Laugh it up, serf! :P
I totally agree that corporations are too powerful and should be reined in, but I just donât think CU was the right way to do it. Too much collateral damage.
Instead, I would like to see changes in their incentives, e.g. make it easier to assign criminal or civil liability to officers when corporations break the law or lose a civil lawsuit.
In many cases officers can be held liable or indicted under current laws. Itâs just that this virtually never happens, and the corporation winds up paying a fine which is laughable compared to their revenue.
Corporation fines should be the max of flat fees and percentages of revenues, and officers and executives should always be indicted where there is corporate culpability, because there is always some human who gave the orders.
This is the case with tons of white collar crime, and itâs bullshit.
No objection from me.
Agree 100%.
Far too often these organizations will do something like effectively stealing a couple billion dollars. Then they get fined for like $500 million and no one goes to jail. Thatâs just a sound business plan at that point, especially since often you wont get caught at all.
Oh hey I agree with you guys. If we started holding people accountable then CU wouldnât be as big a deal. The problem is given that they can now throw unlimited money into elections, I seriously doubt any of that is going to get better.
I wasnât referring to CU with ATT, it was this case:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-att-arbitration-idUSTRE73Q4N520110427
As for the civil liberties of corporations, whose civil liberties are they representing? The CEO? The executive VPs? Their employees? (lol) Shareholders? There is (or should be) context when applying laws. It is obvious to anyone paying attention that the donor class pays for political campaigns (PACS arenât supposed to coordinate with campaigns, but they do that just the same, and AFAIK they are not investigated or prosecuted when it happens.) The RNC, DNC and other political organizations associated with a party advocate on behalf of that party and getting their candidates elected who are supposed to legislate on behalf of their voters. That however is not the reality of the American political system.
Congress e.g. hasnât passed any updated air and water pollution laws since the 90âs despite rapid advancements in science. They are held captive by industry. The interest of the government is to protect the welfare of its citizens, not just those citizens that can pay for their campaigns. Ryan and GOP leaders conduct their annual pilgrimage to the Koch brothers and pay homage, ensuring the interest of the Koch brothers are represented and not the people they harm. In effect the government becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of FuckYouAmerica INC. Instead we get âlawsâ benefiting the finance sector, or payday loan companies, or oil and gas interests, etc et al. For as much grief as we give voters who tune out of politics, itâs rather obvious they realize the government doesnât act on their behalf any longer and hasnât for decades.
If the goal is to prevent corruption and undue political influence from those with essentially unlimited funds, then campaign finance law is a path to address that, but the will of the people as expressed by their elected representatives was summarily dismissed with a twisted interpretation of the 1st Amendment in order to advance corporate interests. Thatâs not judicial restraint, thatâs not deference to the legislature, thatâs political activism:
At any rate I am tired of arguing the merits of CU. If you and other 1st Amendment absolutists cannot or will not accept the harm CU has done directly or indirectly you are certainly entitled to that opinion. But youâre not going to convince me or the vast majority of voters that itâs a free speech issue. The American political system is broken, and it will remain broken so long as itâs held captive by the interests of the monied elite.
"Here lies the body of Johnny OâDay
Who died Preserving His Right of Way."
Itâs up to you where you assign moral responsibility, but if yourâe trying to persuade, your tone will have a direct outcome on the result.
Of course, maybe youâre not looking to persuade and just⌠I donât know, condemn? Show off? Well, okay.
You keep saying that, but it just isnât so. You might not agree with the Constitutional argument, but the argument exists: The Constitution protects the rights of people, and corporations are not people. The Constitution protects the political speech rights of people, and corporations are not people. The Constitution protects the political assembly rights of people, and corporations are not people, while political parties are political assemblies of people.
This is precisely why the authors of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act thought they could pass a law constraining the campaign candidate contributions (or direct spending) of corporations and unions within 60 days of an election, because corporations are not people, and therefore they have no protected right to political activity.
You can keep saying that the ruling in CU was a slam dunk and correct, but in fact it was a 5-4 decision, which means that nearly half the sitting Justices would have decided the other way. Indeed, the US District Court for DC upheld the law as Constitutional. Outside of the Court, everyone who participated in drafting the law, or voted for it, was surprised by the outcome; even the conservatives who did so! A good part of the legal establishment was surprised by the outcome, as was nearly all of the press, so much that that they pressed Romney about it, producing his famous âcorporations are people, my friendâ quote, which was widely mocked by the many people who donât agree that corporations are people with Constitutional rights.
As for all your hypotheticals, they all consist of unbalanced hypothetical laws, whereas the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was balanced, in that it treated all corporation spending the same whether it advantaged the left or the right, and it added unions in for good measure. An example of a law where the RNC can spend but the DNC canât is quite obviously not the same because it isnât fucking balanced, as anyone can see. I kept wondering why you were offering those examples until it occurred to me that you were trying to give the impression that the problem with the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was also unbalanced. So, you know, whatâs with that shit?
Yes, thereâs surely no place for ad hominem here.
This is a spectacular non-sequitur. CU wasnât intended to rein in white-collar crime, it was intended to stop corporations spending big money on behalf of candidate within 60 days of an election. White-collar crime is an entirely different problem, which you could address with other laws that have nothing to do with elections or campaign spending.
Yes, precisely. And to repeat what I said earlier in this thread, absent CU, the executives of corporations already have more speech and political capability than do other Americans, because they have all the rights of everyone else, plus they have the deep financial pockets personally to make maximum contributions to presidential candidates and unlimited contributions to parties and PACs. The idea that the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act violated their free speech or political assembly rights is absurd.
Legally, the DNC is a corporation. Nothing more.
And where does the Constitution ban âunbalancedâ treatment of corporations?
I think my objection is to the idea that corporations are a protected class of people - or is the SC saying that it would also be unconstitutional to restrict what ads individuals are allowed to place on TV or other media prior to an election? I mean there are clearly limits to what you can say when thereâs an overriding interest. And the interest is greater in the case of corporations than individuals.
I think that by and large they do. Itâs just that RNC voters do not have the same interests as you. Specifically, they donât like new regulations. And since new legislation requires a Senate supermajority, they have successfully blocked most legislative attempts to enact new regulations. Which didnât prevent Obama from making new regulations anyway (eg fuel economy, CO2), though it did limit their longevity.
Furthermore, this is a longstanding position of the GOP, and you certainly canât blame CU for it. If anything, elections in 2016 and beyond have been remarkably successful for populist candidates who inspire much less confidence from the corporate elite. Who do you think is complaining that âthe crazies have taken overâ? Be careful what you wish for!
Yes, that is exactly what they are saying.
The limits on speech are few and well defined. Even fewer for political speech. We are literally talking about censorship. If the SCOTUS is unwilling to censor Mein Kampf, itâs hard to imagine why it would censor a conventional ad.
I think my main issue is money as speech. The disproportionate weight this gives to the opinions of the wealthy strikes me as inherently wrong, but the only solutions I can think of are either overly restrictive or they belong in the burn-it-all-down camp. Iâm not a big fan of either.
California this year had a guy running to state office I think whose ad literally used several of the banned 7 words. I remember the local radio station saying that had the guy chosen to place an ad with their station they would have had no choice but to have played the ad, as is.
The guy lost by the way.
Do you think you have a right to donate to Planned Parenthood? Because no doubt there are plenty of Republicans who would like to outlaw donations to groups that advocate for abortion. The only thing stopping them is that donations are equally protected as speech.
Not to single you out, but a lot of anti-CU arguments strike me as akin to, âI donât think the leopards would eat my face.â