I agree, pharma distribution is nationwide so federal oversight seems reasonable.
The point you address is one that is often misunderstood. When most people say the federal government should not be involved in activity X they often mean that a more local level of government should be involved. I other words a level that is (1) more knowledgable of the local environment that activity X is taking place in and (2) is more accountable to local voters.
With respect to (1) in particular, many problems have a local component. A good solution in one part of the country may be a poor solution in another. That is why many people are highly skeptical of one-size-fits-all solutions from Washington DC.
For EU readers, consider an EU based organization usurping control over some activity from your national government. That's sort of the situation with the US federal government. The US is too large and too diverse for many on-size-fits-all solutions.
OP is not a troll, and while I do tend to think that the FDA likely has a place under the interstate commerce clause I am willing to take the OPs position also.
The Constitution is a regulative document, not a normative document. We know it is a regulative document because of the 10th Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Normative: whatever is not prohibited in the document is permitted in practice
Regulative: should include those and only those powers, departments and responsibilities that are instituted, commanded, or appointed by command or example should be the purview of the Federal Government, all else is to the States, Municipalities / People
I expect these new mobile devices/apps coming onto the scene will be considered some sort of novelty devices by the FDA not medical devices. Like ancient digital watches.
The info they provide will be considered more trivia or a novelty than medical info. Much like ancient digital watches that could show a pulse, novelty info, not to be used for medical purposes. Or ancient digital watches that could show pressure, novelty info, not to be used for aircraft altitude or depth when scuba diving. I actually used one for scuba diving but it was secondary to my actual depth gauge made for scuba diving. It was surprisingly close. And when driving up to the mountains it will surprisingly close to the altitude markers along the highway, assuming I calibrated. I knew my altitude at home. And when diving, I was at sea level on the beach/boat. As reasonably accurate as it was, it was still a novelty device, or a last resorts back if my actual device failed.
What about non-closely held corporations? What if they're fundamentally opposed to providing such birth control, but aren't really religious?
My understanding is that the Court requires the corp to be closely held, that once you have a certain number of owners a shared belief is far less plausible. Also the belief has to be part of some sort of established and recognized religion, you can't just declare yourself a jedi and say jedi's don't believe in abortion.
So large corps or non-religious beliefs, the decision does not apply.
Do they get a special exception too, or are religious people part of certain kinds of corporations more equal than the rest of us?
Well, religion does have special rights according to the Constitution. Government is thereby required to give religious beliefs some weight. Its a balance, religious business owners vs a gov't mandate on healthcare. They seem to have said that for small corps where a shared religious belief is more plausible things tip towards the corp, for larger corps where a shared religious belief is less plausible things tip towards the government.
I've seen a small suggestion of breaking the employer-provided healthcare trap in recent employment contracts. Some are saying you get this salary plus we will cover the unsubsidized portion of your ACA compliant health plan. Not an ACA fan myself, we need health care reform and the ACA is a pretty flawed attempt, yet such employment contracts are a step in the right direction.
Nah.
They said that the rights of corporations are transcendent over the rights of real, living people because some of the owners technically can be classified as real living people, thus effectively denying folks access to certain healthcare.
No, decision does not apply to corporations in general. It applies only the closely held corporation (5 or fewer owners) where the owners have a common religious belief. In such a limited case the corporation can be considered to hold such a belief. This being relevant since the Religious Freedom Act was written in a manner that it applied to both people and corporations. Not that corps are people, rather that this particular law applies to people and corps, like a law saying don't toss toxic stuff in the river.
Plus, no one is denied certain healthcare. The company can not prevent an employee from having a procedure, they can only decline to pay for it.
Not true, the corporation can ask the bank for a line of credit secured against receivables (i.e. a big-ass order you just got from Amazon) which makes you and your partners personal credit card history irrelevant.
