US POLITICS: AMERICANS, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR NEW PRESIDENT... SCOTT BROWN!

q: is corporate speech being protected in this instance because the court is considering a corporation as merely an assembly of citizens? like, indistinct from a local teabagging org or union or say the sierra club?

yes, to the best of my understanding

i am gonna read the opinion now

one thing I think we can all agree on is that the next election is gonna be a laff riot

when aren't they?!

yeah but what if the Republican candidate gets a full sponsorship from Microsoft and has to present all his stump speeches via SongSmith

yes, to the best of my understanding

― max, Saturday, January 23, 2010 3:16 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ah ok. i guess if you consider them all to be equivalent, then it follows. but i really don't see how a for-profit entity can be thought of as being equivalent to non-profit, explicitly political orgs.

also, still trying to think of a sinister situation where limiting corporate speech would be bad. like, say, a small closely held corp (not traded) wants to build say a wind-farm that would be beneficial to the community (cheap clean energy yay) but they're running up against political resistance from a group that doesn't want its view ruined by turbines. i guess in this case if you had a law that totally gagged corporations, they wouldn't be able to appeal directly to voters w/r/t this enterprise which could be mutually beneficial. but no one's advocating that corps be disallowed all political speech---just that it's OK to impose strictures on corporate political speech that temper their abilities to use money to swing elections. i guess where there's room for debate, imo, is if you think that ANY kind of limitation of corporate speech could somehow be leveraged in the future to unfairly quash political speech of ALL kinds. but man, seeing how corps are so strictly defined, i don't see how that's possible.

seems like greenwald is being as reflexive in his desire to protect all political speech as the ppl he accuses of disliking this decision because they just hate corporations

'free speech no exceptions' is a fine thing to believe, but given that we already have many, many exceptions, how is this one somehow more corrosive than, say, telling people they can't say "fuck" on TV shows or display pornography in their front yard

tho i guess neither of those are explicitly political

this fiction must die yall. its ridiculous. corporations must serve man.

Also am wondering if corporations become full 'persons' under the law, how do they retain limited liability? People are liable.

this opinion is way boring. but i guess i get what greenwald is saying (i was being dumb earlier) because it *is* a content-based restriction in one way (it only applies to speech mentioning a candidate, which is always political speech). i still disagree because the more important issue is the discrimination against corporations, which is obviously not content-based and doesn't bring up a slippery slope like "if they ban the communist party they might someday ban my party." it's procedural and i'm totally ok with finding a compelling interest here. because the corp has special privileges under law that allow it to amass money and power, it shouldn't get to use its money to make commercials for a candidate who it hopes will help it get even more money. and even before this case it could still do it outside 30 days before an election!

xpost i believe he tried to point out in his post that constitutional rights are *not* limited to persons. you do not need to be a person to have first amendment rights.

Neither can one yell 'fire' in a theater (or a more dramatic post-9/11 equivalent) because it creates a public safety hazard.

Of course we won't be able to throw Big Oil in jail for trumpeting someone who will make it easier for them to create a public safety hazard (in the name of profits).

i'd be down with a law that says private money of any provenance is totally illegal to spend in a political campaign

no you wouldn't

oh ok i guess i wouldn't then

anybody want a beer?

by which i mean: then you get into the murky question of what constitutes "in a political campaign"

if candidate X is running on issue Y (which i, a private individual, thinks is pretty shitty), why shouldn't i be able to spend money on an ad in the newspaper that says "this sucks" but that doesn't mention X's name

if this is a week before the election, then ok, that's at least in the ballpark of a campaign. but what if we're a year out, and i run a weekly ad that says "this sucks." at what point is that no longer a private individual exercising the right to political speech and instead "private campaign funding"?

moreover, how would this affect explicitly political non-profits? there's a campaign coming up and planned parenthood has ppl handing out flyers to passersby. well, they paid for those flyers, and abortion is such a polarizing issue that it'll be clear to any voter who the pro-choice candidate is. is that private campaign advertising?

btw yes plz i will thank you

whereas: explicitly forbidding campaign advertising by corporations, which have very clear, very strict legal definitions, would be waaaaaaaaaaaaay easier.

q: are you registered as a corporation with the state?
a: y

ok then well looks like you are not allowed to buy campaign advertising. if you are publicly traded we will be vetting your financial disclosure for any funny business.

ah grolsch.

no i don't think it's campaign advertising if you don't mention the candidate or the party. otherwise you have to get into all kinds of subjective decisions which would be subject to endless lawyering. but if it does mention the candidate or the party, seriously i think it should be like tennis steroid testing, once and you're out for the tournament, any private money, your own or anyone else's. i'm sure there are downsides to this that i'm not thinking about but you have to admit it would keep things simple if campaigns simply could not accept contributions, from anyone.

it blew me away when i read that top tennis players have to notify drug testing officials of a time each day that they will be available for random testing should the officials decide to pay a visit. for each day of the year! nadal was like "even my mom doesn't know where i am that much." true, but that's the kind of rigor we need.

yeah i guess i can get with that.

