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.
Against my better judgment I will reply. The First Amendment establishes the right of free speech for people. Corporations are not people although our benighted judicial system has backhandedly declared it so.
How about Fox News for starters.
What election did they buy?
You probably consider Fox’s huge air time support for Fox sock puppets a contribution. In answer to your question, every one they’ve won.
What elections have they won?
Sorry to be picky, asking for specifics and all…
“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech…”
Where does it say ‘people’? It says, “the right of the people to peaceably assemble”, but that is an entirely separate clause. Besides, who else speaks but people?
I think you are harping on a distinction without a difference. Corporations are made up of people. They are no more than an organizing principle, and no more than the sum of their parts. If you are upset with people using the influence they have earned to further their own goals, then say so. Just because you are jealous of people with more power, money and influence than you doesn’t mean they don’t have rights.
When corporations get votes, I will concede that the system views them as people.
1 USC 1 is the enabling law that affords corporations legal rights - it’s not a natural result of the plain meaning of the constitution, as much as you’d like to believe. Ergo, the “rights” of corporations can be modified at will.
Rather than 1 USC 1 being viewed as a gift to corporations, isn’t it fair to describe it as correcting an oversight in the constitution? If the citizens have rights, why should they lose those rights just because they’ve pooled their resources?
because they haven’t “just pooled their resources” - they have created a distinct legal entity that stands separate and apart form those people that created it.
it’s not a gift, it’s just the case that corporations have their legitimacy derived form the first amendment.
Corporations are collections of people.
You need to be more specific. How exactly did they “buy” an election?
So? It still does what they tell it to. It’s not like Godzilla rampaging across the landscape at random.
no, it’s not. it’s a completely separate legal entity. if everyone on this planet died tomorrow, Wal-Mart would still exist from a legal standpoint.
Oh, great, the apocalypse kills everyone and only zombie corporations remain to rule the Earth.
A child does what its parent tells it to do. Does that mean it’s not a separate and distinct legal entity?
If you’re going to get snarky, it may actually help to know something about corporate law first.
A shareholder cannot get sued for the acts of a corporation (certain exceptions). This is not a natural consequence of “people pooling their resources”. It’s a consequence of the corporation being considered separate from the people that formed it.
This is the Great Debates forum. We’re here to debate. If you don’t want to defend your positions, you should not have posted here.
I don’t see what would stop a director of Archer Daniels Midland from simply hiring people with his “own money.” Banning a specific legal entity from lobbying will simply invite people to change the legal entity doing the lobbying, but the money can still come from a big business.
The problem with the complaints about “Corporations” is, of course, that most corporations are not big businesses at all, but very small ones (or aren’t even businesses; the old timers softball league I play in is a corporation) and not all businesses or large, influential organizations are corporations. Is the AARP a corporation? (They may be, but if so it’s probably a not-for-profit.) How about the NAACP? MADD? MADD is a corporation; should it be prohibited from lobbying politicians, while, say, a nonincorporated business or a trade union is?
If there’s a problem with businesses buying votes - and I do not doubt for a minute that it is a problem - I don’t think laws such as you’re proposing will accomplish anything, to be honest. You can’t stop people from talking to other people. You COULD restrict business advertising on political issues, I suppose, but that speaks to the real problem; you need people to wake up and smell the coffee.
Other countries managed to get things like single payer health insurance without banning lobbyists.
Um, no.
If everyone on this planet died tomorrow, legal standpoints wouldn’t exist.
Wal*Marts, of course, would still exist, though presumably they’d be a bit understaffed.
Why does it matter if a corporation is a separate and distinct legal entity? It exists only on paper and cannot take any action without a human’s involvement. It has far less independence than a human child.