No. You cite one scenario where an asset is being used as collateral. The fact remains that it is common for the owners of small corporations to take on some personal liability for corporate debt. It happen all the time. Contrary to what the GP said many corporate owners do in fact have skin in the game.
Regarding the myth of being shielded from company failure. Go start a corporation. Now try to get a company credit card or other line of credit, the bank will require a personal guarantee on that card or credit line.
You know you are wrong when you have to use misdirection to support your position. Sure the bank has the option to require that you co-sign on any loan made to your corporation. But the whole reason they require you to co-sign is because the corporate structure would shield you if they did not. Your own citation proves you wrong.
Nope. You are wrong. The false claim that I responded to said that corporate owners have no skin in the game. I offered an example where corporate owners in fact have skin in the game. In particular the small closely held corporations that have 5 or fewer owners that this decision is limited to. They are commonly personally on the hook for something corporate.
eric cantor, and cantor lost because he didn't spend enough time at home. the GOP is going to miss him and his constituents did themselves a disservice.
By how much money did Cantor spend? That is the key point in this discussion.
tell me a job that will allow me to keep the compan paid portion of the HC plan to opt out and then you can say that. Ive never seen it
That is something unrelated to my comment. My comment simply points out that despite healthcare being earned the type of healthcare available was always under company control. That the company in fact had power over an employee with respect to healthcare.
There is no direct 1:1 person -> corporate pass through. The whole POINT of a corporation is to prevent that.
You are mistaken. The barrier between person and corporation is leaky, more so for smaller corporations than larger, S-Corp rather than C-Corp. It has always provided limited protection with conditions. One example of this leaky natures is when the owners of a corporation have to become personally liable for corporate debt if they want a credit card or line of credit. Note that this decision does not apply to all corporations. It only applies to corporations with 5 or fewer owners who have a shared religious belief. In such limited circumstances the Court has ruled that a corporation can posses the religious beliefs of its handful of owners.
> (1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights as individual persons.
Groups of people don't have the same moral awareness or legal responsibility as individuals do.
First, apologies for the typo, I fixed it above, "are" should have been "as".
Actually the Dictionary Act say groups -- corps, partnerships, unions, etc -- do have the same legal responsibilities as people. It says that unless a law defines its scope otherwise the law applies to people and corps and unions.... For example a law that says people can't toss toxic crap into the river would apply to people and corporations.
My understanding is that the Religious Freedom Act (or whatever it was called) contained no such scope definition so it applies to corporations as well as people. Now the question is how does a corp have a religious belief. It seems the Court said that if it is closely held (5 or fewer owners) and these owners share a religious belief then their corporation can be considered to have that religious belief. This does not apply to corporations in general, just 5 or fewer owners with a common religious belief. Hobby Lobby was such a family owned business so they are the rare corp that meets these qualification.
In the Citizens United case the US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people.
Can you explain to me what the difference between a coorpation and a person is, legally speaking, if they have the same rights?
You are fixated on corporations and that is leading you astray. The Court said that groups of people have the same ***speech*** rights as individual persons. That the manner in which this group formed does ***not*** matter, it could be a corporation or a union or some other type of organization. They also said that all corporations are equivalent, that a media/news corporations does ***not*** have any additional rights that other corporations lack.
I'm sure even Scalito would concede their difference (i.e. not having noses or toes), but legally speaking, we ought to treat them the same.
Not what they said, you erroneously paraphrase. Again, groups of people, speech rights, news/media corps no different that other corps. That's it.
... are you a paid coorporate shill or merely delusional (from my perspective, of course)?...
A perspective of erroneous misunderstanding in various ways. No, neither shill nor delusional. I am merely a geek who ***actually read*** the decision when it became public rather than rely on what others told me that it said. Its like reading the source code to see how something really works. I'm also a history geek so I have a tendency to do such things.:-)
If you're going to promote the rights of corporations, you may as well get paid for it.
