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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."
No. Making a profit "qualifies" a corporation for exactly jack shit.
Very specifically, corporations lack some very basic properties of "persons" such as conscience. This alone completely disqualifies them from any civil rights.
Especially transnational corporations, who have absolutely no allegiance to any individual nation or government or society. Why in the world would you want a Saudi corporation or Chinese corporation or Iranian corporation to have a "say" about our society? So why would you want a completely amoral transnational to have any say?
How about this: A corporation can have a say in our society until you move one job off shore or one dollar into a foreign bank or sell one product overseas. Then, you get absolutely no say because your allegiance is no longer to our society.
How about this?: People can spend their money any way they want regarding political speech. Corporations can not. If those skeevs at "Americans United for Mom, Families and Mercury in the Water Supply" want to support a candidate, then each one of them can write a check individually. They are still free to assemble as the first amendment says. They are free to say anything they want. They are not free to buy government.
Speech is something that all people can participate in equally. Money is not.
When the founders wrote the Declaration and the Constitution, believe it or not, money had already been invented. Corporations had already been invented. They left money and corporations out of the First Amendment because they wanted it that way.
It's amusing that people who would think of themselves as "Constitutional originalists" when it comes to fictions like the "right to carry handguns" and "the right to have the US military wear bible verses on their hats" all of a sudden believe that they have to "fill in the blanks" in the First Amendment.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is why I love right-to-work states, where no one can make me join a union.
As an employer I love them too. I can pay those idiots substantially less to do the same work.