Supreme Court lifts limits on corporate campaign donations

[Solid Snake]

Yeah you see the criticism of Bradley's writing style, I can understand. The guy's never really been a gifted author. If you strip Flags of our Fathers of the emotional core regarding a man's search through his father's history, and just read it as a regular ol' history book, it's really nothing special. Bradley's something of an amateur historian, after all, so I don't expect him to hit me with the polished, methodical prose of, say, Jack Weatherford or David McCullough.

What concerns me more when it comes to history books are the factual bases of the author's contentions. In Bradley's case, I found the facts he alluded to in The Imperial Cruise highly, highly disturbing, but also largely true. I'm sure he screwed up a few dates and I'm sure he made a few improper citations. But as a whole, I still "enjoyed" the book, about as much as anyone can enjoy a book that slams America as much as The Imperial Cruise did.

The problem I have with a lot of the criticism is that many critiques seem thinly veiled accusations of Bradley being anti-American or some bullshit, which is just ridiculous. Should we really stop listening to critics of American policies just because their messages could be interpreted as 'bashing' this country? Should we really turn a blind eye to our horrific missteps just out of sheer patriotism?

[krogothwolf]

The thing that's most exciting is that these corporation now can spend billions of dollars on campaigns so that they can get billions in bail out money for their corporations! It will truly be a wonderful never ending cycle!

Till it becomes the United States of the NFL.

[Tev]

Best thing to come of this so far....

...
Fearing this decision before it became official, Grayson last week filed five campaign finance bills and a sixth one on Thursday. Grayson said the bills are important to securing the people's "right to clean government."

The bills have names like the Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act and the Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act. The first slaps a 500 percent excise tax on corporate spending on elections, and the second mandates businesses to disclose their attempts to influence elections. More details are available on the congressman's Web site.

"These bills will save us from drowning in corporate money and special interest money," Grayson said. "They should have been passed a long time ago but after the Supreme Court opened those floodgates, I think it's imperative we get these things done."

[Wigmund]

God I love Alan Grayson, the man's great.

This is from his website...

GRAYSON: "SAVE OUR DEMOCRACY"
(Washington, DC) – Congressman Alan Grayson (FL-8) has introduced legislation to prevent a corporate takeover of government in America. His “Save Our Democracy” Reform Package (H.R. 4431-4435) aims to stave off the threat of "corpocracy" arising from today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision.

“The Supreme Court in essence has ruled that corporations can buy elections. If that happens, democracy in America is over. We cannot put the law up for sale, and award government to the highest bidder.” Congressman Grayson said.

Here are the bills that Congressman Grayson has introduced, and what they aim to accomplish:

1) The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act (H.R. 4431): Implements a 500% excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees, and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns.
2) The Public Company Responsibility Act (H.R. 4435): Prevents companies making political contributions and expenditures from trading their stock on national exchanges.
3) The End Political Kickbacks Act (H.R. 4434): Prevents for-profit corporations that receive money from the government from making political contributions, and limits the amount that employees of those companies can contribute.
4) The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act (H.R. 4432): Requires publicly-traded companies to disclose in SEC filings money used for the purpose of influencing public opinion, rather than to promoting their products and services.
5) The Ending Corporate Collusion Act (H.R. 4433): Applies antitrust law to industry PACs.

The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission legalizes the use of corporate funds in political campaigns, striking down campaign finance laws that date back more than a century. Congressman Grayson introduced the bills on January 13th, in anticipation of the Supreme Court's ruling. Each of the five Grayson bills is clear and concise; none is longer than four pages.

“By gutting the 100-year-old Tillman Act ban on corporate contributions, the U.S. Supreme Court has opened the door to political bribery and corruption on the largest scale imaginable. As Teddy Roosevelt said at the time, 'property belongs to man, and not man to property.' That's why we have federal election laws, and that's why we need them, both then and now,” Congressman Grayson said.

[Loyal]

God Bless Alan Grayson.

