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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."
You are correct, but the GP talked about corporations which are creations of law (passed by our government) and not of simple association like the simple business you describe. These laws specifically give advantages to corporations and other legal entities which would not exist outside the law (again, passed by and enforced through our government). The greatest of these is, of course, the limitation on pass-through liability for acts of the corporation to its shareholders/owners. Nowhere in the Constitution is the right to create such entities explicitly given to the government, yet many folks seem to think their existence is just fine with them as is the shield from liability afforded to their owners (which is contrary to our legal notions of personhood and legal responsibility). I'm fine with unlimited corporate contributions to political candidates so long as the government does not provide a protected status to corporations. Feel free to form business associations. but understand that each of the members of these associations will be fully, personally liable for all actions and debts of the association. What's that? Without protection from liability there will be no corporations? Fine by me. Until that point, entities whose existence is solely a matter of law should realize that the law can constrain as well as benefit them.
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.
Well, I would disagree. It has happened before. It's just that there normally was a face to the government that ignored human welfare. Gengis Khan was brutal and certainly ignored human welfare. However - and this is a significant difference - what's new is that with corporatism, there is no face to a corporation that engages in cruelty. And as Penny Arcade demonstrated so succinctly, nothing makes people into bigger assholes than anonymity.
In other words, corporatism means everyone can be the biggest, cruelest asshole on the block. Lovely.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
You're right, corporations don't vote, so how can they be considered "persons" when it comes to civil rights if they don't have the right to vote?
If they can't participate in elections as voters, then they shouldn't participate in elections as buyers.
And you fear that without the vast sums of corporate dollars, voters might not decide in the way you like.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You cannot tax me. Increased tax burdens just trickle down to less disposable income to spend on cars and cable tv and smaller tips for low level employees like delivery boys and waitstaff. I'm not sure why that is so hard for corporations to get.