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Did Internet Sales Tax Backers Bribe Congress? (Video)
This may be a coincidence, but according to MapLight, Senators who voted last week for the bill allowing states to directly collect taxes on sales via the Internet, AKA The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013, received 40 times as much campaign donation money (yes, that's four-oh, not just four) from businesses in favor of the bill as those who voted against it received from businesses that were against Internet sales taxes. Was this bribery? Of course not! We're not some piddly fifth-world country. But it's a prime example of how money influences politics here in the good old USA, and it's far from the only one we've seen lately. In this video, MapLight Program Director Jay Costa shares a bunch more with us, along with tips on how to spot this sort of thing and some steps we voters can take to fight against both direct and indirect influence-buying. Note that all this is totally non-partisan; the politicians with the most influence -- whether local, state or federal -- get most of the available special interest money no matter what other agenda(s) they may have. And for those who want to learn more about who is spending their dollars to influence your representatives, Jay also suggests a look at these two money-in-politics resources: FollowTheMoney.org and OpenSecrets.org.
Is it bribery or do companies donate more money to politicians that agree with their policies?
A horse of a different color is still a horse, of course of course.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
OF COURSE THEY DID! DUH.
This is exactly what's wrong with the size of these corporations and the corruption of our government system in the USA - the amount of influence they can buy over our "Representatives"
You need to fix the problems with elections themselves. Safe districts make easily manipulated legislators not just in bed with lobbyists but married to them for decades.
Any of the following would work:
Increasing the number of representatives in the house by a factor of ~100
Defining a countrywide party agnostic algorithm for automatically creating districts
Moving to proportional representation(this one would also fix the 2 party problem).
There are lots of other approaches, I'd support yours, if it dealt with this problem. Just support some kind of fix.
I'm not sure this is the best example, because congresspeople would have another incentive to support the measure: all of their home town local shops will have also been calling them up (and directing their customers to do so as well) in support of it, at least I'd guess so. I've been to enough town meeting type things where there was a lot of talk about "buy local!" and such because the local businesses were being so undercut by the big internet giants (who also weren't paying sales tax). It's the kind of thing that riles up city councils everywhere.
For those that don't already know it: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Shocker. _||.|
Proof: The bill got passed with bipartisan support.
I am officially gone from
I searched for this at thomas.loc.gov last night and found the bill text that's entering the House (as far as I know, I think this is the right one):
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c113:H.R.684:
Aside from the taxation issue (which I'll avoid discussing because I don't want to start a flame war here), the biggest problem with this bill is that it's going to be a *nightmare* to implement. It says that each state will have to implement it's own "software" (undefined) which I can only assume would be a REST-style API. That means that if you're going to be legal, under this bill, you have to integrate with not one, but FIFTY separate APIs.
That's why this bill is an obvious attempt by the big guys who can absorb that kind of cost to crowd out medium-sized retailers by forcing them to lose profit or raise prices to comply with the law, and in either case be less competitive. It's just the latest in a long run of attempts to manipulate congress to shut down competition from small and medium business so that the big guys can still get away with over-charging. Limit competition and you can increase your margins, basically.
For the record, I wrote my representative last night voicing this point of view and asking for a "no" vote.
When I fart, it smells bad. Seriously, who didn't know this already?
OpenSecret.org has been around for what, nearly two decades now, and the American people have shown that they are not interested. Apparently the system works, as angry as it may make a few slacktivists. Give it up already with trying to manufacture outrage.
It's LOBBYING. They're just expressing the free speech rights of the megacorporations they represent to influence the outcome of elections to select people who will do their bidding.
There's a difference.
It's not like anyone can save on sales tax by buying real estate over the internet....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The 40 times number is meaningless without further context. The majority of buisnesses collect sales tax. Of course those people would support removing the loop hole that prevents sales tax from being collected on internet purchases.
At least for someone that not followed the news the last, don't know, 20 years? You mean that you never doubted all the other major laws in last years hadn't any major bribe or similar behind?