Actually I care more about the speech rights of unions, watchdogs, advocacy group and other more than corporations. However the Supreme Court has ruled that all of these groups are equivalent with respect to speech rights. Just speech rights, that is all the decision spoke to.
In the Citizens United case the US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
To be fair, it was Mitt Romney who is credited with coining that phrase ("Corporations are people too, my friend"), not 'a spokesperson for the losing side.'
Watch the spin yourself.
Nope. The spokesperson was one of the losing attorneys being interviewed immediately after the case was decided. Mitt Romney made his inarticulate comment later. Romney is also saying something different from the spokesperson, Romney's words are taken out of context. If you read Romney's full quote he is saying that the money of corporations go to people, the employees and the shareholders, and for publicly traded corporations these shareholders are often regular people via their retirement accounts. His larger point being that additional corporate taxes would hurt the people, employees and retirement account holders. Romney merely used the phrase currently buzzing about the media at the time, corps are people, misunderstanding the phrase or trying to alternatively define the phrase for some mysterious reason. Oblivious to how the edited sound bite would make him look.
And in doing so, they acknowledged that bitcoins have value and can be auctioned. This is the government implicitly declaring that bitcoins are real property, rather than worthless tokens in the latest online nerd-game.
The US government already declared that bitcoins are real assets that experience a gain or loss in value. The IRS says that people must record such a gain or loss since the time of coin acquisition until the coin is sold or spent. In other words you have to calculate a gain or loss every time you buy a coffee with bitcoins.
I thought the problem of the 2010 ruling is that "constitutional right" give them unlimited propaganda power, i.e. there's in effect no ceiling on campaign contributions anymore...
I think that citizens united was only about speech and its not only about corporations, its also about labor unions, advocacy groups, etc. Also, with respect to corporations I think the decision said that all corporations are equal under the law, that no corporations have rights that other corporations do not. Saying that media corporations do not have any special status, that all corporations have the same right to speech as media/news corporations.
I think some other court decision was about political spending, but its been a while since I read the citizens united decision. All I recall is groups of people have the same rights as an individual person, it doesn't matter what the nature of the group is, media corporations have no special status - all groups have the same rights to speech.
If citizens united went the other way you still would not have lost your rights,,,,You still have the right and do anything you want, just not use corporate assets for it.
Speaking as a group would have been more difficult is the common argument used. Remember, citizens united is not about corporations, its about all organizations. Labor unions, advocacy groups, etc as well.
Can you spend the company money on whatever you want, like a new house or a boat for yourself? No. That's embezzlement. The money belongs to the company until it is paid out to you. You may be able to make that decision, but the company exists as a separate entity from you for legal and tax purposes. That separate entity doesn't have a religion any more than it has a favorite color. It is not a person.
Closely held corporations have 5 or fewer owners, sometimes family members, sometime friends. As such it is quite plausible for the owners to have a shared religious belief. The Court seems to have ruled that in this narrow circumstance the corporation has the same shared religious belief as its owners.
And many corporations do have a favorite color. Its used for branding and sometimes even trademarked or otherwise protected by IP. UPS Brown, go start a delivery service with similarly colored brown truck in the US, see what happen.
The US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
When was Mitt Romney every against corporate personhood? "Corporations are people, my friend."
I referred to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, how is Romney relevant in any way?
Besides you are taking Romney out of context. If you read the full quote you will see that in a very inelegant manner he was trying to say that corporate income goes to employees and shareholders, and for publicly traded companies many of those shareholder are ordinary people via their retirement account.
You: Nu-uh. Only some spokesperson for the losing side said that to put a political spin on it!!!!!!
The corporations are people quote tossed around in recent years started with the attorney who lost the Citizen United case, he said it while being interviewed after the decision. The media liked the quote. Romney later used it in his own special mystifying manner.
The Hobby Lobby case in the Supreme Court came from a 10th Circuit case in which the court held that Hobby Lobby was a person under the Religious Freedom Act of 1993. So the Court may not have said the exact words "corporations are people," but the Court has consistently held that corporations get every right like a person. So, it's just semantics and you're being pedantic.
