Now you are just being contrary.
Protip: when you can only argue against someone by changing what they said, you’re not arguing against them.
I never said “prior restraint,” so your talk about banning publication is nonsense. However, I am okay with ruling that spending on speech intended to affect the outcome of a political race may be subject to regulation during a political campaign.
There are plenty of societies that regulate spending on campaigns. There is absolutely no reason why doing so in our society would weaken our democracy.
I thought Citizen’s United was a bad decision, though theoretically defensible from an activist conservative judicial mindset.
I would just like to refute the nonsense that corporations need to be considered people in order to function, or that the ability to enter into contractual agreements is what defines what a person is. All the powers your typical corporation has now could be defined by statute. Indeed, most corporate law has already been codified. State corporation law could easily define all the powers a corporation needs in order to exist, including the ability to bind themselves contractually.
Fair enough.
My apologies.
We’re discussing a case in which the US government did engage in “prior restraint”.
Let me rephrase that again.
You do think that the government has the right to fine the publishers of books that are critical of political candidates during electoral campaigns then?
So then you don’t think the First Amendment protects Michael Moore and the production company responsible for Fahrenheit 911 from being fined for massive amounts of money since it cost a lot of money to make, promote, and distribute the movie and it clearly was intended to influence the election.
I’m sorry but this argument is both stupid and useless. For starters, there are lots of democratic societies which regulate all sorts of things that the government is prohibited from doing in the US by the First Amendment.
For example, Sweden puts journalists in jail who are convicted of libel, and Israel can and does ban political parties which advocate “racism” from fielding political candidates for office.
And of course, virtually all western countries except the US have all sorts of laws that harshly regulate hate speech which is protected by the US Constitution.
The laws of other countries is completely irrelevant to the question as to whether or not something violates the First Amendment.
Perhaps the Swedes don’t think jailing journalists for libel doesn’t harm their country and various European countries applaud fining people for denying the Holocaust and the Israelis are pleased with passing laws prohibiting people from using “Nazi imagery” during protests but that doesn’t mean that the First Amendment prevents all those things from happening in the US.
Anyway, I have yet to see the big deal.
Why do Muslim Americans have to put up with people trying convince Americans that we’re evil and deserve to be murdered and discriminated against to protect the First Amendment but we’ll ignore the First Amendment when it comes to preventing people from showing movies critical of Hillary Clinton.
You think the ACLU suffers from “an activist conservative judicial mindset”?
You realize that they along with most ardent defenders of free speech supported it don’t you?
Like Snowboarder Bo already mentioned, a “corporation” cannot do anything. It is the humans who run it that are organizing, having free speech, donating to campaigns, etc. No human will have their rights violated if corporations no longer count as a person, because the people who make up the corporation can still exercise their rights
The appointed leaders never represent the entire corporation. Taking the personhood analogy further, if my right leg wants to go right and left leg wants to go left, I’m not going to be able to get anywhere at all. Corporate executives who feel like they can speak on behalf of the corporation never do as they ignore many levels of employees that make up the corporation. WalMart may want to donate to the GOP, but most of their non-unionized workers probably swing Democratic. To use the name of a corporation, taking its assets, immortality, and all the positives without any of the negatives of being a real person and using that for your own benefit does not serve the public interest. There are exceptions of course, you would obviously need executive management to make decisions on the profitability of a corporation, but it violates a standard of our democracy when such an entity dips its toes into the political realm.
Again, you’re making this much more complicated than it needs to be. You don’t need to call the thing that enters into a contract a person. It can remain a corporate entity. The legally defined idea of a person need not change to accommodate contracts. Rather, we should change the definition of a contract if that were the case
No, I don’t have to agree with them on everything. If they support Citizens United then they are idiots
I got the figure from here. It seems a bit large, but I’m assuming it is the total raised and spent by the Democratic side on for the entire election. Anyways, what I meant was that Obama will have a ton of money and so the people defending these well-funded Super PACs should be ready to take some of their own medicine
No of course not, but like The Definitely Not Coordinated With Stephen Colbert Super PAC, does anyone really expect the candidates themselves to be totally divorced from the Super PACs supporting them? I don’t. I’m sure some of the money counted towards Obama’s war chest will somehow find its way to various Super PACs
Anyways, I think we have a fundamentally differing view of what free speech entails. Let me elaborate using the NRA as an example. Suppose Charlton Heston (I know he’s dead, but he’s famous so its easier) wanted to donate to the GOP and put the NRA’s name on it. In this world of corporate personhood, I suppose a large novelty check, followed by a smaller, real check, would be sent from the coffers of the NRA to whatever GOP candidate was running that year. Some of you would call that free speech.
I have no problems with free speech, but I would make that illegal. If Heston wanted to donate money to the GOP, he can do so, his speech will not be touched. He can go home, take out his checkbook from his antique armoire, and write a check to the GOP that comes out of his own bank account. He can donate as much as he’s allowed to donate. Moreover, everyone sitting on the NRA’s board of executives or roundtable of gunsmiths or whatever can do the same thing, except using their own checkbooks and their own armoires, not Charlton’s. And just to make certain where its coming from, they can all donate the money on behalf of the NRA. They can write little love notes from the NRA on the check, dot their i’s with little bullets, and claim the entire NRA supports the GOP. That’s perfectly fine.