I'm having a hard time sorting out their methodology, but it looks as if the problem is that there just weren't any "anti-" groups opposing the measure, at least by their calculation. They totted up only $1.4 million spent by all the "anti-" groups, which is practically nothing compared to the billions spent on all of the Senate campaigns put together.
Neither, in fact, is that $55M spent by "pro-" groups all that large. This is the problem with the "campaign fund bribery" theory. These groups are heavily constrained in how much money they can give, just $10,000 to each candidate. These candidates need millions.
http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/contriblimits.shtml
Their contributions just aren't big enough to make a bribe. It's not even enough to get them to take a meeting with you. Rather, it's the other way around: they contribute to the candidates that they want to see win the election.
EVERYBODY on this list got more money from the "pro-" groups than from the "anti-" groups. Kelly Ayotte voted no; she got $326,335, compared to $31,751. Mike Crapo, $181,414 vs $15,020. Ted Cruz, $529,897 vs $19,050.
What this data indicates, if anything, is that there just weren't many groups who opposed this. The direct marketers, the catalog sales, and computer manufacturers. That's it. Weren't there any consumer groups? Consumers are the ones who pay the tax. None of the consumer groups took a stand? Or did their crappy methodology just miss them?
America is an oligarchy. Quelle surprise! This is why I don't even bother wasting my time to vote any more.
Yes, the Internet sales tax backers bribed Congress.
So did the Internet sales tax opponents. They were just less successful.
Our system is pretty fucked up. But criticize the system; don't try to justify one side in a dispute by arguing that the other side bribed Congress, because in essentially every dispute, both sides do it.
Senators who voted last week for the bill allowing states to directly collect taxes on sales via the Internet, AKA The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013, received 40 times as much campaign donation money (yes, that's four-oh, not just four) from businesses in favor of the bill as those who voted against it received from businesses that were against Internet sales taxes. Was this bribery? Of course not!
How many businesses in your state have significant out of state sales?
How many people do online retailers employ in your state, how much revenues do these retailers generate for state and local government?
The direction of causality could easily be the opposite way around. If a candidate is known to be pro-internet-tax, then a pro-internet-tax business has reason to contribute to their campaign.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
At some point, civil disobedience is the only way. You have to do some things that would ordinarily be crimes. Not murder or anything really violent. Just illegal, like pulling an offending product off the shelf and throwing it on the floor, or telling the driver to get out of the truck so that you can dump it all in the parking lot. That's not really very good though. It's got to be as close to your ordinary life as possible, and yet illegal.
You see? This is the problem. The powers that be learned how to prevent resistance. In the Civil Rights era, just sitting down on a bus or at a lunch counter was protest. Thousands of people could violate it, and they could fill the jails and create chaos until the Feds had to come in.
The powerful, they learned from that. They've got it down so that there's no real point of friction between us and them. There's no convenient interface between the oppressed and the oppressors. It makes protest difficult... but not impossible.
At some point, they'll go too far, and there will be an interface that's convenient.
It should be to serve the country, passing laws for the positive benefit of the people as a whole.
What it ends up being is trying to get re-elected because then those nice people keep dropping off envelopes stuffed with cash.
Is the sky blue?
Is the Easter Bunny real?
Do babies come from a stork?
Is this politician lying?
sudo make me a sandwich
Old Version: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. New Version as approved by SCOTUS: We the Lobbyists of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Corporation, establish Profitable Trade, insure domestic (and foreign) Profits, provide for the common stockholder, promote the general Welfare of our CEOs, and secure the Blessings of Wealth to ourselves and our Posterity (only), do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
50 years ago this would have been a major scandal. Now it's "ho hum business as usual." This country is fucked.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
This statistic, as presented, proves pretty much nothing.
Look, I'll cheerfully agree that our congresspeople are largely nicely-dressed whores who apparently will vote whichever way they're funded, but the statistics presented here are so confused as to be nearly meaningless.
The total given by those in favor may have been 40x that given against.
Then again, this could be (viewed objectively) simply a groundswell of opinion in favor.
I look at my senators (both D-MN):
Amy Klobuchar took $532,457 from those in favor, $16,298 from those opposed. ~30x as much.
