Senators, Representatives up for auction!

[Surlethe]

Thanks, SCOTUS.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participation in federal campaigns.

By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions.

Critics of the stricter limits have argued that they amount to an unconstitutional restraint of free speech, and the court majority apparently agreed.

"The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion, joined by his four more conservative colleagues.

However, Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting from the main holding, said, "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation."

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens' dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

Advocates of strong campaign finance regulations have predicted that a court ruling against the limits would lead to a flood of corporate and union money in federal campaigns as early as this year's midterm congressional elections.

The decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, removes limits on independent expenditures that are not coordinated with candidates' campaigns.

The case also does not affect political action committees, which mushroomed after post-Watergate laws set the first limits on contributions by individuals to candidates. Corporations, unions and others may create PACs to contribute directly to candidates, but they must be funded with voluntary contributions from employees, members and other individuals, not by corporate or union treasuries.

My opinion on this is the same for unions and corporations both: they're not people and they don't have any guarantee of free speech. That's the end of the legal story. Moreover, they're contractual conglomerations of individuals, and nothing more. If unions and corporations feel that their interests are threatened, then they're more than welcome to have their constituent individuals contribute, but there's no reason they should be allowed to put the collective (and hence of greater impact than almost all single individual's) resources of their constituents to work for a particular candidate.

[Patrick Degan]

My opinion on this is the same for unions and corporations both: they're not people and they don't have any guarantee of free speech. That's the end of the legal story. Moreover, they're contractual conglomerations of individuals, and nothing more. If unions and corporations feel that their interests are threatened, then they're more than welcome to have their constituent individuals contribute, but there's no reason they should be allowed to put the collective (and hence of greater impact than almost all single individual's) resources of their constituents to work for a particular candidate.

Yes but for so long as two legal fictions continue to persist —that money=speech and that unions and corporations are persons— there is about zero chance of this decision ever being revisited much less overturned.

[D.Turtle]

That was widely expected, with the Supreme Court Justices being who they are. Lets hope the results won't be too bad. Its not as if corporations in the US don't have enough influence as it is already.

However, Alan Grayson has introduced a couple of bills in the House to stop this from being too bad - not that they will pass, but the names are simply too good not to post:
The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act
The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act
The End Political Kickbacks Act
Ending Corporate Collusion Act
Public Company Responsibility Act

Here is what they do:

The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act would impose a 500 percent excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns. The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act would require public companies to report what they spend to influence public opinion on any matter other than the promotion of their goods and services. The End Political Kickbacks Act would restrict political contributions by government contractors.

The other measures would apply antitrust regulations to political committees and bar corporations from securities exchanges unless the corporation is certified in compliance with election law.

[Mr. Coffee]

So how long before the Capitol Building has enough sponsor logos on it to put a NASCAR racecar to shame? I can see it now...

CSPAN opening with "This session of the US Senate brought to you by Viagra!"

A fifty foot high Budweiser logo dead center of the dome...

Congressmen wearing jackets with patches of all the companies that sponsored their campaigns...

It'll be fucking AWESOME! We can finally end the behind the bush shit and just come clean that special interests run the fucking place.

[Guardsman Bass]

I just read the opinion of the Court, which can be read here (if the PDF isn't working, I got the link from this blog post).

They basically justified it on two grounds:

1)that there have been a numerous amount of cases prohibiting free speech restrictions based on the speaker's "corporate identity", and the one case (the Austin case) that permitted restrictions was incorrect, and

2)a narrower definition of the law in question to allow non-profits and/or groups like the "Citizens United" group that started the case would have a "chilling effect" on free speech.

I suppose the bright side is that they upheld disclosure requirements, which Citizens United had also attempted to strike down. They also didn't wipe out the ban on direct contributions to candidates running for political office except through legally established means of doing so (like PACs, which were heavily criticized). That means that a corporation or corporate-funded group could directly advertise for a candidate, but presumably they couldn't coordinate this advertisement with the candidates' campaign.

That said, I'm not too happy about this decision. It will inject even more money into federal elections, and no doubt lead to a greater amount of political commercial spam on television and elsewhere.

