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Thursday, January 21, 2010
All You Need to Know About the Supreme Court Ruling on Campaign Finance is This:
One of the most evil things that the Supreme Court did in the 19th Century was to comment that corporations are legally equivalent to people. That was then, and still is today, bullshit. You cannot throw a corporation (or a labor union) in jail. All you can do is fine them, which the managers don't give a shit about, as long as the fines don't put the company into a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
This decision by the "conservatives" is what everyone expected, as they have consistently come down on the side of the powerful over the powerless. Allowing corporations and unions to flood the political process with money will only serve to drown out grass-roots organization attempts.
If the Democrats were of any force, it would be nice to see a bill passed to attack this ruling. But the Allies of the Rich and Powerful, namely the Republicans and the "Blue Dog" Democrats would never allow such a bill to make it out of committee.
Make no mistake about it: This ruling moves this nation incrementally closer to either full-blown corporate fascism or chaos.
Heckuvajob, guys.
15 comments:
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Eventually we will go back to the pre-union model: we will live in company** houses, go to company** doctors, etc. They;ll have "dead peasant" insurance policies on us, and we'll end up racking up huge amounts of debt that we'll spend the rest of our lives working for the company** at slave wages to pay off.
ReplyDeleteNo one will ever be able to pay off their debt, and eventually, children will inherit their parents' debts.
Then they can bring back debtor's prisons!
**That company will probably be WalMart.
really close and not many more nails needed to close the lid for good
ReplyDeleteConservatives love this, and I have no idea why. They don't seem to realize that the powerful corporations that decide our future won't be American ones, mostly. Drug cartels and terrorists and communists have money, too.
ReplyDeleteOh come now, this is America. All citizens are created equal, but some people are more equal than others. Since the Supremes have now rules that money is speech, that means that people with more money have more free-speech rights than people with less money, but that's okay, some people are more equal than others in this brave democracy of ours.
ReplyDeleteAlrighty, then!
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis, from Angry Bear, says it better than I can:
ReplyDeletehttp://angrybear.blogspot.com/2010/01/sauce-for-corporate-goose.html
Too much apathy in this country to do anything about it.
ReplyDeleteTerrant, I'd so something about that, but "Survivor:U.S. Health Care System" (wherein our contestants are dumped at the ER door and must emerge from the system alive at the end) is coming on. A penguin must have priorities!
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
"If the Democrats were of any force, it would be nice to see a bill passed to attack this ruling."
ReplyDeleteNow how would that work? It was tried with the McCain-Feingold CFR reforms and SCOTUS has been blowing holes in it ever since it was adopted. Passing another unconstitutional piece of legislation won't fix anything.
The 1st amendment has had the strict scrutiny principle applied to it which means the government needs a really good reason for infringing upon it and I'm honestly not seeing one with regards to companies taking out ads in support of a candidate. As Kennedy noted in the majority opinion this law prevents corporations like the Sierra Group, NRA, and ACLU from taking out ads in federal campaigns during the blackout window. We don't need that crap.
How is letting the ACLU do whatever they want with their money going to materialize into CrankyLitProf's doomsday scenario?
As long as we have a mechanism in place to track who's tossing the money around I'm fine. It's not like we're letting these groups actually vote in the elections. The people still decide.
Justin, the problem is that this gives the owners of corporations *TWICE* the free speech rights of us ordinary people. First, the owners of corporations have their own INDIVIDUAL free speech rights. Then they have their CORPORATE free speech rights, where they can *EXPENSE* their free speech (boy, I wish I could expense *my* free speech!).
ReplyDeleteLook, the owners of corporations already have free speech rights. They don't need their property (the corporations they own) to have free speech rights too. Depriving their property of free speech rights hurts nobody at all, because the owners still have all the individual free speech rights they ever possessed.
But the U.S. Supreme Court now rules that property, not individuals, has rights. Alrighty, then!
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
BT
ReplyDeleteOf course the narcissistic rethugs think property has rights, they value property higher than human life. They will send your kids to fight for property they don't own but might by sending your kids and never their own. They will pollute the earth. They will deny anything that will take value, perceived or otherwise, from them. They will lie, cheat, or whatever for property gain. Of course they will value property higher than you or me. Hell they "used" to value a black man at 3/5 the value of a white man. And if I remember my history correctly they didn't place any value on black or white women.
So of course they value corporate speech higher than anyone not holding their narcissistic views
Justin, a direct attack on the ruling may have to wait until Justice Kennedy retires (or dies). All it takes is for one state to seek to enforce its own ban and that will be up before the Supremes within a year after he steps down.
ReplyDeleteBadTux, for now, we can change the tax law so that any money spent on advertising of any type is not considered to be an expense for tax law. Corporations would have their speech, for now, but they would have to really pay for it.
Once with feeling: CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE AND THEREFORE NOT ENTITLED TO THE SAME FREE SPEECH RIGHTS AS HUMAN BEINGS.
ReplyDeletekoksuk muthafuk, are these people idiots?
Saw, back in the 1870s or so, the Supremes had a throwaway line in a decision that said that they didn't need to decide if corporations were legally people, because they just were. And ever since then, they've stuck to that.
ReplyDeleteIt is a ridiculous concept, but we're stuck with it, for now.
So I saw we go with it. We hold that the directors officers of a corporation are the flesh-and-blood avatars for the corporation. If s corporation breaks the law, the directors and officers go to jail. If a corporation causes someone's death, those people are executed.
Let the fun begin.
"BadTux, for now, we can change the tax law so that any money spent on advertising of any type is not considered to be an expense for tax law."
ReplyDeleteYou'd find no disagreement with me on that notion.