Quote:
Originally Posted by RendeR
A Company is a THING jon, it is not a person, it is not a group of people, it is an inanimate and in most cases IMAGINARY creation of human beings. A single citizen of this nation can have a political view, many such human beings can sometimes even have the SAME political view.
A Company cannot.
A Company has no place putting its funds into politicians pockets.
People certainly can. Allowing a company to use its much larger deeper purses to promote the political agenda of a few people who are employed at the company is wrong. It artificially inflates those few peoples voices in the discussion while at the same time dissallowing the views of anyone employed there who disagrees with that view. It is in and of itself the antithesis of Free Speech.
Every single person/citizen in this country has the right and I daresay the responsibility to promote their political beliefs. Equally, 1 voice for 1 person. The campaign laws should support this instead of allowing politicians to become little more than bought and stuffed puppets with the board of directors hands stuck up their ass.
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I just got back into the country a couple of days ago but saw this decision. The person I talked to in Colombia about it couldn't understand how the decision even makes sense in the least. That made two of us. I'm strongly with Render on this- a company should not have these rights and I think it opens up many very bad possibilities.
I made my points much earlier in the thread and I still don't understand how people in corporations should essentially get double rights to free speech. The individuals who make up a corporation are not having their free speech impinged so I don't see how they should get an opportunity to doubly extend those dollars both as an individual *and* as a corporation. Then again, I believe in one person/one vote, not one dollar/one vote.
I also see a extreme possibility for conflicts of interest- "You know, Bob, our corporation supports candidate X but I see in the tax filings for his opponent, candidate Y, that you supported him. I think it's time for your yearly review".
It's pretty clear that no only do we have 5 Supreme Court justices who will strongly side with big business. But also that those beliefs also extend to that while they don't support government being big, they're perfectly ok with businesses being big.
Government is either going to be dominated by business or dominate business, in a lot of people's minds. It seems like it's an either/or option- you have to either have big business or big government (which regulates businesses). The cognitive dissonance to me is that a lot of the supporters of smaller government are perfectly ok with unfettered size and power for business, which essentially will just mean that business will function as the government. So, in short, they rightfully decry a tyrannical government but are perfectly ok with being ruled by a tyrannical corporation.
SI