[Gil Hamilton]

Ah, I wondered when this would happen. Now a suitcase full of money isn't a bribe anymore; it's a pursuasive argument. After all, when corporations give large sums of money to politicians in exchange for legislative favors, it's free speech, right?

I don't understand how people can defend this. Virtually the only argument I've heard that even makes a little sense is that this way, when corporations bribe politicians in exchange for favors, there is a chance it will be public record. However, this isn't that good an argument in general.

Mostly, this is making sure Big Business runs the government even more than it already does.

[Anguirus]

How horrid. And unsurprisingly, it was a party-line vote over a situation that benefits Republicans more than Democrats.

[aerius]

Awesome. Now everyone can use the Fannie Mae method of taking bailout money from the government, paying out wads of bonuses, and using the remainder to buy more bailouts from the government. There's gonna be one hell of a funding circlejerk going down in DC. I need to move to the US and become a lobbyist.

[Soontir C'boath]

I can see this making individual donors hesitate to give if the candidate will kowtow to the corporate entities due to their large contributions. They instead will silence the people ironically. Of course, it's not as if they haven't been ignoring us anyway (health care, et al).

[bobalot]

Nearly other functioning western democracy puts limits on corporate and union donations. America once again makes itself an object of ridicule.

[Highlord Laan]

So since it's legal for congressional and senatorial scum to sell their votes to the highest bidder, I expect the rest of us to be able to do so as well.

I look forward to seeing that court case.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Talk about judicial activism.... Democracy takes another hit - a big one too.

[Darksider]

This is total bullshit. Any moron with a high school diploma (well, maybe not an American one) ought to be able to see that allowing companies to directly donate as much as they damn well please to a political campaign will have disasterous effects on the political process. Even a single large corporation has financial resources that millions of average citizens working in concert would be unable to match. This thread may have been titled in jest, but that's exactly what we now have. Senators and representatives are up on the auction block, and the citizens of the United States have already been priced out of the bidding war.

Why should corporations have any expectation of the right to free speech? We allow corporations to exist as separate legal entities to protect people from liability if they go tits up, but that doesn't magically make them real people, in fact, by enabling them to use their vast resources in the political arena without limitation, we are enabling them to trample on the rights of ordinary citizens.

I'm getting so sick of this shit! Hey aerius. If I need to flee to canada, can I crash with you for a few days until I find some lodgings?

[Gil Hamilton]

Why should corporations have any expectation of the right to free speech? We allow corporations to exist as separate legal entities to protect people from liability if they go tits up, but that doesn't magically make them real people, in fact, by enabling them to use their vast resources in the political arena without limitation, we are enabling them to trample on the rights of ordinary citizens.

I'm getting so sick of this shit! Hey aerius. If I need to flee to canada, can I crash with you for a few days until I find some lodgings?

The question is not that why shouldn't corporations have the right to free speech. People respresenting companies can speak on behalf of candidates as much as they want and the people running companies may vote for whomever they want.

The question is why the hell giving money to someone counts as free speech. That's what's on extremely strained logic. I've yet to hear a convincing argument for this that didn't also basically state that directly bribing authorities is alright. After all, it's "free speech", right?

[Guardsman Bass]

Again, keep in mind that it still bars unlimited direct donations to a candidate - this just means they can advertise as much as they want for a candidate. That's a problem, but not so much than if SCOTUS had completely nuked campaign finance laws.

[Gil Hamilton]

Again, keep in mind that it still bars unlimited direct donations to a candidate - this just means they can advertise as much as they want for a candidate. That's a problem, but not so much than if SCOTUS had completely nuked campaign finance laws.

What's the practical difference? Most of a candidates expenses go to advertisement. A company need only coordinate with a candidate to take over a hunk of his advertising costs and in the process do all the wining/dining/expensive present/et cetera bribery stuff. This just gives a vector for giving a candidate vast sums on money under the aegis of "advertising".

[Teebs]

Nearly other functioning western democracy puts limits on corporate and union donations. America once again makes itself an object of ridicule.