What is not fine is the NRA, collectively pooling its resources, using its immortality and the ability to be everywhere at once, throwing its support behind the GOP just because a minority of the employees, but a minority with all of the power, say so.
I wouldn’t want that for the ACLU or the NRA, or any organization in between. Corporations are not people. They do not have speech, they don’t make speech, and they cannot have their rights violated if the speech is restricted.
And yes, I would have liked the Hillary film, or Fahrenheit 9/11 to be restricted. I have no problems with political films like that given a deadline before the election in which they can be shown. And before you guys get all over me for that, realize that in this country right now, there are laws against electioneering. Those are legal, and I’ve never heard someone complain about how that’s restricting freedom. Voting is supposed to be the expression of the citizenry’s power, it makes every man equal to every other man. When something disturbs that, it is wrong, and should be illegal.
The workers and public interest have squat to do with corporate decisions. Only the share-holders (i.e., the owners) have any say and generally that say is only in appointing a board of directors (and some other key decisions). Now, if you wanted to pass a law that said that corporate entities had to take shareholder votes before making any political donations, I might could get behind that.
You seem to be the one that wants to change the definition of a person, though. Because right now, the legally defined idea of a person is a thing that has independent existence and can enter into a contract. That’s what a person is. That’s all that a person is. The ability to exist independently in the law is what divides a person from a non-person.
So, I’m asking you what you think the legal definition of a “person” is, because I think you have the wrong idea about what makes a person a person. So I just want to get that cleared up.
What is a much bigger issue in all of this is just how godawful that ad is, how poorly made and scripted it is and how unsophisticated and downright stupidly tacky the message is.
Any ad agency that could come up with an ad like that, any producer that would shoot it and any production house that would do the work needs to be going out of business posthaste.
It’s satire.
Heh - I thought it was just American.
Does that reflect worse on my opinion of American intelligence or on me?
A navel. All corporations that are carbon based life forms, and possess a navel and two nipples, functional or not, are persons, so far as I’m concerned, and wholly entitled to spend as much money as they want.
Yes.
As an outsider myself, I find Colbert to be the most consistently entertaining satirist in the U.S., and he skewers the right-wing often with both great humour and insight. His presidential run is essentially an attempt to demonstrate how easy it is to manipulate the system and yet still stay on the right side of the law.
The bonus is that he’s mocking Romney while also playing on the tropes of American political advertising. His Iowa “cornography” ad was also hilarious.
A few things. First, you’re clearly wrong as to your definition of personhood. Under the law, navel and nipples aren’t a definition of personhood. Chimps have a navel and nipples, but they’re not persons. AT&T and Harvard University both lack navels and nipples but are persons. “Person” is a term defined in the law. if you want to change the definition you can, but to say, “Corporations aren’t people” is a factually incorrect statement. Can we at least recognize that?
Second, you can say “corporations are persons” and still believe that Citizens United was wrongly decided. The four Supreme Court justices who dissented believe that. I believe that. A lot of people believe that. Mere “personhood” doesn’t itself give an entity rights other than right of contract. It doesn’t give an entity civil rights. So I don’t know why people focus on the whole “corporations are persons” thing and get so het up over that, because it’s a red herring.
I lived in North Carolina during the heydays of Jesse Helms’ PAC, the Congressional Club. Colbert’s ad is Citizen Kane compared to those ads. The Congressional Club ads were nonetheless very effective in electing their preferred candidates.
So they are perfectly crafted to appeal to South Carolina Republicans?
If something is a legal person, they get all the protections of the 14th Amendment, as it also uses the term. It seems you are the one who is misinformed. Go to the (fairly well cited) Wikipedia article and read it for yourself. If personhood only meant what you said it meant, there would be no controversy.
Maybe at one time corporate personhood had nothing to do with all those other rights, but as used in today’s politics, is most definitely does.
But they don’t say “corporations are persons”. They say “corporations are people”. Your semantic legalism notwithstanding, most actual “people” approach the question from a more or less “common sense” aspect, just as most of us have a rough understanding of what a “contract” is, even without so much as a semester of contract law 101.
I am sensitive to the argument that any such effort to restrict the power of raw money in our political arena will impact the freedom of speech I personally hold dear. Even as we revere our civil rights, we recognize limitations as necessary and just. It is a thorny issue, to be sure, and we are obliged to approach with caution and trepidation.
As much as is practical and humanly possible, each citizen should have a roughly equal portion of human rights. That a wealthy citizen or a corporation is entitled to a greater portion of those rights solely because of money is the sort of thing would make the ghost of Tom Paine puke his spectral guts out.
Back in Tom Paine’s day, could a rich pamphleteer or a guy who owned a newspaper make his opinion known more readily than a fisherman living hand-to-mouth?