Nope. As other posters have pointed out the Dictionary Act says that laws that apply to people also apply to corporations and other organizations, unless the legislature defines a scope saying otherwise. In the Religious Freedom Act congress did not define a scope, so the Dictionary Act default that it applies to organizations too comes into play.
So the truth is that the Hobby Lobby decision does not say corporations are people, it says that the Religious Freedom Act applies to both people and corporations.
The real issue here is how can a religious belief be held by a corporation? Well the Court ruled that for closely held corporations, those with 5 or fewer owners who share a common set of religious beliefs, the corporation can be considered to hold those beliefs as well. Note that such closely help corporations will usually be family businesses.
More importantly note that the Court ruling does not apply to corporations in general.
How does "free speech" translate into "depriving people of medical benefits"?
No one claimed it does. Someone used the false meme from the citizens united decision that corporations are people. I respond to that. Apologies for not being clear.
And NO this is a situation where a Corporation is treated as a person -- or a "group of people".
Not really. This seems to be a situation where a law applies to both corporations and people. As other posters have pointed out the Dictionary Act states that legislation that applies to persons also applies to corporations and other organizations if this legislation does not define its scope, and since the Religious Freedom Restoration Act did not define any such scope it applies to corporations as well as persons.
So its seems to boil down to whether a corporation can hold a religious belief. The hobby lobby decisions seems to say that closely held corporations (5 or fewer owners) where the owners share a common religious belief would count as a corporation holding such belief.
If you incorporate -- for that benefit, you leave your provincial ideas behind.
Apparently not if there are 5 or fewer owners who share the same belief. In most such cases this would basically be a family owned business.
I apologize for not being clear. My response was referring to the Citizens United decision, not the Hobby Lobby decision. Someone brought up the "corporations are people" meme and I was responding to that.
actually, the court did say that corporations count as people with regards to the law being discussed.
That is not accurate either. The Court seems to have said that closely held corporation (5 or fewer people) can hold a shared religious belief, not corporations in general. Other posters have pointed out that the Dictionary Act states that legislation that applies to persons also applies to corporation and other organizations if this legislation does not define its scope, and since the Religious Freedom Restoration Act did not define any such scope it applies to corporations as well as persons.
So its not that corporations are people, its that laws apply to both people and corporations unless the legislature says otherwise.
In the Citizens United case the US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
What the Court actually said is that
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights as individual persons.
(2) It doesn't matter what the nature of the group of people is; corporation, labor union, public interest group, etc -- any organization will do.
But a corporation isn't an organized group of people. It's a legal entity with special privileges granted by the government.
Simply solution: Don't incorporate. Let your personal assets be on the line for a failed business. Then it's a business "owned" by the person or family.
The Court ruled that corporations are one of various organizations where people do not lose their right to free speech. As for personal assets being on the line, they usually are even when incorporated. See this other slashdot post to avoid redundancy. http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Essentially, if your own skin isn't in the game (your personal assets are shielded from your failed company), it isn't "your" business anymore.
Financially shielding yourself from company failure is one thing, and its also a myth to a degree. Losing your constitutionally protected right to speech because you are now part of an organization is something completely different.
Regarding the myth of being shielded from company failure. Go start a corporation. Now try to get a company credit card or other line of credit, the bank will require a personal guarantee on that card or credit line. The closely held corporations (5 or fewer people) that this ruling applies to general have skin in the game.
It takes a long and close working relationship before a bank will offer credit purely secured by company assets.
Trying to portray corporations as just "groups of people" is the gross mis-characterization.
You are mischaracterizing the Supreme Court decision Citizens United. The Court only ruled that groups of people, regardless of the nature of their organization, have the same free speech rights as individuals. In other words they say a person does not lose the constitutionally protected right to free speech by organizing into a group.
