You're quite wrong. I won't bother proving it since another poster already did in post 551 and 553.
How?
With this?
In what meaningful sense? That's like saying if you write me a check I have "access" to your bank account. Money flows into and out of every account in the country--do we all have "access" to everyone else's account?
No.
He only supports my argument with that statement. Everyone in the country (not to mention the world) does, indeed, have indirect access to everyone else’s account.
Example: If I give you permission to give your bank permission to request that my bank transfer funds from my account to your account…As in, writing you a check.
Indirect access.
Only if you believe in corporate personhood. Otherwise, the economy should serve the people. Businesses are the engine of the economy but the people should be the owners of the economy just like a business owner is the owner of said business and the employees are the engine of that business. In our corporatocracy the people are simply consumers. We have lost control of our economy and now everything we do is for the benefit of corporations with the failed Reaganomics mantra of -what's good for corporations is good for the people.- We've seen time and again that this is not true and the evidence today is more clear than it's been since the 1920s. The stock market is up, productivity is up, wages are down and unemployment is up. We bailed out Wall Street to stop the damage, all of which proves that Reaganomics doesn't actually work.
No.
I do not believe in corporate personhood, in the sense of a corporation being a “person”.
If our current law says that corporations have certain rights, it is because a person or a group of people challenged the rights of the people who own, control, run, and manage said corporation…And the court denied the validity of the challenge.
Corporations cause and have problems because they are controlled, managed, and operated by people. Corporations are not the issue, individual people are.
Nope. More often than not it's the policies of the corporation that allowed the individuals to do the actions and then the corporation promptly tries to cover it up. History provides us these facts.
And who made those policies?
Did they spring, in whole form, from the magical entity which is a corporation, upon its conception by a group of people?
No, those policies were formed and written by individuals, and it is those individuals who should pay the price, through damage to their corporation.
Thus the attempt/success at a cover-up.
So you DO see the problem and you agree that corps need regulation to keep them from doing harm to the economy.
I see the need for corporations to be regulated/policed to prevent them from doing harm to the people and environment around them, within reason. I suppose a sufficiently large corporation could cause harm to the whole intricate, world-wide economy…
You say it's not a problem of corporations and then tell us that corporations do "influence" politicians. So the bribing or blackmailing isn't the problem it's the guys who accept the bribes or go along with the blackmail. I say it's a problem with BOTH.
It is perfectly reasonable to expect someone (especially, a CEO or lobbyists working for a company, as it is their job to do so) representing a company to use means at their disposal to advance their interests. If violations of the law occur (as in, bribes/blackmail), they should be punished for it, but legally lobbying is, obviously, not illegal.
Until it is, somehow, made so, it is all on the politicians to resist its power, and represent the people, not just those who donate the most/can hire lobbing firms
Additionally obvious is that in a perfect world, corporations would not lobby for policies which cause harm to anyone.
But as people live in this world, it is not perfect.
Seriously, you are really grasping at straws.
How the hell is that grasping at straws? That is
precisely what is happening.
Who's free speech? The owner of the corporation or the corporations themselves? We know the owner has free speech as a person/citizen. If that owner was unemployed and didn't own the corporation would he still have his free speech protected? According to what you just said, the owner would have no free speech if he didn't own a corporation.
Gah!
A corporation is an extension of the will of its owners, or if a publicly traded corporation, of those who directly control it.
Thus, limiting the use of corporate funds when used for speech purposes, also limits the speech of those who control those funds.
Obviously, they can still use their personal funds for speech purposes…
Why should it? Who says that we should try to interpret the constitution? I believe we have an amendment process if there needs changes but there is nothing in the Constitution or quotes from the FF on the need to interpret the Constitution.
Who says they lose their right? No one, that's another strawman. People retain their constitutional right when they go to work for a business. Therefore there is no need to give the corporation itself the right to free speech. That would be a right for the owner in addition to the right he already has. He has the right to free speech in or outside of the company. You're saying let him ALSO use company funds as well as his own.
Yes.
He is.
But it’s not “in addition to”.
It’s “in affirmation of”.
Specious argument. Who is having their rights cut off? Entities that are not people. The only free speech a corporation has is if the owner(s) speaks using his mouth or his own money, in that case he is not exercising his corporations speech he is exercising his own. The SCOTUS has decided that he may also use corporate funds.
Yes.
They did.
Corporate funds are NOT funds of the owner as this would violate the shield of liability. Therefore, to get around this, the SCOTUS decided that the corporation itself could use corporate funds. How will the corporation do this? It can't, a corporation has no hands to write a check... it has no corporeal existence and is therefore an entity and not a human nor animal nor any organic matter. In fact a corporation has no matter. It is words on a document.
Now this argument makes a little sense.
I can see the reason why corporate funds are not those of its owner. But corporate funds are still used at the will of those who control said corporation.
As I said before: If they want to allocate funds to run a political ad supporting a candidate whose policies will improve the environment which their company operates in, why should they be disallowed from doing so?
This is a good point. However, do we not have regulations that corporations are subject to and not people? Can we not make corporate law to cover these things along with all the other corporate laws currently in effect? Obviously the answer is yes. So why do we need to grant corporations protections under the Constitution instead of just protecting those things under corporate law? Because corporate interests get little pieces of personhood here and there whenever the court has a conservative, corporatist majority.
Those corporate regulations and such, and the protections they have under the law, are not to protect the corporations (Or not most of them, I don’t know what all they are), but to protect the people who make up those corporations.
Understanding this leads you to the conclusion that corporations were never intended to be considered anything more than a vehicle to conduct business separate from personal activities.
Precisely.
And freedom to speak on behalf of your business interests is what the SCOTUS upheld.
The "group" has no rights of its own; the people have rights as individuals. Just like a corporation has no rights of its own, however the people who work there or own the company retain their rights. Now you are saying that the Owner can do X as an individual AND then do X again as the owner. What is X? In this case it’s spending money on political ads. The owner can buy 2 ads compared to the employee who can only buy 1.
Yes…And?
