Explain, please.

Why would politicians want *serious* rules against giving them money?

For one thing that doesn't answer the question I posed in the post you quoted.

And for another, because they want to prohibit corporations from giving money to run ads against said politicians?

Because I don't know. Could they technically? Maybe. Will they? 0% chance and falling.

But they don't???

They don't?

Hillary: The Movie's ads??

By and large, of course not. They want that money flowing to them. Of course specifics candidates are going to speak out when they are the target. That's a good article though, although this stood out:

You have mixed feelings, really?

What possible good to you see coming of this? This is some seriously bad news for all Americans imho.

This isn't true. These rulings overturned the limitations on corporate spending for federal and state politicians which have been upheld several times (2003,1990). Turning back the "McCain" ruling was one part of this, yes, but this is essentially an open floodgate now.

Is there something in particular I'm missing?

It could diversify the political climate in the United States by giving corporations the ability to sponsor smaller parties or candidates thus giving them the opportunity to get their voice heard. One massive problem right now for democracy in the US is the fact that so few people have the rescources to get heard.

I predict the big winner in this is the republican party and its candidates along with smaller parties and candidates who now have the opportunity to get their voice heard if they get backed by one single big investor. The loser is probably the Democratic party for obvious reasons.

This might belong in the drunk thread.

lol

Republican, Democrat, Hippopotamus, whatever, this is no bueno for the American people. I guess now we aren't trying to hide that we are a corporate fascist country anymore.

lolwtf @ 'fascist'

Our domestic, and more importantly our geopolitical strategy is dictated by corporate interest, and not the interest of the people.

I personally call this fascism. Sorry if you don't agree.

I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords...

Even if your assertion were true this would not meet the definition of fascism (even if you personally disagree).

luckily it's all crystal clear what fascism is

This law simply upheld the constitutionality of the first amendment(free speech). Would you rather have books and films with political content be banned from advertising because they can be interpreted as political ads advocating the defeat or election of a candidate? Cause that's what this is all about. This decision was made to avoid censorship.

In this case it was a documentary that featured a bunch of right wing political commentators criticizing Hillary Clinton that was banned/restricted from advertising by the FEC during the primaries season so the creator of the movie sued the FEC and here we are.

PS. Actually the lawyer of the FEC was asked in court something along the lines of(these are not actual quotes) "If this movie was a book would the government ban/restrict the advertising of the book if it advocated a person for candidacy within the election timeframe?" The FEC lawyer apparently said "Yes" and the Supreme court went "OMGWTFBBQ CENSORSHIP" and that's what brought on this decision.

I fully admit that I'm pretty hungover and everything's a wee bit blurry right now. You are two very smart guys.

So I'm clear, you guys are making specific claims about what we think the law ought to be, but we're not making an empirical claim about what American standing law is, right? Because I'm almost positive that corporations do have really rights, specifically First Amendment rights, despite what we might want, and that SCOTUS affirmed that in Citizens United. Even the dissenters. The dissenters argued that corporations do have rights, specifically the government must respect the First Amendment rights of corporations -- just that there's a compelling state interest to limit it, sometimes.

Just want to make sure we're all on the same page here.

Yeah, that's the gist of it. By definition, a corporation is legally chartered for the public good. So any rights such an entity possesses must be in line with that goal of providing public good. Every person working for or owning stock in the corporation of course has their full rights. The corporation itself is not those people, however, and is legally distinct from their actions as individuals. That's the whole idea of corporations -- establishing such a legally distinct entity.

When you read that definition, it's impossible to conclude Corporation = Group of People, as has been argued ITT. The very definition can be summed up as: "This thing being chartered is not the same as the group of people making up its members."

Right. I think you and I are on the same page, but I think vhawk's "here's your real argument, corporations have no rights" is a wrong restatement of what I (and you?) think, and "they signed some away" is much closer but not perfect. It's just that corporations have a subset of rights afforded under the law to natural persons but not all.

Because I'm granting:

- As a matter of standing American law, corporations have rights and that's because they have a degree of 'personhood'. That was true before Citizens United, none of the 9 justices disputed that.
- As a matter of standing American law, the First Amendment "limit" on what governments can prohibit...has limits. That is, the government can rightly prohibit some speech and not violate the Constitution. That's true for individuals, so it's really not enough to ask us to grant the premise that corporation = a person, ergo the conclusions is the government can't prohibit their speech. because there's an implied premise that standing law is such that the government can't prohibit the speech of a person, which isn't true.
- In the same way I think we've dismissed the inanity of "money isn't speech", "corporations are people" is a useless generality. It's true that American courts have extended certain constitutional protections to corporations under the justification that they're people. But it's not enough to say coportations = people, the end. Corporations don't have the right to vote in elections. Corporations can't run for office. We should be able to dismiss out of the hand the nonsense that the law treats them exactly the same. As ctyri has belabored, they're different and when you reflect on the fact Pepsi Co. can't capture the GOP nomination in 2012, that should be generally uncontroversial.
- The crux of arguing this case and determining the constitutionality of the law is knowing the precedents for what constitutes a compelling state interest, for knowing the actual law in question, knowing how the law is targeted to limit the speech in question and whether or not it's overly broad such that it's an undue burden that no longer meets a compelling state interest, etc.

So to clear this up and get off this tangent about corporate personhood, except when it's appropriate:

The reason why we care about the "personhood" of a corporation is when we're determining the extent to which the law treats individuals and corporations disparately, and then adjudicating the constitutionality of that based on the criteria I laid out above. That criteria = knowing the precedents for what constitutes a compelling state interest, for knowing the actual law in question, knowing how the law is targeted to limit the speech in question and whether or not it's overly broad such that it's an undue burden that no longer meets a compelling state interest, etc.

Overturn all fraud laws, amirite?

No. All fundamental rights only apply to the extent that they don't violate the rights of others.

Lets see this overturn will mean

Kiss Universal health care goodbye.
Climate change who cares.
Kiss the chance of a third party goodbye
Guy with the biggest war chest wins elections
Kiss banking regulations goodbye

So sad Haiti showed us how good the USA can be.
The rest shows us how screwed up the USA is

I will always love the American people but never has this country been so screwed up by greed

You were quoting the section on economics of fascism.

In the political section there is disccusion about overbroad and narrow definitions. However this defintion seems appropriate if we are to start with 1930s Italy, Japan, Germany as core examples of what the political dimensions of fascism are.

Paxton wrote that fascism is:

a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.[30]

damn, i had the over/under on number of posts before a debate over what constitutes fascism at 175

This new precedent is rooted in the idea that the free speech rights of corporations are important than the fears that spending leads to political corruption.

What this means is that corporations can spend unlimited money under "independent expenditures" while individuals remain limited to a fixed amount under "donations".


It's a huge ruling and I'm curious to see how congress reacts based on what Obama (the crown prince of campaign expenditures) has said on the ruling.


This basically opens the flood gates on corprate propaganda. Not that it was restricted much prior to this ruling. The media conglomerates have had free reign for a long time.