On January 21, he U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down federal laws that make it illegal for corporations and unions to spend money, commenting on candidates for federal office. The vote was 5-4.
Read the decision here. Here is an article by Lyle Denniston on scotusblog that is clear, neutral and useful, about what comes next in campaign finance jurisprudence.
Will a zillion FOREIGN corporations (and/or American Indian tribe corporations) now spend $$$ TRILLIONS to get control of the U.S.A. gerrymander regime — using some of the cash they get via the U.S.A. trade surpluses they have been getting since the early 1980s ???
Ask any 7 year old kid on the street —
Hey kid — do you see any corporation ??? — a FICTIONAL INVISABLE *person*.
The kid’s answer — after getting a definition of a corporation. Obviously NO — since the kid has more brain cells than the senile party hack Supremes.
One more constitutional crisis if 1 of the gang of 5 retires or dies ??? Duh.
P.R. and A.V.
The full PDF of the decision is available here:
http://assets.sunlightfoundation.com/pdf/08-205.pdf
Note that it is 183 pages long. Stevens’ dissent, in which Breyer, Sotomayor and Ginsburg concur is 56 pages.
Most of the other justices wrote their own opinions, so it is at least apparently a divided majority.
Thomas’ response is the shortest and peculiar. He seems to be concerned mostly with the privacy of Prop 8 petition signers. Not sure what that had to do with the original case.
Demo Rep
“Will a zillion FOREIGN corporations (and/or American Indian tribe corporations) now spend $$$ TRILLIONS to get control of the U.S.A. gerrymander regime — ”
lay off the crack, or find a different kind of blog to post on. Im sure the folks at prison planet would be interested in your ideas.l
Will – All of his comments are like this. Tons of random capitalization, calling somebody a “MORON” and making really strange insinuations (American Indian tribe corporations?). We’ve all just learned to ignore him by now.
#3 and 4 — Folks with some brains will detect the mention of foreign corporations in such 183 pages of stuff.
Just enough know-it-all constitutional law JERKS on this list to make it interesting.
For dummies — American Indian tribes have a special internal foreign status for history reasons — now especially with the zillions they get from tribal casinos.
Since corporations are owned by the stockholders, why are we allowing corporate management to spend money on campaigns without first contacting the owners of the company.
We require that unions do, and the Constitution states that the Republic is the representation of the people, not the corporations.
Let’s require that all companies, subsidiaries, or partnertships have a vote by stockholders, whether through mutual funds, etf, or parent companies, on campaign spending before the company is able to spend. The burden of this would make most companies think twice about spending money in campaign financing.
Doug Holmes, MD
While representative democracy may have died today, it’s nice to know at least one member of Congress is already fighting back.
In anticipation of today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) introduced several pieces of legislation last week designed to prevent a corporate takeover of American politics and government.
Specifically, Grayson’s bold and punitive legislation (H.R. 4431-4435) calls for, among other things, a 500% excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees, and on corporate expenditures advocating the election or defeat of a particular candidate.
As part of his “Save Our Democracy” reform package and in response to Dr. Holmes (comment #6), one of the Orlando congressman’s bills, if approved, would give shareholders the power to decide whether to spend money on political campaigns.
Grayson’s legislation also bars companies that make political contributions and expenditures from trading publicly on the national stock exchanges and applies antitrust laws to industry-related PACs to prevent corporate collusion in the electoral process.
Stockholders are free to propose corporation rules that bar that particular corporation from making comments about candidates for office.
The decision will be very helpful to unions.
While shareholders do have the right to propose rules that forbid a corporation from supporting political candidates, anyone familiar with corporate elections know that achieving that is quite a different story.
Even the Securities and Exchange Commission, as recently as last spring, acknowledged that it’s almost impossible for shareholders to replace existing directors and challenges to incumbent directors are all too infrequent, largely because the corporation itself controls the company’s proxy card — the corporate ballots mailed to all shareholders in advance of an election.
Unless there is an extremely well-organized campaign on the part of shareholders to enact such rules, most corporations determined to make expenditures supporting or opposing particular candidates will be able to do so because of the proxy votes they control.
Grayson’s legislation, if approved, merely assures that the shareholders will be a mandatory part of that process.
Is it inconceivable that any entity designed to have limited liability — that is, limited responsibility for its actions — should also have only limited rights?
Who needs direct corporation bribes when there are a zillion zillion indirect corporation campaign ads in the media ???
How many candidates will be owning the media that get the corporation ads ???
Will there be ANY NON-candidate corporation ads in the days and weeks before each gerrymander election ???
P.R. and A.V. NOW — before it is too late.
A rather obvious constitutional amendment –
Sec. 1. Private artificial persons within the United States shall only have the rights, privileges and immunities permitted by law – but not greater than those of any natural person.
Sec. 2. The United States and the States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article within their respective jurisdictions by appropriate legislation.
This amendment is now required since the 5 party hack Supremes have created a mess even worse than the Dred Scott mess in 1857 by the then party hack Supremes [which took the horrific Civil War I and the resulting 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to reverse].
I.E. DS 1857 = CU 2010 = MINDLESS party hack Supremes — comes with being appointed by MINDLESS party hack Prezs and being confirmed by MINDLESS party hack Senators (many of which are from MINDLESS very small States).
Scott West wrote: “Most of the other justices wrote their own opinions, so it is at least apparently a divided majority.”
From the paragraph at the bottom of page 7 (I separated the sentences for “clarity?”:
KENNEDY, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and SCALIA and ALITO, JJ., joined, in which THOMAS, J., joined as to all but Part IV, and in which STEVENS, GINSBURG, BREYER, and SOTOMAYOR, JJ., joined as to Part IV.
ROBERTS, C. J., filed a concurring opinion, in which ALITO, J., joined.
SCALIA, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which ALITO, J., joined, and in which THOMAS, J., joined in part.
STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part,in which GINSBURG, BREYER, and SOTOMAYOR, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.