To me this goes more to treating corporations as citizens with the same rights a citizen possesses. They should not (IMO) be treated as such. Change that mentality and seems to me you could restrict their spending in politics with no problem.
Amendment time.
But they’re not ever going to back We The People either way. They must act only in the interest of their bottom line. Corporations should not be treated as people.
Capitalism just kicked Democracy in the nuts. I see this as The Bush Legacy in action.
Apparently the only way to do it now but I do not see it happening. Amendments are incredibly difficult things to get passed and in today’s partisan climate I doubt they could get an Amendment declaring kittens as cute passed.
Plus, it is in the incumbents’ favor (whatever their stripe) to keep the status quo so expect them to oppose it by-and-large.
Not holding my breath.
True, but they’re always on the same side - their own - regardless of which party they act through. In those instances where they help Dems that have decided to become corporate tools, I don’t feel like that’s to my advantage simply because I’m a Dem. I have reasons for being a Dem, and corporate-tool Dems frustrate those reasons.
Hell, even in the wake of this decision, if there were some way to modify it so that corporations could only run ads that aided Republicans, and couldn’t contribute any money to Democratic candidates, I’d regard that as a step in the right direction.
No, but after the unions aided Hillary to the nomination, the corporations would trash her in the general, and we’d have President McCain.
It was a completely predictable decision. This activist court has sided with corporations over and over. The idea that a corporation is a person is absurd. It got through the court by subterfuge over 100 years ago. You could never get this court to reject personhood. I can imagine the money that would be thrown against attempts to pass an amendment returning logic to our relationship with corporations.
In 1976 the Supreme Court declared that corporate political donations were not illegal but free speech and the lobbying system we have today began to develop (from a lobbying system that was a bunch of vestal virgins compared to the current lot.) The country has gone downhill ever since. When this passes things will get even worse. Obama needs to recess appoint six radical leftist SC judges in an FDR-style move to scrap all corporate interference in government (amongst a lot of other stuff). Make lobbying and politicians accepting money or in-kind payments from lobbyists federal crimes punished by twenty five year mandatory Supermax-in-a-cell-with-a-300-pound-psychopath sentences followed by execution. It’s a real shame Obama isn’t a subversive lefty, that’s what the country needs.
Not holding my breath, but gotta give it a shot.
This country needs an enema.
What does that part say?
What amazes me is how many of my comrades on the left hold the electorate in such complete comtempt. If elections are being fixed, ballot boxes stuffed, and votes suppressed, then we have a genuine issue. If the complaint is that the electorate is so stupid they fall for whatever a TV commercial tells them and that the other side has more money to run TV commercials, then I don’t see the problem.
People get to choose for whom they vote. You can either hold your nose at people and assume they are easily led and lied to, and will vote for whomever spends the most money, or you can educate people. On the left, we have the policies and ideals that are better for the majority of people. We just need to get that message out. And fancy, half hour prime time TV isn’t the only way to do that. We need to stop fucking whining and build up a true grass roots movement, both on the streets and on line. It doesn’t matter in the end how much the right spend, we have a better message. When we lose elections it isn’t because of TV spending, it is because we didn’t get out there and motivate people to get out and vote in their own self interest.
There are plenty more of us than them, which is what matters in democracy. If you trust the people, let the other side spend what they will. If you don’t trust the people, then maybe you are backing the wrong political system.
I am glad the Supreme Court has relieved me of the burden of suffrage. 
But the right to spend money to influence an election is not.
Upholding the disclosure requirement, IIRC.
That grossly oversimplifies the picture. There is a complex dynamic determining what choices ultimately are presented to the voters and what choices are omitted. (There is likewise a dynamic applicable to the range of acceptable/relevant positions in discussion of public issues more generally – see the Overton Window.) The “wealth primary” is an important part of that dynamic – but need not be, and the process would be more honest and democratic and flexible if it were not. There are many countries where campaign donations play no significant role in elections. E.g., in France, broadcasters, as a price of their licenses, are regarded to provide each candidate in an election with an equal amount of free airtime. Yet France remains at least as free a country as the U.S.
Now we don’t have to pretend corporations don’t run the country.
Mind you the following is not just from the “fringe”. This is front and center discourse today coming from mainstream media as well as congresscritters:
- Obama as a Kenyan Manchurian Candidate
- Death Panels
- Obama government = Socialist
- Obama government = Fascist
The list can go on. Hard not to hold my fellow Americans in contempt over that. I have no problem with considered disagreement on policies but we are soooo far from that these days it really isn’t funny. If Americans were as reasonable as you suppose they’d be kicking their representatives in the head and turning off Limbaugh. They aren’t. They are rewarding this discourse.
You expect this move to improve things?
And take us right back to the ‘taxation without representation’.
Corporations are not entitled to representation in government.
They. Are. Not. People.
The actual people who own stock in corporations already get representation. They shouldn’t be getting double representation through their ownership of those stocks. More than double, actually, since now that 1 dollar=1 vote, those corporations have REALLY disproportionate influence, as opposed to their mere disproportionate influence prior to this decision.
First please point to the part in the Constitution that makes that illegal (I can already tell you it isn’t there and it currently happens in the US).
Second, I am pointing out that corporations/businesses should not be viewed as citizens with the same rights as citizens. That is not to say they get zero rights but are not covered, as an entity, the same as a citizen by the Constitution.