Slashdot Mirror
The point you address is one that is often misunderstood. When most people say the federal government should not be involved in activity X they often mean that a more local level of government should be involved. I other words a level that is (1) more knowledgable of the local environment that activity X is taking place in and (2) is more accountable to local voters.
With respect to (1) in particular, many problems have a local component. A good solution in one part of the country may be a poor solution in another. That is why many people are highly skeptical of one-size-fits-all solutions from Washington DC.
For EU readers, consider an EU based organization usurping control over some activity from your national government. That's sort of the situation with the US federal government. The US is too large and too diverse for many on-size-fits-all solutions.
OP is not a troll, and while I do tend to think that the FDA likely has a place under the interstate commerce clause I am willing to take the OPs position also.
The Constitution is a regulative document, not a normative document. We know it is a regulative document because of the 10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Normative: whatever is not prohibited in the document is permitted in practice Regulative: should include those and only those powers, departments and responsibilities that are instituted, commanded, or appointed by command or example should be the purview of the Federal Government, all else is to the States, Municipalities / People
I expect these new mobile devices/apps coming onto the scene will be considered some sort of novelty devices by the FDA not medical devices. Like ancient digital watches.
The info they provide will be considered more trivia or a novelty than medical info. Much like ancient digital watches that could show a pulse, novelty info, not to be used for medical purposes. Or ancient digital watches that could show pressure, novelty info, not to be used for aircraft altitude or depth when scuba diving. I actually used one for scuba diving but it was secondary to my actual depth gauge made for scuba diving. It was surprisingly close. And when driving up to the mountains it will surprisingly close to the altitude markers along the highway, assuming I calibrated. I knew my altitude at home. And when diving, I was at sea level on the beach/boat. As reasonably accurate as it was, it was still a novelty device, or a last resorts back if my actual device failed.
What about non-closely held corporations? What if they're fundamentally opposed to providing such birth control, but aren't really religious?
My understanding is that the Court requires the corp to be closely held, that once you have a certain number of owners a shared belief is far less plausible. Also the belief has to be part of some sort of established and recognized religion, you can't just declare yourself a jedi and say jedi's don't believe in abortion.
So large corps or non-religious beliefs, the decision does not apply.
Do they get a special exception too, or are religious people part of certain kinds of corporations more equal than the rest of us?
Well, religion does have special rights according to the Constitution. Government is thereby required to give religious beliefs some weight. Its a balance, religious business owners vs a gov't mandate on healthcare. They seem to have said that for small corps where a shared religious belief is more plausible things tip towards the corp, for larger corps where a shared religious belief is less plausible things tip towards the government.
I've seen a small suggestion of breaking the employer-provided healthcare trap in recent employment contracts. Some are saying you get this salary plus we will cover the unsubsidized portion of your ACA compliant health plan. Not an ACA fan myself, we need health care reform and the ACA is a pretty flawed attempt, yet such employment contracts are a step in the right direction.
Nah. They said that the rights of corporations are transcendent over the rights of real, living people because some of the owners technically can be classified as real living people, thus effectively denying folks access to certain healthcare.
No, decision does not apply to corporations in general. It applies only the closely held corporation (5 or fewer owners) where the owners have a common religious belief. In such a limited case the corporation can be considered to hold such a belief. This being relevant since the Religious Freedom Act was written in a manner that it applied to both people and corporations. Not that corps are people, rather that this particular law applies to people and corps, like a law saying don't toss toxic stuff in the river.
Plus, no one is denied certain healthcare. The company can not prevent an employee from having a procedure, they can only decline to pay for it.
Not true, the corporation can ask the bank for a line of credit secured against receivables (i.e. a big-ass order you just got from Amazon) which makes you and your partners personal credit card history irrelevant.
No. You cite one scenario where an asset is being used as collateral. The fact remains that it is common for the owners of small corporations to take on some personal liability for corporate debt. It happen all the time. Contrary to what the GP said many corporate owners do in fact have skin in the game.
