I’m against this proposed amendment, and I think it’s a shame that so much liberal energy has been focused on the supposed evils of Citizens United. Trading political power for money is a problem, but it’s not even in the top five biggest problems in Washington, and you don’t get to solve that problem by telling people they can’t pool their money to engage in political speech.
That said, I find the posturing by people like the OP to be absurd. The parties have not switched places on the sanctity of the First Amendment. The liberal component of the Democratic Party remains the staunchest and sometimes sole defenders of the freedom of expression, freedom of the press, separation of church and state, and free exercise for non-Christians.
I’m glad that the GOP has joined the ACLU in opposing restrictions on political speech. They are also pretty good on the rights of abortion protestors. And there has also been some libertarian-GOP support for things like ending restrictive campus speech codes. But get back to me when a substantial number of conservatives also join the ACLU in opposing the banning of books like Harry Potter, opposing school punishment for student off-campus speech, opposing library filtering of LGBT websites, supporting state freedom of information laws, supporting the right to photograph the police, denouncing FBI targeting of political protestors, ending mandatory prayer and religious oaths in military services, supporting prisoner rights to religious accommodation, and a dozen other areas in which the main opponents of the First Amendment are conservatives.
As Ray Bradbury famously said, “there are many ways to burn a book.”
Banning movies may not literally be the same thing but for all intents and purposes it is and people who supported suppressing the documentary Hillary:The Movie were endorsing book burning.
Why else do you think the ACLU endorsed Citizens United.
Political power becoming a commodity might not be one the top five biggest visible problems in Washington. But it probably was the cause for whatever you consider the top five political problems.
I said nothing about corporations not being citizens. I said corporations are not PEOPLE. Therefore not entitled to the same constitutional protections as human beings. The Roberts court used that contortionist logic to make the Citizens United ruling. A simple amendment saying, in nice, formal, legalese that “a corporation is not a person”, would knock out all the ramifications of it.
Not the same way as people. So if a legislature wants to pass a law saying the ACLU can’t make more than X amount of contributions to a political candidate or cause, they should be able to do that without having the constitution thrown in their face.
As **ITR champion **notes in the OP, a constitutional amendment is kind of a really big deal. And there was never any real possibility that this issue was going to be seriously addressed before the upcoming mid-term elections.
So it is easy for the majority of Democrats in the Senate to both voice their support and realize that the issue has zero chance of going anywhere. Voicing support pleases the base and runs zero risk that the issue is going to move to the front page.
After the mid-terms there will be a less than zero chance that this constitutional amendment will ever be heard of again.
I meant to say top five structural problems. I don’t even think it is in the top five of those, which I’d say are: (1) regulatory capture; (2) low participation in party primaries; (3) the increasingly anti-Democratic Senate and its rules; (4) party polarization; and (5) voter suppression and lack of a federal right to vote.
I could probably come up with a half-dozen more before I’d get to corporate funding of political speech.
Big money supports immigration reform, for example. The structural obstacles are a House of Representatives fearful of being primary’d in low turnout elections dominated by extreme partisans and a Senate in which individual Senators wield extraordinarily outsized power, along with a sprinkling of voter suppression and party polarization. That’s enough to prevent a policy with genuine bi-partisan majority support from becoming law.
So as soon as the Republicans gain a Congressional majority, they can pass a law limiting the ACLU’s political contributions to 50 cents and a box of Little Debbie snack cakes without “having the Constitution thrown in their face”.
And if the ACLU doesn’t think that’s constitutional, then tough beans, because the ACLU isn’t a person, and therefore has no right to sue in a court of law.
That’s the same kind of contortionist logic the Roberts court used. The point is limitations can be placed on corporate entities that cannot be placed on actual PEOPLE. Singling out a single corporation for limitations not placed on other corporations would be highly appropriate grounds to sue in court.
And yet it is a valid consequence of declaring that corporations are not people and do not have First Amendment rights - a majority government can shut its opponents out of the political process entirely by passing laws to specifically render them unable to function, and those opponents are left without any redress because the entity cannot sue on its own and the individuals who comprise it lack standing to sue on its behalf.
But who would sue? The ACLU can’t sue, because the ACLU is not a person and has no constitutional right to redress of grievances or the ability to file a suit since that power is restricted to persons. Its members can’t sue, because none of them as individuals have had their freedom restricted by the law and therefore they lack standing.
That’s the rub. In practice, laws to stop dishonest political ads will absolutely end up being used by the party in power to gag the opposition. The Official Honesty Commision basically decides that anything the opposion says is a lie, and suddenly they can’t say a thing without getting fined/arrested/whatever.
So what about the legislature passing a law saying that the New York Times was no longer allowed to use its resources (money) to publish editorials with political content that opposed or supported particular politicians, candidates, bills, laws, etc., etc.
Or a separate law passed that the Chicago Reader was similarly prohibited from using its resources (money) to permit political commentary to be posted on its message board forums, The Straight Dope. And all moderators of said board would be required to limit published posts to those that only included links to kittens.
Why can’t a corporation sue? An amendment that says a corporation is not a person doesn’t mean they have ZERO rights. It only means there can be limitations placed on them that can’t be placed on people. If you’re saying a corporation can’t sue, you’re also saying a corporation can’t BE SUED.
Same point. Any law that places restrictions on a single corporation that’s not placed on others would not be allowed. However any law that places restrictions on ALL corporations without regard to their function, would not be subject to constitutional scrutiny.
Lets’ get real. Corporation are not people. People bleed and die and have children, corporations don’t do any of that. A corporation is a legal tool that people, almost entirely rich people, use to advance their interests. Period. America is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. And corporations, my friend, are not people.
Because one of the fundamental principles of English Common Law, upon which our entire legal system is based, is that only a person may sue or be party to a lawsuit except in very specific and exotic circumstances. By and large, that’s the entire reason the concept of corporate personhood came to exist - so that a corporation could sue as a single entity, or be sued without the plaintiff having to separately serve each and every one of its shareholders and attempt to enforce separate judgments upon them all.
Exactly. Do you understand why stripping corporations of personhood is a bad idea now?
I said ALMOST entirely for a reason. You are just holding up exceptions that have little or no consequence on the issue of money in politics. A distraction, in other words. Most corporations that are trying to influence public policy do it for monetary reasons, not ideological ones. If they were people, they’d be sociopaths, totally obsessed with money and not at all concerned with human freedom or human suffering.