Just raising a thought I read elsewhere: if corporations aren’t necessarily national, could that mean that Chavez (who IIRC has a good chunk of ExxonMobil or something) could pay for ads on American TV promoting this or that American candidate?
Did the Founding Fathers have any conception at all in their day that huge corporations would gain all the power and influence they currently enjoy? If they did not (in the same way that the Wright Brothers, in their heyday, could scarcely stealth bombers & smart bombs and how they would completely alter warfare, so we can hardly blame them for that), then all this strict constructionist stuff is just a smokescreen. I don’t think TFF ever thought their words should be considered to have been written in stone, never to take into account how vast future changes in society could warp and twist their initial core assumptions in ways they could never imagine (“Oh yeah,” says George Washington, accidentally plucked from the timestream by the Tardis and brought to 2010, “If we had known about all that power that corporations would accumulate in 220 years we certainly would have put in something very explicit about it back then.”).
Plus how is speech “free” if is is directly proportional to wealth? Why should Exxon have 1,000,000,000 times as much “freedom” as I do to help my candidate of choice?
This seems to be a good place to ask something I’ve asked in other threads:
Liberals seem to believe that this is the end of government “for the people”, that corporations now have the power to band together and essentially “shout out” any message or candidate whose views would be detrimental to their bottom line. Essentially, they seem to feel that said corps can now buy the government and their own pet candidates, thus, for all practical purposes, permanently entrenching their power.
Why do you think this won’t happen, conservatives? Or, given some of the responses so far, why do you think that this risk is worth the ruling going the way it did?
Because it’s a free country? Because being able to spend a lot of money on ads does not necessarily translate into votes? Because corporations still have to answer to shareholders and still have to make a profit, and can’t spend huge amounts of money on political causes?
There are lots of examples of candidates that outspent the other by a large factor and still lost. There are lots of ad campaigns that cost millions of dollars and fell totally flat.
And if this problem ever existed, it exists much less today in our current world of fractured media. There was a time when an ad buy on a major network would reach half the people. That no longer exists. There was a time when you could spout misinformation and there was no way for the average citizen to find out if it was true. That no longer exists.
How about the corporate media? They’ve been given carte blanche to advocate whatever they want, and to spent billions of dollars trying to convince people of their point of view. They have the biggest megaphone in the land. And yet, you regularly see candidates win that were largely opposed by the mainstream media.
Do you have that low an opinion of the American people to believe that a corporation can simply spend enough money on ads to convince the voters to vote for whoever the corporation supports? I don’t. I think a corporation that overtly tries to slant an election in today’s media world will probably face a lot of blowback.
That’s very naive. The corporation doesn’t have to garner a single vote. All Exxon Rep has to say is, “If you don’t hold an anti-climate change position we will make sure that your primary challengers are all able to outspend your advertising dollars 2 to 1. If you do hold to an anti-climate change position we’ll match your advertising dollars 3 to 1.”
The threat of it as as good as the real thing.
Never mind that more money is good. The fact that people have still lost when having more money doesn’t mean that it isn’t an advantage.
Of course the money translates to votes. it always has. The news keeps track of every dime that is raised for campaigns like it is a horse race. Do you think that is just for fun? We just had a good candidate for Gov. in Michigan pull out because he could not raise enough money. In politics money means everything.
This mess was caused by a Fox type 90 minute movie that skewered Hillary. It had such fair people as Coulter giving her even handed views of Clinton and everything in her life. It was a next level up of swiftboating and that will be minuscule now. They can run slanted stories all day long on the news.
The corps don’t even have to spend the money. all they have to do is threaten to.
Now foreign corporation can invest in American politics if they buy part of an American company. China will have a powerful direct threat to our politicians. Hell a organization that is owned by terrorists will have a door open to press our politicians. Just become incorporated and hide who owns them.
Let’s leave corporate personhood aside for a moment - as not only can this be limited but unequal treatment of corporations and individuals for many purposes is expressly permitted.
A long list of Supreme Court cases have recognized that First Amendment rights apply to corporations. These aren’t limited in any substantial way from those for individuals - except for these campaign finance rules. This inconsistency was addressed by the Court - correctly, in my view.
