On Citizens United

The First Amendment reads, in pertinent part, "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech."

The Free Speech Clause contains no mention of protecting the speech of "People" or "Individuals," etc., which could theoretically justify the denial of freedom of speech rights to corporations. Rather, the emphasis is on the protection of Speech.

No matter how much Justice Stevens and the other dissenters may believe that the Framers disliked corporations, one cannot substitute the personal likes/dislikes of the Framers for the clear text of the Constitution, as Justice Scalia discusses in his typically eloquent concurrence :-)

If we are to be a free society, we must respect the rights of all airing of opinions, no matter how much we disagree with the opinion, or dislike the person or entity espousing it.

LIBERTAD!

Geez - why am I not horrified like muirbot? Am I a conservative psychopath or something? Really, i'm dumbfounded here. The sun came up, the birds were singing, everything was fine.

This decision and the arguments supporting it are more horrifying to me than the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004. In fact because of his Supreme Court nominees after that election they are intricately related.
The bizarreness of supposed haters of rent-seeking supporting this decision to massively increase rent seeking is beyond all comprehension.
You don't get to support this decision and at the same time complain about things like the TARP bailout. You can of course.... but not with any claim of logical consistency.


According to Ribstein,

The Court's reasoning is best encapsulated by this quote (citations omitted):

The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach. The Government has "muffle[d] the voices that best represent the most significant segments of the economy." . . . And "the electorate [has been] deprived of information, knowledge and opinion vital to its function."


The most significant representatives of the economy are apparently not citizens, consumers or people but multinational corporations. WOW!!!! Our Supreme Court now makes Supreme Kool Aid.

As if corporate desires have been under-represented in elections and policy. We just saw what happened with health care reform.... they killed it with money not logic for the profit making patient killing status quo.

"The electorate has been deprived of information..."???? What the heck? The electorate has been indoctrinated by the corporate message coming through corporate owned media, Right Wing "Think Tanks" and News cycles dominated by mis-information campaigns as seen on Fox News. This is where the illogical idea that in free markets you have no obligation to purchase a businesses product falls to pieces. Now you will have an obligation to live by the rules they write with their money for the politicians they hand pick for elections. Of course the argument goes that consumers can rally to watch to see who is funding who and make exchanges and organize on the internet..... as if all that information won't eventually be filtered and suppressed as it now is in Communist China.

History and the Orwellian warning are a lesson to be learned that the first step to dominance and totalitarianism is to control the message. We've taken that step long ago. For that could be the only explanation for supposedly educated intellectuals to write and support such mind-be-numbed hypnotic essays in support of the masters who have already gained control of their thought.

I truly fear for my country and the world if this isn't challenged. It's only a matter of time until this actually leads to censorship of individual speech as I write here and now freely to the world on this open internet. This internet may succumb to corporate personhood and its desires to control the message.



"Unless you become more watchful in your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations."
--President Andrew Jackson

"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"Behind the visible government there is an invisible government upon the throne that owes the people no loyalty and recognizes no responsibility. To destroy this invisible government, to undo the ungodly union between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the task of a statesman."
-Teddy Roosevelt

I regret missing this discussion. Muirgeo, you're right on the money. Here's another good quote to keep in your back pocket:

"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of the money corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the law of our country."

Thomas Jefferson (1816)

muirgeo -- Much of what you wrote above just isn't true. Your tirade also mentions Fox News so I'll have to assume from your words and tone that you think corporations speak with a uniformly conservative voice. The last 18 years have seen an explosion of money being spent on lobbying and political campaigns and the majority of it was from liberal groups, special interests, unions, and for avowedly liberal positions. Political campaign and interest spending in major media outlets has been mostly from the left, not the right, in the US. Notably George Soros and others have spent huge amounts of money in special purpose entities to influence legislation and elections. Look at Advertising Age, public election disclosures, and the NY Times coverage of campaign spending and you'll see that liberal cause spending is larger than conservative.

Your paranoia about censorship also skips over the history of new media, the Internet, and the growth of cable television. You refuse to see the court decision for what it is. There is less censorship in Western countries today, not more. There is more corporate regulation than ever before. There are more environmental and commercial regulations in force today than at any point in history.

When I say what you write isn't true it really isn't about your obviously deeply held beliefs. It's about what you write-- you are factually wrong and you argue without real information. Your paranoia about Orwellian society doesn't stand up to what is happening today in the media, in politics, or in advertising and marketing.

"News cycles dominated by mis-information campaigns" assumes an omnipotent news media controlling consumerism and political choice. This is just idiotic. How do you explain the election of Obama and Democratic majorities in both houses?

muirgeo - I ask this in all sincerity:

IF we are strict in our interpretations that corporations are NOT individuals and are not entitled to First Amendment protections, then does the minority opinion in Citizens United v FEC necessitate a ban on political parties as we know them?

Would this prohibit the DNC and the RNC from spending on issue advertising? Our modern political parties are indeed "corporations" by every modern (and 18th century) legal definition.

Yes, I know what the intent of the dissenting opinion is. But if you can't draw a line for a legal interpretation, you merely invite more partisan interpretation and chaos down the road.

How about labor unions, home owners associations, ACLU, or any organization with more than 1 person involved, do they have collective freedom of speech?

Corporation might not be a person, how about investors, some of them with large enough stake in some of these corporations? Are they allowed to speak their mind.

Don't waste time with muir. His mind is warped. His mind set like concrete in this pattern - Democrats: incarnation of good. everybody else are republicans, they are born of the devil. Which is why he has innuendos about Fox News and never about MSNBC.