Pete's Sake.

A group of nearly 200 "extremely concerned citizens" in a small Montana county are demanding that local leaders fill out a "questionnaire" pledging to form a local militia, prohibit mandatory vaccinations, boot the EPA out of town, allow citizens to bear any type of gun, and require federal government employees to get written approval before approaching "any Citizen."

The Ravalli questionnaire, which you can read here, demands that local officials pledge:

To form and command a county militia of all citizens 18 or older. However, it adds: "Note: Women must serve, but not in a combat capacity unless the men are in danger of being overrun."

"To absolutely prohibit all efforts, Federal, State or city, that infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms including the requirement to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon and restrictions on the kinds of weapons one may possess and carry, eg., fully automatic, silenced, length of barrel, length of blade, opening mechanism of a knife, etc."

To require federal employees to obtain written permission from the sheriff before approaching local citizens.

"To prohibit mandatory vaccinations."

To prohibit federal employees from collecting census information beyond the number of adults in each home.

To block all Environmental Protection Agency employees from entering the country. (We should note here that the editor of the Republic tells us he knows of no EPA activity in the county.)

"To use the term 'peace officer' in lieu of the current law enforcement officer.'"

Uh, don't worry Ravalli County. I can't speak for the EPA due to the Hatch Act, but I can tell you that your broken brainstem revolution guarantees that I will not go within 500 miles of your county.

man I live within 500 miles of that county

Chief Justice Roberts last September, questioning Solicitor General Elena Kagan, during oral arguments in the Citizens United v Federal Election Commission corporate-funding case whose decision was announced yesterday (as reported by Stuart Taylor here):

" 'When corporations use other people's money to electioneer,' as Kagan explained, 'that is a harm not just to the shareholders themselves but a sort of a broader harm to the public,' because it distorts the political process to inject large sums of individuals' money in support of candidates whom they may well oppose.

"Roberts sharply challenged this line of argument. 'Isn't it extraordinarily paternalistic,' he asked, 'for the government to take the position that shareholders are too stupid to keep track of what their corporations are doing and can't sell their shares or object in the corporate context if they don't like it? ... ' "We the government have to protect you naive shareholders." '

"Kagan responded that 'in a world in which most people own stock through mutual funds (and) through retirement plans ... , they have no choice. I think it's very difficult for individual shareholders to be able to monitor what each company they own assets in is doing.' "

http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2010/01/john_roberts_the_difference_fo.php

ha, that was supposed to be "q" for block quote, not "b" for bold. sorry.

it merits the boldface imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LfhGNOlg90

yeah the fiction of shareholder influence on corporations, like lots of people have pointed out, is a really obnoxious thing for anyone to hang a legal opinion on. corporations are not their shareholders. they just use our money to make themselves filthy rich.

Also am wondering if corporations become full 'persons' under the law, how do they retain limited liability? People are liable.

That's not what limited liability means. Limited liability means that a corporation's (or partnership or whatever) liability is limited to the actual assets of that corporation and does not include the assets of the people who own or run that corporation.

For instance if you started a business selling lemonade or whatever, and accidentally poisoned someone and then that person sued you, they could sue you for everything you own and basically ruin you personally. So what you would want to do instead is organize a business entity such that if you get sued, the worst thing that's gonna happen is that your business goes bankrupt, but you won't have to personally go bankrupt.

the financial industry is transparent and simple to follow for any shareholder. can you imagine what would happen if it wasn't?

i was thinking about that, like, i have some money in a 401k -- not enough, or too much, depends how you look at it -- and i have no idea what companies i theoretically "own" some tiny part of. and even if i did, my ability to in any way influence the operation of those companies would be nil. but the whole system is rigged, because what else are you supposed to do? put it in banks? ok, what are they going to do with it? lend it out to god knows who. basically the individual citizen one way or another becomes vested in the system, but with next to no influence and very few protections when things go south. why do we put up with it? i don't know. i think because we don't really understand what's going on.

can i trade my freedom of speech for limited liability now?

you don't have to! win-win!

win-win inc.