They also tend to have spending limits for political parties which help reduce the influence of big donors - if no party can spend above a certain amount then it doesn't matter so much if one party can get huge sums from corporations while another can't.

[Pulp Hero]

So, moeny is free speech then?

I wonder if candidates could directly pay voters to vote for them. Write up a contract to the individual with payment upon voting results.

[Surlethe]

I'm not sure I understand the interpretation that "money = free speech". Money can be turned into speech -- e.g., by funding the production of an ad -- so any restrictions on converting money to speech are necessarily restrictions on speech. That's straightforward. The real legal question is whether corporations, unions, and other super-entities have free speech rights in the first place, and that ties to the ethical question of whether they should be considered persons. It's interesting, because the flavor of that disagreement seems somewhat similar to the flavor of the question of taxing corporate profits, since those profits are going to be taxed anyway when they turn into dividends.

[Guardsman Bass]

The real legal question is whether corporations, unions, and other super-entities have free speech rights in the first place, and that ties to the ethical question of whether they should be considered persons.

"Corporate person-hood" was definitely a major factor in this decision. If you look at the Opinion of the Court, a big part of their justification of their decision was from what they claimed was a long list of Court cases that protected free speech from speakers with "corporate identities".

[Surlethe]

I can't help but wonder if the legal status of corporations as taxable entities has added to the precedent for this case. I don't want to drag this thread into a debate on that subject, but at the same time the parallels seem to run deep.

[Sriad]

This is EASILY the most a political event has pissed me off since George the Dumber left office.

All the hand flapping apologists who suggest corporations WON'T be willing to spend a few hundred million dollars nationwide to reap tens of billions in benefits until the next election cycle are living in a fantasy world.

Or they're lying shitsack Republicans more concerned with their party's return to power than with the preservation of Liberty and Self-Representation.

[Sriad]

Again, keep in mind that it still bars unlimited direct donations to a candidate - this just means they can advertise as much as they want for a candidate. That's a problem, but not so much than if SCOTUS had completely nuked campaign finance laws.

What's the practical difference? Most of a candidates expenses go to advertisement. A company need only coordinate with a candidate to take over a hunk of his advertising costs and in the process do all the wining/dining/expensive present/et cetera bribery stuff. This just gives a vector for giving a candidate vast sums on money under the aegis of "advertising".

Indeed there's no difference; in fact it can even be MORE beneficial for a corporation to spend $X advertising than the candidate.

Let's say Rick Santorum is trying to return to office. He publishes a list of official positions for "Campaign Endorsed" ads to stick to. If a particular ad goes too far, Santorum can publicly distance himself from THAT corporation's "vile, slanderous attack ads" while reaping the benefits that go with it.

The corporations can (unless I'm mistaken) hide money they're spending by ONLY disclosing the up-front production and ad-space costs of their . Focus groups and advertising firm consultancy (I bet they get a bulk discount for going through whoever already does their ads!) both seem like ideal under-the-rug costs, and I barely know anything about the ad-making process.

[Surlethe]

All the hand flapping apologists who suggest corporations WON'T be willing to spend a few hundred million dollars nationwide to reap tens of billions in benefits until the next election cycle are living in a fantasy world.

Even better, look at all the lobbying: IIRC, $300,000,000 last year on health care alone. Businesses obviously think that spending several hundred million dollars in lobbying will be quite worth the cost, or else they wouldn't be doing it!

[ArmorPierce]

Ah, I wondered when this would happen. Now a suitcase full of money isn't a bribe anymore; it's a pursuasive argument. After all, when corporations give large sums of money to politicians in exchange for legislative favors, it's free speech, right?

I don't understand how people can defend this. Virtually the only argument I've heard that even makes a little sense is that this way, when corporations bribe politicians in exchange for favors, there is a chance it will be public record. However, this isn't that good an argument in general.

Mostly, this is making sure Big Business runs the government even more than it already does.

At work I had a older woman going on about freedom of speech and how people against it were ridiculous anti-free speechers. Her source was her husband. She actually had people agreeing with her until I later went to them and explained what really was happening.