Al Franken took $858,186:$11,400 almost 90x.
Two SOLID yes votes, as they vote mindless lockstep with their party.
Yet Jeff Flake (R-AZ), he received $588,966 $2,800 - a staggering 200x in favor, and voted "NO".
Mark Kirk (R-IL) $1,076,621to $28,200 or some 35x in favor, another "NO" vote.
So it doesn't seem that the wierdly-presented statistic of how much more one guy got from one side vs the other controls which way they voted.
I'd argue from opensecrets.org that the link between money and legislation is so obvious that it's hard to imagine that anyone could present it in a way that's NOT conclusive...like maplight managed to....
-Styopa
" Was this bribery? Of course not! "
Of course? How is it obvious that it is not bribery? I dont see anything obvious as to why it is not.
Giving a politician money for the purpose of influencing said politicians support of legislation is corruption, fair and square.
There are no ifs or buts, it is corruption.
And this corruption is so widespread, and so accepted ( and even expected ), that the American people think nothing of it, and accept it as simply a part of doing politics.
Leader of the Free World my ass.
I live in a first world western democracy, and here, this sort of corruption is illegal. Why is this allowed in the USA?
Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]
The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.
Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.
The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.
Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]
Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.
Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.
The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.
-- Proposed 28th Amendment
The really big disparities in contributions, interestingly enough, came from the various Unions, especially public worker unions - they tended to come down on the "we want this new tax" by very large percentages (90% for, 10% against, as an example - most weren't quite that extreme, some were rather more extreme).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Bribery is something that's done clandestinely; this obviously wasn't.
If you don't like it, make an issue out of it next time these people run for Congress.
Everything is for sale, including the laws.
Unless your state doesn't have any sales taxes, you are breaking the law (almost always) by buying out of state and not paying "use tax", unless you self identify and pay the use tax. (Exceptions for purchases of goods for resale and some other exceptions exist.) I'm generally against any tax.. but if people are dumb enough to enact incredible high sales tax rates (like the 8.5% we have in CA) we should at least make sure people aren't given an easy way to avoid it.
Was this bribery? Of course not! We're not some piddly fifth-world country.
Yes you are and yes it is.
You Americans are the only country in the world that pretends outrageous "campaign contributions" aren't bribery.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Could someone explain for me why this is a bad thing?
Taxes are good. The government needs taxes to provide revenue so that it can spend on entitlement programs.
If it takes a little corruption to make the rich fatcat 1%-er mucketymucks pay their "fair share," then what's the big deal? I mean... the government needs money to pay for all the entitlements we've demanded they provide for us, right? And they have to get that money from somewhere, right?
So what's wrong with more taxes? I would think Slashdot would be crowing about how wonderful it is that the rich will pay more taxes to help fund programs for the 99%.
...that money can buy!
You can bank on that.
Then there's the system Howard Hughes used: he'd donate to any politician that looked like they had a chance to win. That way, no matter who won, Howard could say, "I gave." In fact, that's why nobody tried to find out where that slush fund Bebe Rebozo was holding onto came from during the Watergate Scandal; they all knew it was from Hughes, but they were all afraid of what might come out if his name was mentioned.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Is grass green? Is the sky blue? Does shit stink?
I always supported the fact that Amazon was tax-free in California even as a Californian. At least the lack of taxes was saving me money that would have otherwise been spent on government assistance for illegal aliens. The ineffectiveness of the California government makes me think we would be better off shrinking the state tax base and relying on private businesses to provide more needed services. I would expect a private business to ensure our parks stay safe and clean. I would expect a private business to provide better security than our police force. The Internet has proven that large decentralized networks that people depend on don't need to be handled by the government.
The government should serve one purpose and one purpose only: to ensure the free market remains competitive, to manage our defense, and create business practices so that we can maintain a high standard of living and are not forced to compete against places like China that undercut us through sweatshop labor practices.
The less money the federal government has in it's pocket, the better we all are.
It's like we're living in fucking Somalia. Country is a joke.
