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Supreme Court Overturns Limits on Corporate Spending in Political Campaigns

Vader said:
The constitution was intended to protect people... not big business.
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Says who?

The First Amendment says nothing about protecting people or business (which is also people, by the way). It protects SPEECH.

I suppose it will at that. I just do not like business having the ability to buy off politicians. It just bothers me.
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Um, this decision did NOT change the longstanding ban on corporate contributions to politicians. That is still illegal.

Business and government should never be bedfellows. The result of this is ugly, corrupt, unscrupulous children who seek profit and nothing more.
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I find that attitude absurd and disturbing. Business is good. It's how people make a living. Business doesn't actually vote, the people do, so your fixation is overblown.
 
Coronado said:
So which corporations that you know of are buying votes? Be specific.
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Seriously? You don't think politicians are influenced by contributions at all? You don't think corporations and unions contribute in order to have influence? You think they do it out of the kindness of their hearts?
 
Groucho said:
Seriously? You don't think politicians are influenced by contributions at all? You don't think corporations and unions contribute in order to have influence? You think they do it out of the kindness of their hearts?
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So there are lots of them? Then it shouldn't be hard to answer the question.

As for influence, it's not power. You have no right to limit influence or say the voters shouldn't be influenced by something. That's their decision, not yours.
 
Groucho said:
Seriously? You don't think politicians are influenced by contributions at all? You don't think corporations and unions contribute in order to have influence? You think they do it out of the kindness of their hearts?
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I didn't say anything about politicians. I'm talking about voters.
 
Groucho said:
Really? People aren't influenced by advertising at all? Not in the slightest?
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I'm not talking about advertising.

Vader said corporations buy votes. I want to know which ones.
 
Groucho said:
Really? People aren't influenced by advertising at all? Not in the slightest?
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Of course they are.

What's wrong with that? People have a right to base their vote on whatever they want. It's scary that anyone would suggest that voters should be shielded from certain messages because they don't like this fact.
 
U.S. Army Retired said:
This is great news indeed. This means if Palin runs for Pres the Oil Companies can endorse her and donate big to her campaign which I will support and donate to. The 1st Ammendment prevails. Now if the SCOTUS would enforce Article 2 Sec 1 Clause 5 of the Constitution requiring you have to be a Natural Born Citizen to be President reflecting on the usurper Obama, everything would be ok.
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Yes, imagine Palin with a billion in her war chest, and from only one company. :lol: She could go ahead and buy CNN and we could watch her all day.
 
misterman said:
Really? Who is selling?

Seriously, buying votes is illegal. If a voter freely chooses to vote for someone based on the ads he or she saw on TV, that's democracy. You have no right to tell voters they are too dumb to hear certain speech just because you don't like it or think it's too much. Pretty simple concept.
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Pretty simple if you don't give a !*%$ about the democratic process. Inevitably, no one who is independent of corporate money will be able to rise and run for office. So what difference does it make to have a vote?
 
Cassandra said:
Pretty simple if you don't give a !*%$ about the democratic process. Inevitably, no one who is independent of corporate money will be able to rise and run for office. So what difference does it make to have a vote?
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Um, if everyone is voting for those who have corporate money, then the voters must be happy with those who have corporate money. They watch the ads, and they respond to them. Nothing is forcing them to do that. Nothing is preventing them from learning plenty about the other candidates by reading a newspaper or looking them up on the internet.

The voters choose. They have all the power. They are making choices based on certain information, and you don't like those choices but that's too bad. They are not brainwashed idiots. If you think they are, you're the one with a problem with democracy.

I don't know how to put it any more bluntly - you lose, get over it. The voters choose candidates with corporate money. It's their choice.
 
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misterman said:
Um, if everyone is voting for those who have corporate money, then the voters must be happy with those who have corporate money. They watch the ads, and they respond to them. Nothing is forcing them to do that. Nothing is preventing them from learning plenty about the other candidates by reading a newspaper or looking them up on the internet.

The voters choose. They have all the power. They are making choices based on certain information, and you don't like those choices but that's too bad. They are not brainwashed idiots. If you think they are, you're the one with a problem with democracy.



I don't know how to put it any more bluntly - you lose, get over it. The voters choose candidates with corporate money. It's their choice.
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They don't have a choice to begin with. The have democrats and republicans! They have faux choices most of the time. Unlike you, I would like the voters to have real choices.
 