(btw we own the copyright on "win-win." not all speech is free. pay up, buster.)

i was thinking about that, like, i have some money in a 401k -- not enough, or too much, depends how you look at it -- and i have no idea what companies i theoretically "own" some tiny part of. and even if i did, my ability to in any way influence the operation of those companies would be nil. but the whole system is rigged, because what else are you supposed to do? put it in banks? ok, what are they going to do with it? lend it out to god knows who. basically the individual citizen one way or another becomes vested in the system, but with next to no influence and very few protections when things go south. why do we put up with it? i don't know. i think because we don't really understand what's going on.

A nice irony here is that the fiduciary duty that the corporate management owes to you, the shareholder, is the very reason corporations are legally obliged to pursue maximum profit above any and all other considerations.

It is a crazy in a sense. But also we should expect business to pursue profits. That's their purpose after all. It is up to us, as a society, to put the necessary legal constraints on how they go about doing that. Of course, thanks to this new Supreme Court ruling, they can now spend money in elections to prevent us from doing just that.

On the bright side, can our politicians be any more bought than they already are? Look at the Senate HCR bill for example. It's like complaining about rain after you've already drowned.

A nice irony here is that the fiduciary duty that the corporate management owes to you, the shareholder, is the very reason corporations are legally obliged to pursue maximum profit above any and all other considerations.

yeah was thinking about this last week when stocks went up supposedly because of scott brown's election and its prospects for killing the health care bill. so wall street gets happy at the prospect of me continuing to get screwed by insurance companies, which in turn causes my 401k to go up. but in the long run does my stock appreciation actually compensate for the money i'm getting screwed out of? probably not. the house always wins, and we're supposed to be happy with what they leave us.

I'm more ambiguous about what you're saying, tipsy, because I think in the long run *I* will be more than compensated for the money I'm getting screwed out of. That could be illusory, but the perpetuation of the system depends in part on people like me thinking, ah fuck it, this is screwed but I'm gonna get mine so I won't raise a stink. The ambiguity is because it seems wrong for me to benefit personally from a screwed system, but is that silly? These are moral questions and I'm not sure what to think. Can't knock the hustle...

As a matter of fact there is jurisprudence that says shareholders have no right to be informed of certain political activities of corporations.

I think in the long run *I* will be more than compensated for the money I'm getting screwed out of.

it's hard to say. i mean, if you're a hedge fund operator or big-bank trader, then definitely. but if you're a working stiff, even a well compensated one, counting on gains in the market over time to offset all the lost wages to spiraling health costs, i mean, maybe. if you're lucky and cash out at the right time. but investment retirement funds are a lot riskier than i think americans appreciate, because we've grown up with this idea that the market always goes up. which isn't true. there are people in japan who've been plowing money into retirement funds for the last 20 years and a lot of them would have been better off burying it in a hole in the backyard. so there's all this risk in our theoretical future gains, but in the meantime we're getting nickeled and dimed (and dollared) by health insurance companies, bank fees, low interest rates, all these other ways that our system is set up to extract money from the working population and transfer it to short-term corporate profits.

I'm not really talking about wages, but rather the possibilities of employment that exist because of the way our system is financed. I get to do terrific things, and I am able to do them because universities are powerful engines of investment.

John Roberts may want to think about the fact many corporations have both executives and major shareholders who are not US citizens. IIRC, the major institutional shareholder in like 90% of the Fortune 500 is Barclays, based in the UK. So now, via a corporate vehicle, we're giving non-resident, non-US citizens a voice in US elections that they didn't previously have.

South Carolina Lt. Governor says of poor people, "Stop feeding them or they're just going to breed."

via a corporate vehicle, we're giving non-resident, non-US citizens a voice in US elections that they didn't previously have.

OTM. Multinational corporations with majority interests overseas will now be able to pump money into affecting domestic policy for their own gains.

SC Combat Veteran
I'm the "stray animal" thats has been fighting your wars, I'm the "stray animal" that voted absentee ballet, for you. I'm the "stray animal" that came home to no job, I'm the "stray animal" that swollowed his pride and filled out the unemployement forms for the first time in my life. I'm the "stray animal" that filled out the paper for help feeding my kids at school. I'm the "stray animal" that will fight on and on. I am the "stray animal" that will never vote for you again.

absentee ballet ♫

food is medicine, you fucking despicable savage. if a physician had said that children would have their medication discontinued if their parents didn't take a course in microbiology, he would be shamed, humiliated, and lose his job and/or license. that this can somehow be spun as a political view or "just one guy's opinion" is fucking monstrous.

cf drub rehab programs that withhold treatment (whether it is therapy or medication) when their patients (sorry, "clients") backslide. hey looks like your ailment isn't remitting or is getting worse. i know: let's STOP TREATING IT

http://www.gallup.com/poll/125327/Majority-Favors-Suspending-Work-Healthcare-Bill.aspx