[Solid Snake]

Hey at least we can all agree that despite their crazy policy objectives, the Supreme Court conservatives are united by a true understanding of the framer's intent. After all, that's what the Supreme Court majority is always up in arms about, right? How they respect the will of the founding fathers who painstakingly crafted our Constitution?

Originally Posted by James Madison, Regarding the Constitutionality of the First Bank of the United States

"As a charter of incorporation the bill creates an artificial person previously not existing in law. It confers important civil rights and attributes, which could not otherwise be claimed."

Ahahaha this is hysterical it's almost as if James Madison, the federalist turned anti-federalist who was primarily responsible for giving speeches that assisted and practically crafted both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, is here speaking that the Bank of the United States was unconstitutional as such a national corporation would be endowed with the rights of a person hahaha it's almost as if Madison here is saying that he very strongly opposes such a concept.

But clearly Madison is in the minority here it's not as if this text was actually given in a speech to Congress and it's not as if Madison himself, in his own journals during the secret conventions that resulted in drafting the Constitution, made note of the fact that during his federalist days (before he swapped sides) he proposed a provision in the Constitution to mandate a National Bank and this proposal was documented as defeated under similar concerns!

Why no, our founding fathers clearly envisioned an America run by large corporations...

Originally Posted by Thomas Jefferson

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

...Okay, so the man who drafted the Declaration of Independence has betrayed the cause of his allies. But Jefferson and Madison must have been in the kooky minority! Surely their opinions were not widespread. It's not as if the founding fathers were afraid of corporations due to the raw, unrestricted power wielded by such entities as the East India Trading Company in Britain. It's not as if an entire basis for the revolution involved chartered corporations from Britain receiving favors that resulted in raised taxes and other burdens on the colonists. It's not as if charters creating national corporations back in those days only lasted ten to forty years before the charters were ripped up and the corporations ceased to exist, in large part because governments feared lending private entities such power. It's not as if charters actually actively restricted the products corporations could make so as to prevent corporations from expanding into too many disparate fields.

It's not as if Adam Smith, the author of The Wealth of Nations, written during the revolution and used as a bastion of free-market capitalism, with the invisible hand and all, actually argued against large corporations, right?

Originally Posted by Adam Smith

The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own .... Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less in the management of the affairs of such a company.

...WHAT?!?! Adam Smith is arguing against the existence of corporations that are larger than mere partnerships among small Mom and Pop business-owners? This is MADNESS! This can't be true!

Noam Chomsky has argued that several aspects of Smith's thought have been misrepresented and falsified by contemporary ideology, including Smith’s reasons for supporting markets and Smith’s views on corporations. Chomsky argues that Smith supported markets in the belief that they would lead to equality, and that Smith opposed wage labor and corporations.

...Okay but that's just Noam Chomsky, crazy liberal guy, and this is just Wikipedia, who's clearly misquoting Chomsky's work.

Hey Sam Adams you're practically the one man responsible for the American Revolution with your Sons of Liberty and whatnot so what do you have to say on this critical issue...

Originally Posted by Sam Adams

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the Tranquility of servitude better than the Animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you."

...Okay?
Hey Abe Lincoln I know you're not a Founder but everyone loves you, you're our favorite President and:

Originally Posted by Abe Lincoln

"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.. corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed."

...Is Lincoln a prophet, or what?

Here's one final whopper.
Back in the days of the Founders?
A corporation making a political contribution would be found guilty of a criminal offense.

Ahahahahaahahaha I wish I was making this up.
These Justices aren't even consistent with their own justifications for their own beliefs!

Of course, Justice Stevens tried to make this clear to the five majority Justices in his dissent:

Originally Posted by Stevens

"The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind. While individuals might join together to exercise their speech rights, business corporations, at least, were plainly not seen as facilitating such associational or expressive ends. Even the notion that business corporations could invoke the First Amendment would probably have been quite a novelty, given that at the time, the legitimacy of every corporate activity was thought to rest entirely in a concession of the sovereign."