For what it's worth I would bet that the anti- campaign is no more moral than the pro-, consisting of online sellers interested in screwing over their physical-store brethren, so perhaps the moral of the story is that online sellers are simply cheap.
It's technically illegal to ship an un-taxed parcel into the state of South Carolina without informing SCDOR of the sale and/or collecting the SC sales tax on it.
Amazon got a pass for locating jobs here, but that expires this year if I'm not mistaken, and they'll be reporting all sales to SC residents to SCDOR starting this year, so that they can be properly taxed.
Amazon, interestingly, lobbied hard for Internet sales tax, becuase they charge a fortune for "compliance services." They are able to collect tax for all 50 states, and charge Amazon.com sellers a nice premium for the "service" of doing the tax busywork for them.
From the crumbling infrastructure, to massive invasion campaigns, to the billions in funding to Israel, to a growing security apparatus, to the war on drugs, America needs the money. Maybe Ebay and Paypal can shave a couple percentage points off their unjustified fees and percentages to let the government have more funds. Though I much rather taxes go to rebuild, educate, and maintain the country as opposed to oppression, but that's just my quirk.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
to Betteridge's law of headlines
No
Does anything in congress happen without bribes changing hands?
Requiem for the American Dream
In order to become law this will have to pass in the House of Representatives. Did they bribe them as well.
Note that the House has a Republican majority.
Anybody know when it is scheduled for a vote in the House?
I know that if it does pass, I won't be voting for the senators and representatives that voted for this - ever again, regardless of their views on other issues.
Once this comes into effect, I won't be buying stuff online, I will stock up on stuff before it comes into effect though, and after that date I will be using my disposable income to pay off my credit card.
I won't be buying more stuff locally than I now am.
Yet Jeff Flake (R-AZ), he received $588,966 $2,800 - a staggering 200x in favor, and voted "NO".
Mark Kirk (R-IL) $1,076,621to $28,200 or some 35x in favor, another "NO" vote.
Dear Donor,
Thank you for your generous checks! As promised, I will not blow my nose (we call it filibustering) during the public performance of our Circus, even though I have an impressively long nose longer than that of Pinocchio's, so that the Donkeys can pass your bill. But I will immediately blame the Donkeys for passing the bill. Don't worry. That won't hurt your bill a bit. I just do it to entice other of my donors to continue to write checks to me.
Thanks again for your generous checks! Keep in touch.
Sincerely,
The Elephants
the main difference between corruption in the US and `3rd world countries is that in the US you have to be crazy rich (1%) to be able to bribe anyone afford. 3rd world countries are much more democratic and make bribery affordable to everyone
only allow individual human beings to donate to campaigns, and then only in campaigns they can vote in. Bam, money out of politics instantly.
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"Was this bribery? Of course not! We're not some piddly fifth-world country. "
Yes it IS bribery, and until you people stop pussyfooting around and start calling it what it really is, we will become more and more of a 5th or 6th world country as each day goes by.
Our politicians are bought and paid for, Every single one of them. Only fools believe otherwise.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Did anyone else actually click the first link and see that the number of groups, associations, unions, etc. supporting the online sales tax outnumbered those opposing it by quite a margin. I realize those groups will vary in size and membership, but if I assume all those listed groups are the same size and each gave $1 million then YES, senators would necessarily RECEIVE 40 times more money from those in favor of the bill given that they outnumber the opponents so handily. And maybe many people supported the bill because avoiding taxes merely because you sell things online instead of from a brick and mortar storefront is not fair.
Vote this comment up if you believe in critical thinking. And yes, lobbyists, donations, and all that money flowing to Washington can have undesirable effects and result in certain views being disproportionately represented. Another case of the right conclusions being reached based on the wrong statistics!
check out movetoamend.org they are working tirelessly to remove money from speech, corporations from citizenship and bribery from lawmaking...
How?
By getting constitutional amendments that state the following..
Corporations are NOT citizens.
Money is NOT speech.
Period.
Its a campaign contribution. You people love to act like everything is a conspiracy or something.
