So much for public financing

[nova]

We don't allow corporations to vote; we shouldn't allow them to voice opinions. The exceptions of course would be those organizations explicitly created to express political opinions, but Ford Motors and UAW should have no voice and no dollar in politics.

I would almost agree except to me thats a violation of equal protection. Essentially you would have two groups of people, one of which would lose their speech rights when they assemble and one of which who would not. Its fundamentally unequal in the eyes of the law.

If we're going to amend the Constitution to make these changes it probably needs to be an all or nothing proposition....

 

[Accountable]

I would almost agree except to me thats a violation of equal protection. Essentially you would have two groups of people, one of which would lose their speech rights when they assemble and one of which who would not. Its fundamentally unequal in the eyes of the law.

If we're going to amend the Constitution to make these changes it probably needs to be an all or nothing proposition....

Your argument earlier in the thread naturally follows that corporations should have the right to vote. If you're not willing to go that far then you need to drop the whole thing.

Corporations don't have equal protection. They have extraordinary protection in some ways, that being of an immortal human, and unequal protection in others, such as trustbusting. Any individual has the legal right to speak and act on his own behalf. he doesn't need or deserve the right to have his company speak on his behalf as well, especially since he speaks for the company. Any individual has the right to join a political organization to help voice his opinion. Other people who join that same organization can be safely assumed to share the same political opinions. That can't be said of business corporations or unions.

So you see, we would not have two groups of people because the same people can be in both groups. No amendment is needed because not all corporations were created to be equal, nor were they endowed by The Creator with inalienable rights.

 

[Alien Allen]

This whole problem is what is wrong with politics and why public financing is needed.

An election should be about the candidates and what they are for and against. The candidates should dictate what is said. Not outsiders with agendas.

This would keep the lead up to elections on target as there would not be the virtually unlimited amount of money to spend on bull shit ads. The candidates would have to carefully spend the money and all the sideshow stuff would be eliminated. In theory anyway

 

[nova]

Your argument earlier in the thread naturally follows that corporations should have the right to vote. If you're not willing to go that far then you need to drop the whole thing.

No it doesn't. There is no existing precedent in law or jurisprudence for a corporation to have the right to vote. Thats a right reserved for natural persons to the exclusion of legal persons.

Corporations don't have equal protection.

But they do. Going back to the natural vs legal person the 14th amendment says specifically

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Bot the due process and equal protection clauses make no distinction between natural and legal persons. The priveleges and immunities clause makes it clear it only applies to citizens. Until SCOTUS gutted in, the P&I clause was originally intended to specifically protect the right to vote, ie a privelege of citizenship.

So you see, we would not have two groups of people because the same people can be in both groups. No amendment is needed because not all corporations were created to be equal, nor were they endowed by The Creator with inalienable rights.

Any way you cut it, you need an amendment. "Congress shall make no law" not "Congress shall make no law except for entities whose speech we find distasteful."

I guess you could go the judicial route and remove the legal personhood of corporations, at which point our economy would come to a screeching halt, because no longer could a publically traded compmany do business, hold property, etc in its own name, it would have to amend deeds, bylaws etc etc every time a share changed hands to reflect the new legal ownership. Deeds and titles would be reams of paper long. Generally a nasty mess to say the least...

If we're going to remove the right of corporations to speak, then it needs to be all of them. I mean basically we just tried the method of for profit corps can't speak but political corps (PACs) can. It didn't do a whole lot to keep corporate money from being an influence.

Which probably hints at the true root problem, namely politicians behaving badly.

 

[Accountable]

Legal persons. Natural persons. Legalistic gobbledygook. If the Supreme Court would grow the balls to wade through all the federal laws and toss all the unconstitutional ones (rather than waiting for someone with the funds and energy to bring it to them) we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.