Regarding the myth of being shielded from company failure. Go start a corporation. Now try to get a company credit card or other line of credit, the bank will require a personal guarantee on that card or credit line.
You know you are wrong when you have to use misdirection to support your position. Sure the bank has the option to require that you co-sign on any loan made to your corporation. But the whole reason they require you to co-sign is because the corporate structure would shield you if they did not. Your own citation proves you wrong.
Nope. You are wrong. The false claim that I responded to said that corporate owners have no skin in the game. I offered an example where corporate owners in fact have skin in the game. In particular the small closely held corporations that have 5 or fewer owners that this decision is limited to. They are commonly personally on the hook for something corporate.
eric cantor, and cantor lost because he didn't spend enough time at home. the GOP is going to miss him and his constituents did themselves a disservice.
By how much money did Cantor spend? That is the key point in this discussion.
tell me a job that will allow me to keep the compan paid portion of the HC plan to opt out and then you can say that. Ive never seen it
That is something unrelated to my comment. My comment simply points out that despite healthcare being earned the type of healthcare available was always under company control. That the company in fact had power over an employee with respect to healthcare.
There is no direct 1:1 person -> corporate pass through. The whole POINT of a corporation is to prevent that.
You are mistaken. The barrier between person and corporation is leaky, more so for smaller corporations than larger, S-Corp rather than C-Corp. It has always provided limited protection with conditions. One example of this leaky natures is when the owners of a corporation have to become personally liable for corporate debt if they want a credit card or line of credit. Note that this decision does not apply to all corporations. It only applies to corporations with 5 or fewer owners who have a shared religious belief. In such limited circumstances the Court has ruled that a corporation can posses the religious beliefs of its handful of owners.
> (1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights as individual persons.
Groups of people don't have the same moral awareness or legal responsibility as individuals do.
First, apologies for the typo, I fixed it above, "are" should have been "as".
.... For example a law that says people can't toss toxic crap into the river would apply to people and corporations.
Actually the Dictionary Act say groups -- corps, partnerships, unions, etc -- do have the same legal responsibilities as people. It says that unless a law defines its scope otherwise the law applies to people and corps and unions
My understanding is that the Religious Freedom Act (or whatever it was called) contained no such scope definition so it applies to corporations as well as people. Now the question is how does a corp have a religious belief. It seems the Court said that if it is closely held (5 or fewer owners) and these owners share a religious belief then their corporation can be considered to have that religious belief. This does not apply to corporations in general, just 5 or fewer owners with a common religious belief. Hobby Lobby was such a family owned business so they are the rare corp that meets these qualification.
In the Citizens United case the US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people.
Can you explain to me what the difference between a coorpation and a person is, legally speaking, if they have the same rights?
You are fixated on corporations and that is leading you astray. The Court said that groups of people have the same ***speech*** rights as individual persons. That the manner in which this group formed does ***not*** matter, it could be a corporation or a union or some other type of organization. They also said that all corporations are equivalent, that a media/news corporations does ***not*** have any additional rights that other corporations lack.
I'm sure even Scalito would concede their difference (i.e. not having noses or toes), but legally speaking, we ought to treat them the same.
Not what they said, you erroneously paraphrase. Again, groups of people, speech rights, news/media corps no different that other corps. That's it.
... are you a paid coorporate shill or merely delusional (from my perspective, of course)? ...
A perspective of erroneous misunderstanding in various ways. No, neither shill nor delusional. I am merely a geek who ***actually read*** the decision when it became public rather than rely on what others told me that it said. Its like reading the source code to see how something really works. I'm also a history geek so I have a tendency to do such things. :-)
If you're going to promote the rights of corporations, you may as well get paid for it.
Actually I care more about the speech rights of unions, watchdogs, advocacy group and other more than corporations. However the Supreme Court has ruled that all of these groups are equivalent with respect to speech rights. Just speech rights, that is all the decision spoke to.
