WTF, you are insane, "rape the [C]onstitution"?

Do you know what a corporation is? It is a financial instrument, a pact between society and investors to encourage investing while keeping a person's house and finances shielded from being put at risk by creating products.

It has nothing to do with anything in the Constitution. It REALLY has nothing to do with electing politicians. The only thing that has happened in the last 30 years is that corporations now control elections and put more money into campaigns than individuals. Corporations have realized they can make more profit by buying politicians which reward them with favorable laws and regulations and kickbacks nad contracts at the expense of citizens who suffer from the corporate greed.

Look at the BP oil spill or Enron or corn subsidy or sugar tariffs or bank bailouts or GM bailouts or mortgage crisis. In general, corporations best interest goes directly against a health society and the health and prosperity of citizens.

This isn't an issue of speech, it's an issue of campaign finance. Corporations don't have vocal cords and corporatists don't have any special limitations on what they can say in public. The fact that anyone even takes the money = speech argument seriously is evidence of how beaten and broken our political culture has become.

@joedirt

I think both I and Mr. Greenwald understand what a corporation is. Let me describe it in another way from you, even though I don't think your description is wrong. Is it a free collection of citizens arranged for a specific end. For instance, the ACLU is a corporation. Are we going to start staying that only certain groups of freely gathered citizens are allowed protection under the law? Are we going to start writing different sections of laws for different factions of people? I can honestly say this is the WORST idea we could have to amend the constitution in this way. This is the same kind of logic that denies voting rights to minorities, and to women, or to Catholics. Specifically limiting certain groups participation is censorship of the worst kind, it is also forbidden by the constitution, see Article I, Section 9.

And @dystopianfuturetoday, if money isn't speech, then isn't there no problem? I mean, no "group" has vocal cords persay, but factions are things we all are a part of. How is a political faction, or a family faction, or a business faction, or a religion faction any different? The ALCU isn't that much different than IBM computers, or the Church of Christ in the way the carry out their actions. They are groups of freely gathered people with common aim to achieve certain goals, and as such, have a right to freely petition the government in the affairs that concern them collectively. I don't see how collective spending is any more of less evil that individual spending. If you aren't free to petition the government as a certain faction because some other faction has successfully lobbied your legal pacification, then far have we fallen from what was supposed to be the thrust of the 10th federalist paper.

Not to say that I don't support some form of campaign finance reform of sorts, but I do not agree with the legal notion of denying people the ability to do with what they own they like; spare it harm someone else, because some other group doesn't like you...it is horrible and reeks of the worst kind of oppression.

Believe me Mr Dirt, I find all those subsidy and bail outs abominable, just as I found those terrorists on 911. But I will not permit anyone to pass a new sort of patriot act against the rich that really is attacking us all in the end. I say this not as a rich man, but one whom exists in poverty.

(crap, misclick on the upvote, sorry dirt )

Um, you do realize the Patriot Act reduced restrictions on the use of power right @GeeSussFreeK ? A patriot act on the rich would allow them greater flexibility in how they continue to drain the economy and environment of whatever remains.

Also, using the word "attack" when talking about the rich is simple rhetoric. Rational policy that redistributes some of the wealth (as one example) is not 'attacking' - it is something that would benefit everyone.

What sort of campaign finance reform would you support btw? Do you like Lawrence Lessig (and others) idea of publicly financed elections via a constitutional convention?

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/4/as_states_take_on_citizens_united

It is the job of the government to regulate things that are of great harm to it's citizens. I know this seems like a wet dream in present day America. But. If the government were to take this corrupting, soul-crushing influence out of our politics and bring us back to a state of 'by, of and for the people', they'd be guilty of nothing more than just doing their fucking jobs.

(PRIMAL SCREAM)

ahhhh... that feels better.

yes, the system is broken and needs fixing, but...

citizens united was the logical outcome of michael moore's (inc) release of the anti-bush film "farenheit 9/11" in an election year, and its rushed dvd and tv releases within 30 days of the 2004 election

how could the fec state that it wasn't a form of corporate political advertising? how could they then turn around in 2008 and block the release of citizens united's film "hillary: the movie" prior to the election?

this scotus decision leaves me worried... but i'm also flabbergasted that "the left" didn't rail against moore's blatant "corporate advertising" in an election year, yet now their feathers are all ruffled

@Diogenes
no dude. citizens united had nothing to do with a movie. It was a supreme court decision built upon a precedent of corporate person-hood.

it is also about bribery.
Want favorable legislation passed? Donate big money to a congressman. If he isn't willing to play along, you threaten to donate to his next opponent. That's undue influence. That's undue power. and that is against the public interest.

@GeeSussFreak
Let's be clear: "free speech" and the right to voice one's opinion is a far different thing than being able to steer the course of a supposed "free" election. There are limits on speech. Just like yelling fire in a movie theater is against the public interest for obvious reasons, so is controlling elections.

Saying that corporations are not people is not the same thing as removing their right to free speech. It is instead resolving a legal ambiguity that is being exploited to exponentially increase the influence of concentrated capital.

and
If money is speech
It is illegal to give a congressman a Porsche, which I buy with money. That's bribery.
But it is legal to just give him a whole bunch of money. That's free speech.

money=free speech is a legal reach built on an ambiguity.

Also, you might notice that corporations only want certain rights that are normally only reserved to flesh and blood people, and wish to continue avoiding certain other aspects to being a person, like personal criminal liability.

and finally! if a corporation wishes to be a person, then by that logic the dual entity should also be subject to an Individual Person's Income Tax payment along with their corporate filing.