But hey, there's always Fox's interpretation:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/...est=latestnews
Oh man clearly Fox News knows more about what the Founders believed than the Founders themselves!

EDIT: Oh God why did I decide I wanted to go learn all this shit in law school I rather preferred living in the blissful ignorance of not knowing how the monied aristocracy of modern America was fucking us all up the ass and relying on exploitation of base prejudices to ensure that voters bought into their bullshit about how the founders believed America was going to be a corporatist shithole.

[Wigmund]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Ahahaha this is hysterical it's almost as if James Madison, the federalist turned anti-federalist who was primarily responsible for giving speeches that assisted and practically crafted both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, is here speaking that the Bank of the United States was unconstitutional as such a national corporation would be endowed with the rights of a person hahaha it's almost as if Madison here is saying that he very strongly opposes such a concept.

Out of all the quotes you have there, this is the vaguest just because of the way it's phrased. I have a hard time telling if Madison's alright with the creation of corporations and granting them rights or is opposed to it - needs more context...
FOUND: James Madison’s Speech on the Bank Bill 2 February 1791
Welp, solved my problem.


NOTE: Sorry for reposting something you just posted Snake, I couldn't grasp what Madison's intent was, so I had to find the entire speech to understand him.

[Solid Snake]

Madison was against the Constitutionality of the United States authorizing the creation of a federal bank, which would have been a monopolistic enterprise (competing national banks literally would be punished by criminal persecution, if Hamilton had his way.)

The point is a bit obscure but, then again, my Constitutional Law class so far has been fairly obscure. Let me see if I can dig it out. In regards to constitutionality, if the government's creation of a bank were to be found as explicitly permissible within the confines of the Constitution, that implies that the Bank would actually have protections under said Constitution. Namely, the government would protect the bank against competitors and provide the bank with funding. Yet beyond that, the bank would also perceivably have rights of free speech and the rights to sue in court to collect payment.

The point here is subtle: Madison is noting that the Constitution enumerates Congress' authority over the people. But if a corporation is not a person -- and this was generally assumed by individuals in Madison's time, as national corporations then were temporarily created by charter by other nations like England and were generally disapproved of in the independent, big-corporation-despising, still-bitter-about-the-East-India-Trade-Company States. If the Constitution only enables the government to regulate the behaviors of the people it governs (as well as the States that comprise the Union,) then wouldn't the Bank have to by definition be an "artificial person" in order to fit into the framework the Constitution provides?

(One difference you might pick up on is, surely, as businesses did exist even back then, corporate entities on a local or regional level had legal protections. Several key differences: first, back then those legal protections would be provided by states, not the federal government, which interfered in 'interstate commerce only,' and even the interstate commerce provisions took a long time to develop through cases. The most important distinction however is that as private corporations are created by individual people, theoretically speaking the government has the right to regulate the creations of private citizens insofar as the Constitution enumerates the ability for the legislators to levy taxes and regulate the governed. Of course the federal government was limited in scope back then and really didn't protrude in such a manner. But here the concept of the government only reacting in a sense to the governed is superseded, as the government creates its own private institution.)

(It's important to remember that back then governments were small and even the concept of government agencies with intensive, concentrated authority over the States was beyond most of the Founding Fathers. The Constitution was enacted in large part to correct taxation and majoritarian 'mob rule' issues with the Articles of Confederation and enable the government some power over individuals in each State -- namely, the federal government could directly tax the people. In return, the people received a Bill of Rights enumerating their liberties. The snide comment Madison is making here may well be more comical than serious -- the idea of a corporation being created by a government and treated as a person with applicable legal rights and a corresponding relationship with its government was so far-fetched and so monarchistic that it's really just Madison laughing at the concept that a Constitution designed to give the government power over the people would lead to the creation of a corporation.)