"Citizens_United" Corporations are people too.
In the Citizens United case the US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
To be fair, it was Mitt Romney who is credited with coining that phrase ("Corporations are people too, my friend"), not 'a spokesperson for the losing side.'
Watch the spin yourself.
Nope. The spokesperson was one of the losing attorneys being interviewed immediately after the case was decided. Mitt Romney made his inarticulate comment later. Romney is also saying something different from the spokesperson, Romney's words are taken out of context. If you read Romney's full quote he is saying that the money of corporations go to people, the employees and the shareholders, and for publicly traded corporations these shareholders are often regular people via their retirement accounts. His larger point being that additional corporate taxes would hurt the people, employees and retirement account holders. Romney merely used the phrase currently buzzing about the media at the time, corps are people, misunderstanding the phrase or trying to alternatively define the phrase for some mysterious reason. Oblivious to how the edited sound bite would make him look.
are good friends of governer Jerry Brown?
Likely the former owners were too, and bitcoin enthusiasm had nothing to do with it. :-)
And in doing so, they acknowledged that bitcoins have value and can be auctioned. This is the government implicitly declaring that bitcoins are real property, rather than worthless tokens in the latest online nerd-game.
The US government already declared that bitcoins are real assets that experience a gain or loss in value. The IRS says that people must record such a gain or loss since the time of coin acquisition until the coin is sold or spent. In other words you have to calculate a gain or loss every time you buy a coffee with bitcoins.
I thought the problem of the 2010 ruling is that "constitutional right" give them unlimited propaganda power, i.e. there's in effect no ceiling on campaign contributions anymore ...
I think that citizens united was only about speech and its not only about corporations, its also about labor unions, advocacy groups, etc. Also, with respect to corporations I think the decision said that all corporations are equal under the law, that no corporations have rights that other corporations do not. Saying that media corporations do not have any special status, that all corporations have the same right to speech as media/news corporations.
I think some other court decision was about political spending, but its been a while since I read the citizens united decision. All I recall is groups of people have the same rights as an individual person, it doesn't matter what the nature of the group is, media corporations have no special status - all groups have the same rights to speech.
If citizens united went the other way you still would not have lost your rights,,,,You still have the right and do anything you want, just not use corporate assets for it.
Speaking as a group would have been more difficult is the common argument used. Remember, citizens united is not about corporations, its about all organizations. Labor unions, advocacy groups, etc as well.
Can you spend the company money on whatever you want, like a new house or a boat for yourself? No. That's embezzlement. The money belongs to the company until it is paid out to you. You may be able to make that decision, but the company exists as a separate entity from you for legal and tax purposes. That separate entity doesn't have a religion any more than it has a favorite color. It is not a person.
Closely held corporations have 5 or fewer owners, sometimes family members, sometime friends. As such it is quite plausible for the owners to have a shared religious belief. The Court seems to have ruled that in this narrow circumstance the corporation has the same shared religious belief as its owners.
And many corporations do have a favorite color. Its used for branding and sometimes even trademarked or otherwise protected by IP. UPS Brown, go start a delivery service with similarly colored brown truck in the US, see what happen.
Saying they ARE people is a power grab ...
The US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
When was Mitt Romney every against corporate personhood? "Corporations are people, my friend."
I referred to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, how is Romney relevant in any way?
Besides you are taking Romney out of context. If you read the full quote you will see that in a very inelegant manner he was trying to say that corporate income goes to employees and shareholders, and for publicly traded companies many of those shareholder are ordinary people via their retirement account.
You: Nu-uh. Only some spokesperson for the losing side said that to put a political spin on it!!!!!!
The corporations are people quote tossed around in recent years started with the attorney who lost the Citizen United case, he said it while being interviewed after the decision. The media liked the quote. Romney later used it in his own special mystifying manner.