[ol]
[li]I agree with Volokhet al. that “corporations aren’t people” is weak. Corporations are tools created by people to do stuff, and you can’t argue that limiting them won’t inhibit the ability of people to do stuff. (You can say that maybe we *should *inhibit certain abilities, but painting corporations as faceless monoliths is inaccurate. Also remember that nonprofits also count as corporations.)[/li][li]Also as per Volokh, politics, at least a politics as expansive as ours, is a zero-sum game. If corporations lose, then other folks gain. What sort of folks? Lobbyists, academics, journalists, celebrities, and the individually extremely rich. Taking the broad view, then, nixing corporate speech will increase, not decrease, individual inequality in political influence.[/li][li]All that said, I’m concerned about the practical effect of increased corporate political influence. By and large, profit-seeking corporations only have one reason to get involved with politics, and that is rent-seeking. Google will want subsidized free broadband, GM will want protectionism, and Goldman Sachs will want implicit government guarantees against collapse. Of course, even if corporate speech is muzzled there’s nothing to stop them from hiring lobbyists, so the marginal effect of this decision may not be that great. A longer-term solution would be to limit the government’s ability to grant economic rents, whether by drawing back its powers to begin with or by agitating voter sentiment against corporate welfare.[/li][li]This really shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Corporations regularly donate to both parties, and in 2008 Obama received morecorporate donations than McCain.[/li][/ol]
We have had both parties trying to get financing reform due to the obvious corruption of big money in politics. There is no logical reason to believe that corporations being able to bring unlimited money into campaigns will make us a better system. They will be a more corrupting force than they ever have been. The health care bill was attacked by 1500 lobbyists. why is that? Do you suppose they think pouring money into the bills will have no effect? Anybody arguing that this will not increase the strangle hold corporations have on us are deluding themselves. This subject gets tons of debate in the house and floor. Almost all politicians agree something has to be done to keep them from spending their lives whoring for money. This screws up everything on a fundamental and scary level.
OK, it was “inconsistent”. Why does that need to be addressed, correctly or no? What is the problem that needs to be solved? That an actual person has more human rights than a legal fiction? Is Lockheed having some issues in regard to its freedom to worship as it chooses? Has the issue of religious freedoms for non-existent persons been fully addressed? Seems rather inconsistent, shouldn’t we get right on that?
Of course there is an inconsistency, there should be an inconsistency. We are actually people, and they are not. Needless to say, I don’t mean this to suggest any unequal rights for replicants. That is an issue to resolve at another juncture.
41 industry leaders call on Congress to halt corporate 'bribery' - Raw Story Here is a response from 41 industry leaders decrying this horrible ruling and the evil damage it will do to our already wounded political system. Even some conservative rich types recognize.the damage that this decision will do.
One of the most shocking things about money in politics is how little is actually spent. Considering that having a Senator vote one way or another can be worth 10 figures to the bottom line, and even the most expensive campaigns usually fall in the very low 8 digits (in 2008, Franken and Coleman spent a bit above 10 million each, iirc), it’s irresponsible for a corporation to not try to influence policy, for the sake of it’s shareholders.
Remember when Obama did what was essentially a shakedown of pharmaceuticals back in May, to get something like a warchest of free funds to use against insurance companies? There’s a reason PHRMA agreed to that–150 million doesn’t amount to much when you’re being guaranteed tens of billions.
Have you ever donated to a political candidate? Or, even if you have not, do you think anyone who’s donated to a political candidate is being stupid and/or irrational in thinking that their money will help the cause?
Or do you think political candidates are stupid in trying to raise money, because money doesn’t matter in the end?
If you’re not willing to make those claims, you’re sort of evading the central point that allowing corporate donations will influence who wins elections and who loses them, to the betterment of corporate interests. Which may well be better for the common interest–what’s good for GM and all–but that’s another debate.
Perhaps. But consider a company like Exxon. Though it’s hardly the paragon of corporate wholesomeness, any image problem doesn’t seem to have cut too sharply into their bottom line. This is despite the fact that it’s pumped millions of dollars into faux-think tanks that put out propaganda arguing that global warming is a myth. So at least some corporations get away with pumping out disinformation without facing much meaningful blowback.
This isn’t to say I think this ruling is the end of the world. As a couple of the examples I mentioned suggest, corporations influencing public opinion and government officials for their own interests is already widespread, so I doubt we’ll see a qualitative change in how big business operates in the political sphere. It does, however, make it easier, so it’s not something to celebrate.