EDIT: Perhaps an even stronger argument involves, for example, the ban that existed back during the time of the Founding that prevented corporations from donating to the political campaigns of national legislators and Presidential candidates. Clearly, such a ban would be effectively impracticable with a National Bank insofar as the entirety of the bank's operation would be made possible by the government. The interrelationship fostered between the bank and the feds would almost inevitably lead to collusion. If the bank were ever to get into financial pitfalls, for example -- say, a depression hits and no one can pay the bank the money -- then the Federal Government now has a very strong incentive to actually coerce debtors to repay with all kinds of threats, circumventing the Bill of Rights protections along the way.

Why? Because the feds would pick up the bank's tab (or be forced to allow the bank to collapse, which would have disastrous impacts on the federal government itself, insofar as the feds would do all their own borrowing and lending and whatnot through BUS.) The interrelationship would enable collusion as feds and the national bank could easily conspire to dethrone regional banks through passing ludicrous laws. Of course, the real latent concern here is that a relationship between the US and the Bank of the US would resemble the kinds of bureaucratic horrors you saw in monarchistic states everywhere throughout Europe at the time -- lots of backhanded deals among an aristocratic elite, lots of bribery and corruption, lots of arbitrary laws enforced to protected moneyed interests, lots of huge corporations chartered by Kings to make shitloads of money at the expense of the people, etc. Basically, just like modern America today.

[Amake]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Grand things

These men, so powerful in their convictions, so sure in their knowledge of right and wrong: Was it because the world back then was simpler, or was it that they had balls?

[Solid Snake]

The sad thing is that neither liberals nor conservatives really seem to have a complete picture of the Founding Fathers. Liberals seem to unduly criticize the founders without realizing just how strongly the Founders would agree with many (certainly not all, but many) of their assertions, while conservatives laud them and raise them on false pedestals without actually understanding the principles the Founders stood for. (And, for that matter, without contemplating the extensive nature of the Founders' shortcomings and sins.)

When judging the Founders it's always important to view them relativistically and interpret their beliefs based on the standards of the era in which they lived, and in that context the Founders (with notable exceptions like Hamilton) were genuinely likable people, and more left-wing radicals than anyone's written them to be. They despised large corporations. They believed human beings (well, white men at least, the rest would come later) were endowed with inalienable natural rights, prior to the conceptualization of governments or divine monarchs, all of which was revolutionary. They understood the Constitution was mutable. Hell, some of the Founders outright state in their Constitution-era writings that they expected future generations to alter its content and adjust it to handle future developments! They abhorred many of the monarchistic European practices we now associate with our current economic system. They distrusted large banks. They did not favor a massive army or navy, and indeed, were wary of military engagements abroad. They valued personal liberties far greater than national security concerns -- heck, Britain's extensive quartering laws, unspecified arrest and seizure warrants, and taxations were all done in the name of "security," and the colonists rebelled over it!

Even many of the southern Founders were deeply ashamed of slavery. I won't pretend they were perfect -- they all had their strange prejudices, moments of damning stupidity and utter incompetence, and most damning by far, genocidal rage against Native Americans. But compared to common Americans in their era, and compared to most aristocracies in foreign governments? The Americans were doing well then.

But all that aside? One strategy I'm shocked liberals haven't used yet to lure middle American 'values voters' who tend to buy into the conservative hype and vote Republican: define the Founding Fathers appropriately! Don't let Fox News and Limbaugh and Gingrich misidentify them as staunch supporters of corporate America and traditional American values when they, in fact, foresaw a future in which future generations of unborn Americans would rise to create a better world.

Allowing the conservatives to unilaterally define the Founders does them -- and all of us -- a great injustice and completely distorts the shades-of-grey historical context in which they actually lived. It also lures impressionable voters into assuming that America today looks something like the Founders had hoped. And that simply isn't true. This Supreme Court decision would not have pleased the Founders, as Fox News claims: it would have depressed the crap out of most of them. Maybe not Hamilton (although even Hamilton wouldn't have expected modern corporations to look like this,) but nearly everyone else.

A liberal who can speak idealistically about the past as eloquently and authoritatively as he speaks idealistically about our future would be a hot commodity in American politics, that's for sure.