A person/s or a business will always donate money to a political side that helps them. They give them money because they want that policy, that politician, that legislation or whatever to go through so they support them financially (and because they can write it off on their taxes). When you renew your drivers license each year they ask me if I want to donate money to some state politicians campaign, I say no but if I did then technically you guys say I would be bribing that politician.
You see the reason why you guys jump on the bribery train here and blame politicians is because you don't want to pay taxes for online purchases. That's what this really comes down to. You don't want to pay taxes so you make up wild and crazy accusations simply because you are going to be inconvenienced. You see if someone was saying "They are donating to them to NOT make internet sales tax a law" then none of you would even mention the word bribery and you would all be behind it 100%. Why? Because you have double standards and you have no sense of reality.
Somehow corporations are citizens these days.
I realize that is the meme popularized in the media. However if you actually read the Citizens United decision it says something different:
(1) Groups of people have the same rights as individuals.
(2) It does not matter if that group of people is a corporation, trade union, advocacy group, etc.
The CEO, or who ever was involved in committing a crime should go to prison just like any other citizen.
They do. Here's a top ten list, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/18/top-10-ceos-sent-to-prison_n_1527361.html.
I bet the legislatures of every state with a sales tax supported this. If the legislature of your state says to you, that your state is losing lots of sales tax revenue, and companies out of state are getting those sales jobs, that would sway senators in favor of this bill.
Probably.
And yes, I'm shocked.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
I wish I had mods points. And I wish I could understand why people who would scream bloody murder if their rights to free speech were curtailed are so fervently interested in taking those rights away from others. Maybe just a hint as to why they don't think that people who join together to spend their money more efficiently should have free speech rights after all. And why anyone would support a "legal fiction" that is calling for the stripping of free speech rights from every other legal fiction but itself. ("Move To Amend", spending money lobbying against their own right to spend money lobbying against spending their own money...)
In 1998, Microsoft was pursued by the DOJ in an antitrust case. In 2001, the case was dropped.
1) Amount of money Microsoft contributed, from 1990 to present.
Scroll down to the graph titled "Party Split" to see the totals by year.
2) The DOJ announced on September 6, 2001 that it was no longer seeking to break up Microsoft and would instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty.
It's a voluntary prostitute-john business. Politicians can threaten to shake down businesses. Businesses give money, politicians do what they want.
Every remedy has its own set of costs and benefits. But, I don't think the Founders foresaw this type or level of corruption. They instituted a system of checks and balances, because they understood human nature, and the system was designed to keep the leaders in check. I don't think they foresaw the power of various business-political complexes.
And other rethorical questons :)
AccountKiller
Unethical and illegal are two different things. Donating millions to influence litigation into putting your little competitors out of business illegal? No. Unethical. Bet your ass it is.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
but without the huge barrier to entry into politics that the donations system creates we get an opportunity to work on those other things you mentioned. I guess what I'm saying is, it's a complex problem. Solving even 70% of it gets us well on the road.
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By golly, this is terrible! You know, I think I'm going to get elected and fix it! Hmm, that means I'm going to need a campaign and... how much money... eew... yeah... Some donors. A LOT of donors. Of course, I look out for my friends! Any of my donors want to be "Minister of Calenders"? I can totally do that if I get elected! Oh... my god... what have I become! Ok, effective immediately, I feel I must step down from my campaign, having been corrupted by campaign donations!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Saying they were bribed is one way to look at it. Of course, the fact that these politicians could already have had pro-sales tax stances, and as such attracted more funds so they could get elected, is another way.
.. here is a novel idea ... try to convince your representatives that they don't need to be spending as much money so they don't need to tax as much. Cut back on social services, police, fire, or education so that the tax isn't even needed.
Otherwise, it's just free speech. NRA, Green Peace, Sierra Club, and every other lobby gives more to politicians who help their causes, they would be stupid to give money to people who oppose it. Why try to change someone's idea when you can just help someone who agrees to get elected. Why is it the 'other side' only points out the spending of people they disagree with, and not their own???
Correlation != Causation.
That is not bribery. Find an email where a senator said he will change his vote *IF* he gets more funds, and you have bribery.