The Hobby Lobby case in the Supreme Court came from a 10th Circuit case in which the court held that Hobby Lobby was a person under the Religious Freedom Act of 1993. So the Court may not have said the exact words "corporations are people," but the Court has consistently held that corporations get every right like a person. So, it's just semantics and you're being pedantic.
Nope. As other posters have pointed out the Dictionary Act says that laws that apply to people also apply to corporations and other organizations, unless the legislature defines a scope saying otherwise. In the Religious Freedom Act congress did not define a scope, so the Dictionary Act default that it applies to organizations too comes into play.
So the truth is that the Hobby Lobby decision does not say corporations are people, it says that the Religious Freedom Act applies to both people and corporations.
The real issue here is how can a religious belief be held by a corporation? Well the Court ruled that for closely held corporations, those with 5 or fewer owners who share a common set of religious beliefs, the corporation can be considered to hold those beliefs as well. Note that such closely help corporations will usually be family businesses.
More importantly note that the Court ruling does not apply to corporations in general.
How does "free speech" translate into "depriving people of medical benefits"?
No one claimed it does. Someone used the false meme from the citizens united decision that corporations are people. I respond to that. Apologies for not being clear.
And NO this is a situation where a Corporation is treated as a person -- or a "group of people".
Not really. This seems to be a situation where a law applies to both corporations and people. As other posters have pointed out the Dictionary Act states that legislation that applies to persons also applies to corporations and other organizations if this legislation does not define its scope, and since the Religious Freedom Restoration Act did not define any such scope it applies to corporations as well as persons.
So its seems to boil down to whether a corporation can hold a religious belief. The hobby lobby decisions seems to say that closely held corporations (5 or fewer owners) where the owners share a common religious belief would count as a corporation holding such belief.
If you incorporate -- for that benefit, you leave your provincial ideas behind.
Apparently not if there are 5 or fewer owners who share the same belief. In most such cases this would basically be a family owned business.
actually, the court did say that corporations count as people with regards to the law being discussed.
That is not accurate either. The Court seems to have said that closely held corporation (5 or fewer people) can hold a shared religious belief, not corporations in general. Other posters have pointed out that the Dictionary Act states that legislation that applies to persons also applies to corporation and other organizations if this legislation does not define its scope, and since the Religious Freedom Restoration Act did not define any such scope it applies to corporations as well as persons.
So its not that corporations are people, its that laws apply to both people and corporations unless the legislature says otherwise.
"Citizens_United" Corporations are people too.
In the Citizens United case the US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
What the Court actually said is that
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights as individual persons.
(2) It doesn't matter what the nature of the group of people is; corporation, labor union, public interest group, etc -- any organization will do.
But a corporation isn't an organized group of people. It's a legal entity with special privileges granted by the government.
Simply solution: Don't incorporate. Let your personal assets be on the line for a failed business. Then it's a business "owned" by the person or family.
The Court ruled that corporations are one of various organizations where people do not lose their right to free speech. As for personal assets being on the line, they usually are even when incorporated. See this other slashdot post to avoid redundancy. http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Essentially, if your own skin isn't in the game (your personal assets are shielded from your failed company), it isn't "your" business anymore.
Financially shielding yourself from company failure is one thing, and its also a myth to a degree. Losing your constitutionally protected right to speech because you are now part of an organization is something completely different.
Regarding the myth of being shielded from company failure. Go start a corporation. Now try to get a company credit card or other line of credit, the bank will require a personal guarantee on that card or credit line. The closely held corporations (5 or fewer people) that this ruling applies to general have skin in the game.
It takes a long and close working relationship before a bank will offer credit purely secured by company assets.
Trying to portray corporations as just "groups of people" is the gross mis-characterization.
You are mischaracterizing the Supreme Court decision Citizens United. The Court only ruled that groups of people, regardless of the nature of their organization, have the same free speech rights as individuals. In other words they say a person does not lose the constitutionally protected right to free speech by organizing into a group.