He is a silly dude. He is here to just heckle people with his idiocy.

The issue deserves deeper thought than it is getting.

I know that putting the Genie back in the bottle is in all probability unlikely to ever happen; but it is obvious that the USA has wandered far afield from the "equal representation" and "all politics is local" concepts of our founding fathers and what they thought would make America work best for all the people.

Muirduck is as stupid as they come; but, he is alert enough to know that something is wrong. His analysis of what is wrong and his solutions are as well, but his conclusion that something is wrong is one I think you and I also determined long long ago.

What do we do? Knee jerk to fossilized conventional wisdom, enculturation, or try to analyze our present situation, find the root causes of the problems, and start talking about how we get politics back to the "local" level and regain our "equal representation"?

You've shown yourself to be a bright guy, so in all sincerity give it a moment of thought and see if you really think continuing down this same old road is really the best idea we can come up with?

We all agree there are problems in the system.

But after more than 200 years of seeing people game that system, let's see if we can find a more elegant way to untangle things.

We're chasing warts on warts on warts on the orange. In the example I link to, there's little potential for harm. In our present political case, each "wart" represents someone's exertion of undue influence to lubricate further such activity.

I apologize for the length of the read, but it's a good one. (in my humble opinion.)

Interesting read but in lawyer language, not responsive to my question.

I say nonresponsive because I interpreted your reply and the link to mean basically you are taking the fatalistic view of the political scene.

Is this correct?

For myself, I don't do fatalism. No matter what, nothing starts without a start.

Oh, I'm not being fatalistic at all.

The fatalists would have given up looking at the Heavens, instead of dreaming about more elegant solutions.

To put it more succinctly, asking the courts to rule about whether corporations are people, THEN whether certain kinds of corporations ought to be included, THEN whether those types are popular or in vogue, THEN whether there are unintended consequences to clean up...

...is putting patches on patches on patches. It works okay for a while, then you forget how long it's been since you've touched the original fabric, or what it even looks like.

History is best understood as a study of unintended consequences, because it makes one more cautious about worshiping Progress for Progress' sake.

Here's an example of a proposed solution that gets at the root. Instead of arguing about who can and can't have Political Speech because it makes some "too powerful," then let's disperse the power.

Okay, we seem to be drawing closer. Did you not see where I specified local politics should be local?

The point I am making is that putting patch on patch on patch is the kneejerk conventional wisdom method of doing things.

I suggest that if we pull patch after patch after patch off, at the bottom we will find perfectly good material, patches were only applied (used) to cover up the fact that the perfect material did not allow for the leeway a corrupt person needed.

Since I do not blog, let me suggest that at the bottom of the patches is the perfect material where Ike, when running for office, runs only against the money generated within the district he is seeking to represent. Outside money is the patch, pull it off and do not allow it to be reapplied.

I can expound farther but I'll wait and see if we get closer yet.

I respectfully disagree with you guys. Contemplating how best to "control" the government shows a lack of understanding of its true nature. You need to realize that ANY government is a "genie out of the bottle," and it exists to control you. And there is nothing you can do to change it. That's its nature. As long as government exists we will witness one faction fighting with another over who gets to call the shots. Little tweaks here and there will resolve nothing. The only solution is to dissolve government in every form.

Now you know Dan, I am humbled. I never thought of that and I am sure Ike hasn't either.

A superficial reading might have lead you to think we are talking about little tweaks, but I assure you, go back read what I wrote and it should be clear to you that tweaking isn't what I am about. Ike can speak for himself.

Aw, vidyohs, you know I love you. Don't feel humbled. Superficial reading is my specialty. But that doesn't change my opinion that any amount of tweaking will produce the results you want. I appreciate your efforts, though.

You must realize we're not anarchists here.

That's fine. I'm anarchist enough for both of us!

Ike,

I really appreciate the sincerity. Obviously some very smart people can have very different views of the world. I really am mostly interested in spirited debate on these great issues.

Anyway you bring up a very good point of which I think I'd agree. I have to go see some newborn babies this morning and will think about this and reply in full soon. But shortly I'd argue that indeed the problems we are seeing represent some more fundamental flaws in how our system works. I think many of the founders feared political parties. But I'd argue a well set up and representative system would likely result in a more "socialist" society. I'd argue that around the world the most successful societies have multiple parties and more equal democracy and they thus do quite well. People want that IMO not because they want to be dependent on government but because they see government by the people as a great facilitator of our undeniable interdependency.

The giant steaming pile of commentary that surrounds this issue makes me wonder what people who oppose the decision think political speech is today. The news outlets talk about political advertising when the case really stemmed from a movie made about a politician. A lot of what Pres. Obama said in his radio address was just ridiculous overstatement about "lobbying and special interests."

But what do they, and you, think 'political speech' is these days? What is this blog? Russ does a podcast. Is that broadcasting? What is a movie you make on your laptop and post to YouTube or do with iMovie and run on cable outlets (you'd be surprised how much time you can buy for under $5k).

The commentary seems to completely lose sight of the media landscape today. It's really not as much about monolithic, dark, secret corporate interests as people think-- it's about the right of any group, co-op, organization, company or committee to speak out about politics and policy.

The hyperbole about corporate interests has an assumption attached to it-- like one of those old movie montage scenes showing newspaper presses and broadcasters at big fat microphones-- that corporations can buy the political process by advertising on three tv channels and in a dozen major newspapers. The fear that millions of dollars from rich evil corporations will overwhelm political communication presumes a media lanscape that died out with the fedora and cars with fins.