There are many opposing lobbies that also spent money on getting their politicians elected. They only people complaining about how things turned out are those who disagree with the outcome. I support 100% coming up with a method to tax internet sales, it's fair and replaces an existing source of revenue. If it's not replaced, then income or property taxes will be going up. You are going to pay it one way or the other.
If you don't support the method (i.e. having 'small' companies have to collect and pay it out), then come up with a better solution and contact your political representatives instead of pouting.
Or
It's not a 'big money in politics' issue, it's a spending/revenue issue that no one has found a good solution for yet. Put your energies towards that end instead of whining.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Canada only allows political contributions from individuals, and only up to a maximum of 5000$.
There are some sketchy real estate deals, but many of these get publicized, so I don't think it is that rampant.
The revolving door however is in effect. I am not sure how one might tackle it. I believe there are rules around immediately working for a industry you regulate, so you might have to wait a year or something before the big payoff. Many times it is hard to argue either way, when they actually have a lot of experience in the field in question.
Ugh. In reading up a bit I just found a disgusting fact. The president of the Bank of Canada for the last decade (and though the financial crisis) was also a former Goldman Sacks executive just like down in the US. Wonderful.
Why am I reminded of Pyrrhus: "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined."
Not really, everyone can have a congressman in their pocket for a pittance.
So if the board of directors decides to fund Politician Bob (tax cuts for corporations) from the corporate treasury while the majority of their employees, who also happen to be on minimum wage, would rather fund Politician Joe (minimum wage increases), whose speech is it?
If the company is majority foreign-owned, whose speech is it?
(I am also reminded that the guillotine was once considered a marvel of humane efficiency).
So if the board of directors decides to fund Politician Bob (tax cuts for corporations) from the corporate treasury while the majority of their employees, who also happen to be on minimum wage, would rather fund Politician Joe (minimum wage increases), whose speech is it?
To be fair that happens in trade unions as well. The union leadership may spend huge sums of money on candidates that union members will vote against. Money that was forcibly extracted from the union member's paycheck. Hence the popularity among the members of *some* unions of initiatives that would require union member's consent for that portion of union dues that go to political contributions.
It would seem that only the advocacy groups make contributions that are generally in line with the membership. It surely helps that their funding is generally from voluntary membership and donations. This provides a check and balance missing in corporations and trade unions. On second thought, corporations do have a minor check and balance. Consumers can boycott their products in they find the corporation's political contributions distasteful. Regrettably consumers seem to care about nothing beyond the lowest price.
I'm not in favor of any such abuse by CEOs or union leaders. I'm just pointing out that rights and abuses are not as one sided as often portrayed.
if ( you agree with speech ) {
it's protected
} else {
it's bribery
}
There is no reasonable concept of reasonableness.
Thats why I support the Tea Party. They represent me, not Philips Morris, Facebook, Rockwell Collins, GE.
So if the board of directors decides to fund Politician Bob (tax cuts for corporations) from the corporate treasury while the majority of their employees, who also happen to be on minimum wage, would rather fund Politician Joe (minimum wage increases), whose speech is it?
The people who own the company who hired the directors. You certainly don't think the money belongs to the employees just because they work there, do you?
If the company is majority foreign-owned, whose speech is it?
The foreigners, who are then falling afoul of existing campaign finance laws.
(I am also reminded that the guillotine was once considered a marvel of humane efficiency).
I'm sure you could come up with 100 more irrelevancies to comment on.
I wish I had mods points. And I wish I could understand why people who would scream bloody murder if their rights to free speech were curtailed are so fervently interested in taking those rights away from others. Maybe just a hint as to why they don't think that people who join together to spend their money more efficiently should have free speech rights after all. And why anyone would support a "legal fiction" that is calling for the stripping of free speech rights from every other legal fiction but itself. ("Move To Amend", spending money lobbying against their own right to spend money lobbying against spending their own money...)
The right to "free speech" is a meaningless term when my free speech, and those of most ordinary Americans are trumped by the "free speech rights" of corporate backed PACS with the budget of millions or more.