executive, for which they can be fired.
You're absolutely right that corporations are anti-democratic semi-feudal organizations. But an organization is nothing but the people comprising it. So when you say that the directors should view the corporation like an untrustworthy animal, it is buying into the fictional personification of the corporation that says it has a will outside of the directors themselves. Do not allow the directors to abdicate responsibility for their own actions in this way. It may be a legal reality, but it is not a literal reality.
Nobody would speak of, say, the 1st U.S. Army have a will or interests outside of the General commanding it, excepting that the General has lost control of the people under their command. You can't nuke "the concept of the 1st Army" though you can nuke the people in it. It is "immortal" only in the sense that the concept will still exist, but that concept is nothing and does nothing and desires nothing until a new General takes up the head, and then the 1st Army's desires are the General's desires.
Or for another example, you would never say "the people of feudal Britain were oppressed by Britain", you'd say they were oppressed by the King, the executive. The idea that "Britain" could oppress the people despite the wishes of the King is ludicrous.
So, getting back to the point. This problem with this decision is not that it gives political power to corporations. The problem is that it gives political power to CEOs and directors (usually CEOs of other companies if not the same company), to use the resources of the corporation -- meaning the product of the labor of everyone working for it -- for the CEO's own political benefit.
The enemies of Democracy are
I can't imagine why SCOTUS is taking this approach. True, since 1866 it has been swept along in the idea that corporations should have the rights of citizens, but they don't have to rule this way if they don't want to. And they didn't always. Below is a cut from 1905 I've probably sent you before. Even after 1866 The Court knew the difference between individual and corporation. I have no theory why it keeps screwing America by ruling this way. And we also suffer from the reverse; individuals being treated as corporations with no rights. For example the IRS says you have no "cost basis" in your own labor so when you sell it, it's all "profit or gain" and therefore "income". They wouldn't talk to an individual like that, IRS thinks everyone is a corporation, under its jurisdiction, the bastards.
Come the revolution they'll be the first ones up against the wall :)
Hale vs Henkel
201US74
Year 1905.
a 5th amendment case
"Conceding that the witness was an officer of the corporation under investigation, and that he was entitled to assert the rights of the corporation with respect to the production of its books and papers, we are of the opinion that there is a clear distinction in this particular between an individual and a corporation, and that the latter has no right to refuse to submit its books and papers for an examination at the suit of the State.
The individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the State or to his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his doors to an investigation, so far as it may tend to criminate him. He owes no such duty to the State, since he receives nothing therefrom beyond the protection of his life and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the land long antecedent to the organization of the State, and can only be taken from him by due process of law, and in accordance with the Constitution. Among his rights are a refusal to incriminate himself and the immunity of himself and his property from arrest or seizure except under a warrant of the law. He owes nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights.
Upon the other hand, the corporation is a creature of the State. It is presumed to be incorporated for the benefit of the public. It receives certain special privileges and franchises, and holds them subject to the laws of the State and the limitations of its charter. Its powers are limited by law. It can make no contract not authorized by its charter. Its rights to act as a corporation are only preserved to it so long as it obeys the laws of its creation. There is a reserved right in the legislature to investigate its contracts and find out whether it has exceeded its powers. It would be a strange anomaly to hold that a State, having chartered a corporation to make use of certain franchises, could not in the exercise of its sovereignty inquire how these franchises had been employed, and whether they had been abused, and demand the production of the corporate books and papers for that purpose."