Comments on: Understanding the Citizens United Decision (UPDATE)

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:37:03 +0000

I think the real underlying problem is the whole corporations=personhood problem.

Glenn Greenwall might say, “I tend to take a more absolutist view of the First Amendment than many people, but laws which prohibit organized groups of people — which is what corporations are — from expressing political views goes right to the heart of free speech guarantees no matter how the First Amendment is understood.”

Corporations may be organized groups of people, but they are organizations that shield the actual people in these organization from a lot of the responsibilities that people are normally held to. The whole point of Corporations and LLCs (like the name implies, limited liability company) are to shield the members of the group from being considered the same as any old guy on the street. So to say they have the rights that people because they are made up of people isn’t right because these groups of people do not have the same responsibility for their actions as any old guy on the street.

This might be a crazy analogy but my worry with this ruling is sort of like the potential of what would happen to basketball if you just allowed everyone to carry the ball and not have to worry about dribbling. Currently teams can score over a 100 points a night already, but what if they didn’t have to worry about losing the ball. (I guess it would become just a boring non contact version of rugby right?) This might sound silly, but I guess what I’m trying to say that we can say the current system is already at it’s peak of corporate influence or maybe we haven’t seen nothing yet … I imagine it’s going to be somewhere in the middle … It will just grease the wheels a little, but that’s all.

By: America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws

America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:56:45 +0000

[...] is not speech, it’s property,” though I repeated it several times. I agree with Bryan, in that I can’t really imagine that a pesky little thing like campaign finance law was [...]

By: the mza

the mza — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:47:00 +0000

10.6% unemployment in NYC and growing. 10% around the USA.

Jobs can be the control force we need to limit the influence of corporations. Pass resolutions that support new industry and innovations, and use watch them blossom and make the lobbies for deeppocketed organizations clutching to the past obsolete.

It’s not easy, but it will change. Ideas & organizations are always the most charged and fight the hardest when they know they are about to die.

(caveat: assumption of government remaining the same, and no social revolution — which could also be a good thing, I want my cake)

By: coachie

coachie — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:23:57 +0000

i think i read that somewhere around $400 million was spent on lobbying last year on health care reform. there was going to be a tax included, somewhere around 5%, on cosmetic surgery. that industry, being deep-pocketed, killed that proposal. what survived is a tax on tanning salons, bro. they don’t have a particularly strong lobby. it’s sad.