The point is very simple. It’s the same reason we have two houses of Congress. We don’t want any one group of people to have more power than another. The problem is, while the individuals who make up a corporation may have differing views, the corporation is using the work of all those people to make it’s own separate point.
If corporations were somewhat democratic, then the result would be democratic. But it isn’t. The CEO has the power of every single person under him in the form of their money.
And finally, I stick with my old standby. If you admit something is unfair, it is your responsibility to do something about it.
However, we the people do not get to decide which names appear on the ballot for us to choose among. That is determined by a lot of factors, but mainly by the wealth primary. You are missing the point, which is not that the people cannot be trusted with the final decision, but that the wealthy cannot be trusted with the preliminary gatekeeping decisions.
Personally, I’ve always wanted to see some type of voucher system for political candidates. If you vote in the last election, you get a voucher that you can donate to the candidate(s) of your choice. Theoretically, this would at least make it possible for someone to run a campaign without being beholden to any particular set of donors. The voucher levels could be adjusted to match corporate spending if it became clear that they weren’t useful. I think this also has the added benefit of providing an incentive to vote. This solution would hopefully help to reduce corporate rent-seeking.
Most apologists for Citizens United ignore the full implications of the decision in terms of silent constraints on politicians, who change their behaviour out of fear intervention, as opposed to explicit intervention. But the calculus of making hard decisions and standing up to special interests just got a lot harder.
Essentially the only thing checking this increase in corporate power in the political sphere would be requirements set by Congress for disclosures and disclaimers. And that is hardly a comforting solution in this day and age of Byzantine corporate groups and shell companies.
And you seem to be missing the point that the Supreme Court doesn’t decide cases based on good results or bad results, they decide cases based on what is constitutional.
If you’d bothered to click on the link I posted, rather than just making up total conjecture about the sum total of my reasons for opposing the decision, you’d read a lengthy piece by a noted legal academic about the legal flaws in the majority’s decision. Dworkin touches on the various precedents that Citizens United overturns and he is scathing in his assessment of the majority claim to be restoring earlier precedent, citing Stevens dissent with approval.
Honestly, read more careful and conjecture less. There’s nothing wrong with discussing the policy implications of a major legal change brought forth by a case, but I actually linked to a legal discussion as well which just makes you look foolish.
When individuals donate money, one of the questions asked is, “Who is your employer?” I donated a hundred bucks to Obama in 2008… but that doesn’t mean that Sony Entertainment donated a hundred bucks.
I guess I’m thinking we get to vote in primaries (the preliminary gatekeeping decisions) as well, and the major reason most of us don’t is shear laziness. Sure, parties choose nominees. But the opportunity to become part of that process as well is open to all.
I just don’t buy into the construct of a big bad system run by the wealthy cabal. I blame my own inaction and laziness.
The way to get elected around here is to work hard raising support and promise chickens and healthcare in every local pot, funded with public money from St Elsewhere.
I have issues with the Dworkin piece. Foremost is that while he harps on the fact that the Supreme Court has taken a too-favorable view of the First Amendment rights of corporations vis-a-vis their election activities, he avails himself of the facilities of a corporation (the New York Review of Books) to publish this viewpoint.
Why should some corporations be favored in their communications roles and other corporations be punished for it or prevented from doing so? That doesn’t wash with me. The First Amendment wasn’t written to protect media companies or journalists - it was written to recognize freedoms all of us possess.
Sure I do - since the treatment of media companies vis-a-vis the First Amendment was an explicit part of the reasoning in the decision itself - and I am in some agreement with it: