Supreme Court ruling on money and free speech
POSTED BY: HKCavalier
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 25, 2026 22:50
VIEWED: 10274
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Wulf, dismantling the government is not an option. As equivocal and counterproductive as it sometimes is, it is the ONLY force standing between you and corporations.
Now, lawmakers have mixed and impure motives at best... the need for campaign money and the desire for power competes with the fact that they have to stand before the people who elected them, and SOME politicians (Russ Feingold, for example) really DO want to do good.
Corporations, OTOH, have ONE and ONLY one motive: the highest amount of profit possible. Pay the least possible, and charge what the market will bear. Develop a monopoly. Sink the workers. It doesn't matter to them if it means shipping off American jobs to Chinese prison labor, or creating inscrutable pyramid schemes with funny-money, or dumping toxic waste in your water table, or ravaging the entire planet. They're answerable to nobody except (maybe) their shareholders, whose interests are the same as theirs: greater profitability, higher dividends, higher stock prices.
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Quote:
I was going to post this under Byte's THROWING THE PARTIES thread.
It doesn't matter what parties are in power IF you remove the effect of MONEY MONEY MONEY from the elections. The only way to do that is to require that the FCC.. which licenses the spectrum to private parties with the stipulation that they also SERVE THE PUBLIC INTEREST ... require its licensees to provide FREE AIR TIME to all viable candidates.
Ooh, that's a good idea. And makes sense given the context.
Maybe we can undermine the Supreme Court and write in letters to the FCC en mass requesting this policy change. I mean, they practice censorship in the name of public service, right? So if the supreme court considers money bought advertising and slander a form of free speech and restrictions on it a form of censorship, then this is right up their alley. Maybe that way they'd actually BE serving the public, instead of randomly bleeping out swearwords.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
I guess it depends whether you view the spirit of the law as meaning individuals, excepting where it specifies "the people," or whether a corporation falls under "the right of the people to peacefully assemble."
Problem with that lies in Corporate Personhood, which is something never effectively nor completely addressed even under the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust acts, which themselves are for all intents and purposes, universally ignored.
See, quality of the law doesn't matter much when those charged with enforcing it are the ones helping break it, and this was a core problem before the Constitution itself was even signed, something Anti-Federalist BRUTUS pointed out quite effectively in #14-#15.
http://www.constitution.org/afp/brutus14.htm
http://www.constitution.org/afp/brutus15.htm
And therein lies the problem with Laws in the first place - how, exactly, does one mean to enforce them ?
Hiring a professional class or caste to do it results in an all but inevitable corruption and class warfare, which can be temporarily, but not completely, stymied by proper oversight, but as the rot deepens (look at the Detroit PD, and Federal Task Force mess as an example..) then you wind up having everyone watching everyone else and nothing getting done in a culture of fear and abuse.
All in all, I'd say we would be best served going the other way, Corporations have ALWAYS had the Goverment and it's military forces in their pocket, it's why organised labor as a non-criminal enterprise or pacification arm of the corps has prettymuch failed - they can fight a corp, they cannot fight a corp and the gov, and if they could, what's to stop em from the disaster of just taking over ?
Although whether that'd actually BE a disaster depends on your interpretation, Catalonia didn't do too bad with it.
The quickest way, I think, to spike corporate abuses, would be to respect their property rights - heh heh.. tell em in essence, that's YOUR property, YOU hire someone to protect it.
The threat of an enraged populace will do the rest, and serve as a healthy check upon that kind of thing, not to mention operate as something of a release valve before the pressure builds to where folks who've lives have been destroyed start carbombing their offices.
As for gridlocking the system till nothing gets done, in THIS environment and toxic society, that's begging dictatorship, especially given that particular kind of gridlock was why executive orders wound up given the prominence they have, cause folks got frustrated with it, and manipulated by mass-media propaganda, foolishly handed more and more power to individuals in hopes of actually accomplishing something, ignorant of a real awareness of how and why the system works - you can see this in that whole "Czars" thing, an end run around that kind of gridlock, which is of debateable legality and certainly counter to the spirit of the structure.
Every time more and more power is handed to the executive or judiciary in hopes of breaking or overcoming congressional gridlock, it weakens the already ragged checks and balances and cranks us just one more notch down the road to dictatorship, and the mainstream media plays right along encouraging it because they benefit directly and financially from it.
That's a damned fools notion, cause there's a big, sharp, pointy hook underneath that delicious looking bait, and the name of that hook is Fascism.
-Frem
There always has to be a price.
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Kwicko: Candidacy should be based on a petition method. Not money.
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"However, I still say, we need to tie up the processes in Washington so that nothing they want gets done."
Who is the 'they' ? Because something DID just get done - the corporations now get to run national and state politics. If by 'they' you mean corporations, 'they' can get even more done that 'they' want. UNTIL such time as new legislation is passed, which, I would like to point out, DEMOCRATS are already working on.
BTW, for anyone who thinks republicans are better, or that a vote for a republican is somehow an effective way to improve the system:
"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised the decision.
"For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process. With today’s monumental decision, the Supreme Court took an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups by ruling that the Constitution protects their right to express themselves about political candidates and issues up until Election Day," he said.
And National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) said he hopes the ruling opens the doors for political parties to increase spending."
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Silence is consent.
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"Wulf, dismantling the government is not an option. As equivocal and counterproductive as it sometimes is, it is the ONLY force standing between you and corporations.
Now, lawmakers have mixed and impure motives at best... the need for campaign money and the desire for power competes with the fact that they have to stand before the people who elected them, and SOME politicians (Russ Feingold, for example) really DO want to do good.
Corporations, OTOH, have ONE and ONLY one motive: the highest amount of profit possible. Pay the least possible, and charge what the market will bear. Develop a monopoly. Sink the workers. It doesn't matter to them if it means shipping off American jobs to Chinese prison labor, or creating inscrutable pyramid schemes with funny-money, or dumping toxic waste in your water table, or ravaging the entire planet. They're answerable to nobody except (maybe) their shareholders, whose interests are the same as theirs: greater profitability, higher dividends, higher stock prices."
NOT arguing for the dismantling of the government. Just tying things up, so that real people can have a chance at running things.
I doubt that anyone can say they are happy with the status-quo, or that corporations should run things.
What we need, are people who give a damn about what we (as Americans, as people) stand for.
Getting rid of the legacies of the Bushes, the Clintons, the Obamas, and all the rest..
Hell, it may not fix everything, but its a good start.
We need people in "power" who will give said "power" back to the people. As it was meant to be.
That salt of the earth farmer, that everyone wrote off as an uneducated redneck... that gutsy ghetto boy who folks wrote off as nothing more than a criminal... provided that they give a damn about our people...
THEY should be in charge.
Because, in the political spectrum of long odds, THEY know more about being an American than these people do.
THEY give a damn.
They want to change things for the better.
ETA: Also, these folks will respect the rights of the people, and of the states to govern themselves.
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Quote:
Wulf, dismantling the government is not an option. As equivocal and counterproductive as it sometimes is, it is the ONLY force standing between you and corporations.
Not addressed to me, I know, but gotta comment.
Dismantling corporations is also going to be an important step in the process of "taking back the machine" so to speak. I'm not sure if we even can change anything using our current system, but I'm making an effort. I'm just sick of the current parties. I think that they just have to go before anything else. Then maybe we have to purge the Supreme Court and justice system, get honest people in THERE too. THEN maybe we can go after the goddamn corporations. I'm not about to take back one government just to have THEM step in and set up house.
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Quote:I'm with you 1200%!
NOT arguing for the dismantling of the government. Just tying things up, so that real people can have a chance at running things. I doubt that anyone can say they are happy with the status-quo, or that corporations should run things.
What we need, are people who give a damn about what we (as Americans, as people) stand for. Getting rid of the legacies of the Bushes, the Clintons, the Obamas, and all the rest..
Hell, it may not fix everything, but its a good start. We need people in "power" who will give said "power" back to the people. As it was meant to be.
That salt of the earth farmer, that everyone wrote off as an uneducated redneck... that gutsy ghetto boy who folks wrote off as nothing more than a criminal... provided that they give a damn about our people... THEY should be in charge. Because, in the political spectrum of long odds, THEY know more about being an American than these people do. THEY give a damn. They want to change things for the better.
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"I'm with you 1200%!"
Holy crap..
I just fell out of my chair.
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"I'm just sick of the current parties."
The way to improve them is, as SignyM pointed out, to get $$$$$ out of the system. The effects would be twofold - 1) existing legislation wouldn't be for sale to Congresspeople looking for campaign money, and 2) it would free up less well-funded but potentially better candidates to campaign.
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Silence is consent.
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