Cassandra said:
They don't have a choice to begin with. The have democrats and republicans! They have faux choices most of the time. Unlike you, I would like the voters to have real choices.
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That is much more the fault of ballot access laws than corporations.
 
Morality Games said:
All of them are non-absolute. Legal absolutes are virtually impracticable. Something always goes wrong. Like:

1. Random stranger comes into your house, steps on top of your living room table, and begins a monologue on the importance of saving white tigers, then vigorously protests when the police come to drag him off on the grounds he is being physically prevented from performing his free speech right. If the free speech right were absolute, then the property right would have to give and be the temporal right that gets trumped.
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This doesn't make any sense. You say rights aren't absolute, and use this as an example, but breaking into someone's house and blabbering about white tigers is not a right, so how have you've demonstrated that rights are not absolute?

2. Guy cites privacy right when police have compelling evidence items incriminating him in a murder are hidden in his house. Search warrants would not exist if the privacy right was being practiced as an absolute.
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Again, you say rights aren't absolute, and use this as an example, but refusing a lawful search warrant is not a right, so how have you demonstrated that rights are not absolute?

And so on. Material necessity compels us to interpret and practice our constitutional rights as non-absolutes. This has had the unfortunate side effect of diluting their potency, but there's not much we can do if we want to have both property rights and free speech rights, for example.
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We can violate rights, but we cannot take them away. You don't seem to understand the difference.
 
Vader said:
Actually, it's not fascist at all. Corporations are not people. People have rights in this country; big business does not.

I know your righties don't like anything that limits big busineses corrupting influence... but that is, as you so nicely put it, of little consequence.
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Corporations are made up of people. Those people can pool their resources and endorse whatever candidate or position they want. They can even do so in the name of their business. I'm not sure why this is so confusing to you.
 
Coronado said:
That is much more the fault of ballot access laws than corporations.
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Sure, I favor instant run-off and other measures to expand choices but I don't know how you can deny that money is not a major factor in limiting choices.
 
Cassandra said:
Sure, I favor instant run-off and other measures to expand choices but I don't know how you can deny that money is not a major factor in limiting choices.
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Money can not prevent someone from going into the polling booth and flipping the switch for the candidate of his choice.
 
misterman said:
Really? Who is selling?
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It's not a matter of who is selling. It's a matter of big business special interests flashing unimaginable large sums of money in front of a greedy politician who is willing to bend over and spread his/her cheeks to get it.
 
And yet more.

The nutjobs over at dailykos took a break riling up the Alito lynch-mob to actually look at the Citizens United decision for a few seconds and came up with this:

Yeah, I know, I know, evil corporations are about to flood the political process with all sorts of outlandish expenditures certain to wreck our political discourse and install a thousand-year plutocracy. But before we all dive off the deep end, a quick before-and-after.

Before Citizens United:

* Corporations could make direct financial contributions to candidates in 27 states, but not in federal elections.
* In 26 states, corporations could run direct advertising for or against the election of a state/local candidate.
* In all 50 states and in federal elections, corporations could run "issue advertising" against candidates saying "Sen. [X] is wrong on this issue and is a bad person, so call him on the phone and say so," and as long as it didn't say "and you shouldn't vote for him" and wasn't too close to an election, it was legal.

After Citizens United:

* Corporations can make direct financial contributions to candidates in 27 states, but not in federal elections.
* In all 50 states and in federal elections, corporations can run direct advertising for or against the election of a candidate.
* In all 50 states and in federal elections, corporations can run "issue advertising" against candidates saying "Sen. [X] is wrong on this issue and is a bad person" as well as "so don't vote for him."

Is this really that large of a difference?
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I can't believe I'm saying this, but some people here could take lessons from them.
 
RightinNYC said:
And yet more.

The nutjobs over at dailykos took a break riling up the Alito lynch-mob to actually look at the Citizens United decision for a few seconds and came up with this:



I can't believe I'm saying this, but some people here could take lessons from them.
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I agree. I have already said that it won't make things a whole lot worse. The process is already terribly corrupted- so why is that a strong argument for putting more fuel on a fire already out of control?
 
Coronado said:
Money can not prevent someone from going into the polling booth and flipping the switch for the candidate of his choice.
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As I said, already, it can prevent people w/o the backing of moneyed interests from being on a ballot to begin with.
 
Vader said:
It's not a matter of who is selling. It's a matter of big business special interests flashing unimaginable large sums of money in front of a greedy politician who is willing to bend over and spread his/her cheeks to get it.
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Do you have anything rational to add or are you just going to fling mindless cliches?
 
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