Firstly, corporations consist of and are run by real people.
Secondly, one of the rights that has been held to be implicit in the First Amendment is freedom of association. One way for people to associate is by forming corporations.
It bears repeating that the biggest political donors are not corporations but unions. And corporate contributions may be overstated:
Is this thread sparked by the pharma companies buying advertising supporting the administration’s health-insurance reform plans? Is that what you’re objecting to?
The right to free speech and all else was granted to them with the Fourteenth Amendment, which was worded to use the term “person” rather than “citizen.” Corporations, legally, are persons too.
The matter became first apparent some years after the Fourth Amendment was passed. It was decided at trial. Testimony at the trial included that of a couple senators, who were brought in to argue that, “yup, that’s exactly what we meant when we wrote the amendment.”
Rather logically, the political system was bought by corporations before it gave corporations the right to buy it.
Doesn’t this reasoning mean the rights used by corporations to “buy elections” also let individuals buy elections?
…
I haven’t read your list, but I already dismiss it.
Interesting.
The founding fathers may have favored landed white men but they were quite aware of the danger to their new govt that large accumulations of capital could pose.
As our founders set things up, corporations were looked upon as potential felons and quite restricted in their legal “rights”. “Free speech” was not among them.
And from my previous post
The bottom line is people die while corporations today are considered potentially eternal. People die and their fortunes and political influence are subject to dispersal whereas corporations and their revolving-door lobbyists live on and on and on …
The result is that while the corporate “free market” is looked upon by the uniformed as economic Darwinism, it is quite Lamarckian.
The founding fathers may have favored landed white men but they were quite aware of the danger to their new govt that large accumulations of capital could pose.
As our founders set things up, corporations were looked upon as potential felons and quite restricted in their legal “rights”. “Free speech” was not among them.
And from my previous post
The bottom line is people die while corporations today are considered potentially eternal. People die and their fortunes and political influence are subject to dispersal whereas corporations and their revolving-door lobbyists live on and on and on …
The result is that while the corporate “free market” is looked upon by the uniformed as economic Darwinism, it is quite Lamarckian.
…
Aside from the usual exaggerration of the court case in question, this doesn’t make any sense. What’s a “Potential” felon? Aren’t you a “potential felon?” Where in the Constitution is “potential felon” mentioned?
Corporations are considered persons for some legal purposes and not for others, and if you can come up with a logical reason why it should not be so, by all means volunteer it. Corporations can’t vote, for instance. But should corporations not be protected from thieves? If I steal your hat, the law protects you, but if I steal merchandise from your incorporated hat store, are you saying the law should not regard that as a crime because the hats were stolen from a corporation?
Similarly with freedom of speech. You can say you don’t want corporations to have that right (and in fact business speech IS much, much more restricted than personal speech) but how can you infringe upon that and not infringe upon free speech in general? If you don’t want ABC Corp. lobbying, ABC Corp will just pay more salary to its directors and have them lobby directly.
Nate Silver put together an interesting table earlier this month, showing corporate PAC contributions as a percentage of a Senator’s total contributions.
Whether or not corporations can buy elections, their PACs can certainly buy Senators, especially those from small states (which was the point of Nate’s chart). The basis thesis can be broken down this way:
- To a corporate PAC, any Senator’s vote is equally valuable.
- Flesh-and-blood people, OTOH, are much more likely to contribute to the campaigns of Senatorial candidates in their states than to Senatorial candidates elsewhere.
- While small-state voters are as likely to contribute to Senatorial campaigns as large-state voters are, there are a lot fewer of them, so they give a lot less money, total.
- So in small states, it’s much easier than in large states for corporate PAC contributions to Senators and Senate candidates to swamp contributions from individuals.
There were two interesting things about this chart, IMHO. One, the near-absence of Republicans from the lower reaches of the chart, isn’t of relevance to this discussion.
The other, which definitely relates to this discussion, was the hard-to-overlook fact that almost all of the Senate Dems that give progressives like me fits with their efforts to avoid stepping on corporate toes are congregated near the top of the list - i.e. they have the highest percentages of corporate PAC contributions among Democrats. That’s where we see names like Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, Byron Dorgan, Mark Pryor, and the like.
Reminds me of this Bloom County strip from 1981 (sorry, wasn’t able to Google a pic):
Yes, indeedy.
I don’t like it that money talks, but that doesn’t totally chap my hide. That it votes… that drives me nuts.
I’m referring all requests of this nature to my post. I’m not here to debate. I merely offer an historical context for Corporate America, for better or worse.
Let the reader decide.
As I understand it, the legal distinctions between business speech and personal speech under American Constitutional law have been eroding for some time, and there’s not a whole lot of difference left. But IANAL; I have all this secondhand. Perhaps one of our legal eagles can weigh in.
However, I think it’s both practically possible (as opposed to legally feasible) and necessary to restrict corporate speech without hampering speech by individuals. Why it’s necessary is that individual speech is, for most of us, time and money lost to other purposes. Since we human beings only have 24 hours in a day, and all but a relative handful of us have limited financial resources, that’s important.
Corporate speech, OTOH, is without such bounds. There are no limits on time because they can keep buying more lobbyists. And the limits on money are so stratospheric that they’re pretty much irrelevant, because such expenditures are investments which not only have an excellent track record of paying for themselves, but often have a pretty spectacular rate of return.
So what we have is a structurally uneven battle between the time and money of flesh-and-blood people who want to affect the political process, and that of corporations that seek to do the same.
If current interpretation of the Constitution so permitted, it would be possible to do so by passing laws banning lobbying and issue advertising by corporations. Sure, the stockholders, directors, officers, etc. could still lobby as individuals, and it would be impossible to take away that right. But as individuals, they have limited money and time (even if they have more money and free time than the average citizen), and competing demands for those resources. They must sleep; they cannot clone themselves. The playing field iwould still not be level, but it would be close enough, at least as far as I’m concerned.
Dude, this forum is called “Great Debates,” not “Great Statements of Fact or Opinion.”
There’s nothing wrong with stopping into a debate thread to add some relevant facts, then leaving - if nobody’s going to argue about whether they’re facts. But if their status as facts isn’t clear, or if you’re expressing opinions under the guise of historical context, then they’re only as good as your ability to defend them in debate.
Just sayin’.
Send in…the clones. There must be…clones.
First Amendment for reference:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Can you provide us with some specific examples of corporations buying elections?
I have neither the ability nor the interest to debate each and every whack-a-mole quibble with a broad history of corporations. I yield to my betters.
Your post is a case in point.