@criticalthud
let's be really clear... i agree with your position on corporate personhood
but... we can use "citizens united" to abbreviate the scotus decision: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission... and how that decision has overturned several previous legal precedents and aspects of bcra -- and we can also use "citizens united" to refer directly to the non-profit group of the same name...

i'm just pointing out the latter (the npo) filed suit against the fec because they felt that a media corporation (moore, et al) was violating bcra - the fec dismissed their complaint -- then the group made a similar 'documentary' about hillary clinton and promoted it with the same style and timing of moore's anti-bush film - a lower court barred it, stating that it violated the bcra -- this background led us to the troubling scotus decision

what i was pointing out was that bcra, etc, was already allowing corporate political advocacy through the media, i.e. movie producers, book publishers, newspaper conglomerates, and television networks, etc

this, imho, is what really muddies the waters

Yea, I hate to say it, but the left really seems to have no idea how convoluted and potentially dangerous legislating this issue is. Diogenes is on the right track, and even (gasp) GeeSussFreeK gets it. We aren't concerned with whether or not a corporation can hand over billions of dollars to a campaign. That seems relatively straightforward. At issue is whether a corporation can buy a billion dollars worth of advertisements perceived to be supporting a particular candidate or position. Once you put it like that, it seems much dicier. Who decides whether an ad is political if it isn't expressly stated that way? How could we even effectively limit that sort of activity without risking limitations on legitimate political speech? I mean, do we want to tell the Audubon Society they can't run advocacy campaigns in an election year? Or do we just want to tell people they can't donate to the Audubon Society in an election year? See the problem?

The fact is money has always been a factor in amplifying speech. It's one of the reasons Ben Franklin was so powerful (via his control of the presses). However the first amendment was enshrined anyway. Now, I still sympathize with the notion that something is wrong with our political process, and it looks to be something like green paper with president's faces on it. However, a means to effectively fixing it without severe (potentially worse) unintended consequences is still a mystery to me.

>> ^Diogenes:

@criticalthud
let's be really clear... i agree with your position on corporate personhood
but... we can use "citizens united" to abbreviate the scotus decision: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission... and how that decision has overturned several previous legal precedents and aspects of bcra -- and we can also use "citizens united" to refer directly to the non-profit group of the same name...
i'm just pointing out the latter (the npo) filed suit against the fec because they felt that a media corporation (moore, et al) was violating bcra - the fec dismissed their complaint -- then the group made a similar 'documentary' about hillary clinton and promoted it with the same style and timing of moore's anti-bush film - a lower court barred it, stating that it violated the bcra -- this background led us to the troubling scotus decision
what i was pointing out was that bcra, etc, was already allowing corporate political advocacy through the media, i.e. movie producers, book publishers, newspaper conglomerates, and television networks, etc
this, imho, is what really muddies the waters


thanks i really appreciate the clarification. muddy waters for sure. You raise some good points. Especially in distinguishing an over-reach of political influence from entertainment and documentary media. But are we getting to the point where campaign finance legislation will necessarily intrude on free press and the works of film-makers? what is your take? I would prefer to think that legislation could and should be narrowly tailored in this instance.
and (edit)
@bmacs24 I think it makes sense to start with the fundamental underlying legal ambiguity by which the power grab occurs. The war on "terror" is another ambiguous area of laws that also leads to incredible abuse.
Otherwise you find yourself caught in the minutiae, trying to re-arrange the top bricks on the shit-stack

What Citizens United does - which is give legal permission for unlimited direct funding to political campaigns from nondisclosed corporations - has absolutely fuckall in common with some guy making a political movie.

To make that connection means you don't know what Citizens United does, no matter how many paragraphs you write about how stupid liberals are. So just stop. Citizens United is a scam on every american and is completely killing democracy in the USA.

If you'd like to see how political campaigns should be funded, see what Connecticut does and how crazily awesome the outcomes are:
http://prospect.org/article/clean-election-state

@criticalthud
man, i honestly think it's a hopeless can of worms... and imho, i believe that the continued advance of technology means that even our best efforts in "regulation" or making "fair" the process of political advocacy... well, i think we're always going to be lagging behind

first off, to even discuss the matter we need to divorce ourselves from our partisan political leanings (conservative talk radio, liberal press, wingnut internet content)

next, we need to avoid where possible the all-too-convenient labels, such as "corporatism", as it's much too vague - better to just understand that "big money" will inevitably lead to undue influence peddling in our political process

we should also understand the types of regulations or statutes that were tried (and failed) in the past, i.e. fairness doctrine, equal-time rule, and even the implications of miami herald publishing co. v. tornillo

we also need to reach some kind of concensus on both relevant first amendment provisions, e.g. freedom of speech and and freedom of the press (the latter being a certain candidate for the "big money" moniker) - any tinkering we do here carries disturbing implications

and finally, what the heck are we to do with the internet, where both the speed and pervasiveness of political advocacy easily avails itself to abuse from "big money" - just try imagining how we'd regulate big money from filtering through pacs to banner ads, popups, blogs and web-hosting

all that said... dude, i feel lost as to where to even begin forming a coherent solution - sorry

@Diogenes

i really appreciate your depth of insight.
the muddle makes me think it makes more sense to start from the beginning. I think it is time to fully appreciate that modern issues can't be solved by an ancient document. We have a culture built on the idea that the framer's were infallible, and that the constitution was a standard of perfection. We know this to be false, and we have since built an entire system of fuckery on the "interpretations" of the document.