5 ms·

We (the U.S.) protect rich people's freedom of speech. We protect organization's freedom of speech. Saying corporations have no freedom of speech is like saying

by jfoutz 17y ago

We (the U.S.) protect rich people's freedom of speech. We protect organization's freedom of speech. Saying corporations have no freedom of speech is like saying peaceable assembly is a separate right from freedom of speech. It's not. The first amendment gets value from thousands, or millions of people getting together to say the same thing at the same time.

benpbenp 17y ago
Yes. While I understand the point of view of the article, I can also see a corporation just as a group of persons acting in concert. Each one of these persons has natural rights, so why can't they exercise these rights in concert?
- Dryw 17y ago
  Employees of the corporation may have different political views. When a corporation donates money to a political cause, it is not expressing the views of all of its employees.
- jackowayed 17y ago
  Because corporations aren't people. You can't arrest a corporation and send it to jail. You can't draft a corporation into the military (though drafting some of those defense contractors and paying their workers military salaries would sure help with the deficit). Corporations have separate rights and responsibilities from the people that own them.
  - bokonist 17y ago
    But corporations do not speak, people do. The management are all people, and the owners are all people. These people can and have been drafted into the military or arrested for illegal conduct. Congress can make no law abridging any person's freedom of speech, period.
    - jackowayed 17y ago
      There's no law keeping them from speaking just like any other person. There's (well, there was) a law keeping them from using millions of corporate dollars to broadcast that speech.
  - protomyth 17y ago
    given that, why would unions have more rights than corporations?
  - mseebach 17y ago
    > You can't arrest a corporation and send it to jail No, but you can sue it and rule against it. Ever seen a ruling with a name like "Smith vs. Acme Inc."? > Because corporations aren't people. No, and corporations also can't speak. So free speech for corporations is an oxymoron if you don't mean free speech by the people that make up a corporation.
    - tsuraan 17y ago
      The ruling isn't really about speech, though, it's about money. The ruling doesn't affect any person's ability to speak, it affects a company's ability to spend its money on political candidates, with a clear expectation of a positive ROI. How can that possible be legal? If money really is speech, why isn't it legal to talk my way out of a speeding ticket with a wallet full of bills?
      - mseebach 17y ago
        > The ruling isn't really about speech, though, it's about money. Its about money spent on speech. Free speech that you can't spend money on, isn't free speech. If a news paper was told that it was welcome to print a specific story, except you can't spend money on ink for it, it'd still be censorship. > spend its money on political candidates, with a clear expectation of a positive ROI. How can that possible be legal It's not, that's corruption. What you're referring to is rent-seeking, and it's been around as long as politics itself. The best solution is to give politicians less power, simply because there's less rent to seek.
      - yummyfajitas 17y ago
        It is legal to use money/speech to talk yourself out of future speeding tickets. You can spend money on posters entitled, "Vote Smith, No More Speeding Tickets!" in the hopes that it will persuade people to vote for Smith (who presumably promised to end laws against speeding).
    - DannoHung 17y ago
      > No, but you can sue it and rule against it. Ever seen a ruling with a name like "Smith vs. Acme Inc."? Not in a criminal court. > No, and corporations also can't speak. So free speech for corporations is an oxymoron if you don't mean free speech by the people that make up a corporation. The board of directors, actually, or, even more accurately, whoever holds a controlling share of the corporation.
  - hga 17y ago
    You're essentially wrong: while arrest and jail are obviously not in the cards for corporations, they are subject to criminal charges (RICO was in fact established to do this with a lower threshold for making the charge). Arthur Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice WRT to Enron, and while that conviction was reversed, it was too late since it had lost its CPA license as a result. You're also wrong about the draft bit: while the mechanism is different, private companies have found themselves taken over by the Federal government during e.g. WWII ... or at least the credible threat was made (most recently I read such a case WRT to the Manhattan Project, that threat was required to light a fire under one company that supplied them).
sethg 17y ago
Before the Citizens United case came down, thousands or millions of people were free to get together to say the same thing at the same time by donating money to organizations (“527 corporations”) whose specific purpose was political advocacy. (Or they could give money directly to their favorite political parties or candidates, but then each person involved faced limits on what he or she could contribute.) What wasn’t legal was for another kind of corporation to use its general-treasury funds for the same purpose. The laws banning that kind of spending were based on the idea that when a for-profit corporation injects itself into the electoral process¹, it creates the appearance of political corruption if not actual corruption. After all, if the corporate directors authorizing the donation didn’t expect to get some kind of benefit from the politician in return, then they were wasting their stockholders’ money. The majority in Citizens United acknowledged that preventing the appearance of corruption was a legitimate concern (which is why restrictions on direct donations to political parties and candidates were allowed to stand), but was so committed to the “treat corporations as people” principle that they didn’t see the point of restricting contributions from corporations. ¹I.e., corporations could run ads saying “nuclear energy is great”, but not “vote for Smith, because he supports nuclear energy”.
- ShabbyDoo 17y ago
  "After all, if the corporate directors authorizing the donation didn’t expect to get some kind of benefit from the politician in return" Of course. But, that thing in return might not be corrupt. Let's say you are a gun manufacturer and you give money to politicians who support the NRA. Corrupt? No more so than a gun owner making contributions for similar reasons. Beneficial? You bet.
- hga 17y ago
  I'm pretty sure you're essentially incorrect, in that one of the things Citizens United struck down was the ban on "vote for Smith" by any non-media corporation in the 1-2 months before a Federal election (1 for a primary, 2 for a general). Wasn't it a specific ban from that provision in McCain-Feingold on their anti-Hillary movie that prompted them to file the lawsuit? I wasn't able to quickly determine if Citizens United itself is a 527, but they are affiliated with one (http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtes2.php?ein=&cycle=2008&tname=Citizens+United http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtes2.php?ein=&cycle...).

by jfoutz 17y ago

benpbenp 17y ago

Yes. While I understand the point of view of the article, I can also see a corporation just as a group of persons acting in concert. Each one of these persons has natural rights, so why can't they exercise these rights in concert?

Dryw 17y ago
Employees of the corporation may have different political views. When a corporation donates money to a political cause, it is not expressing the views of all of its employees.
jackowayed 17y ago
Because corporations aren't people. You can't arrest a corporation and send it to jail. You can't draft a corporation into the military (though drafting some of those defense contractors and paying their workers military salaries would sure help with the deficit). Corporations have separate rights and responsibilities from the people that own them.
- bokonist 17y ago
  But corporations do not speak, people do. The management are all people, and the owners are all people. These people can and have been drafted into the military or arrested for illegal conduct. Congress can make no law abridging any person's freedom of speech, period.
  - jackowayed 17y ago
    There's no law keeping them from speaking just like any other person. There's (well, there was) a law keeping them from using millions of corporate dollars to broadcast that speech.
- protomyth 17y ago
  given that, why would unions have more rights than corporations?
- mseebach 17y ago
  > You can't arrest a corporation and send it to jail No, but you can sue it and rule against it. Ever seen a ruling with a name like "Smith vs. Acme Inc."? > Because corporations aren't people. No, and corporations also can't speak. So free speech for corporations is an oxymoron if you don't mean free speech by the people that make up a corporation.
  - tsuraan 17y ago
    The ruling isn't really about speech, though, it's about money. The ruling doesn't affect any person's ability to speak, it affects a company's ability to spend its money on political candidates, with a clear expectation of a positive ROI. How can that possible be legal? If money really is speech, why isn't it legal to talk my way out of a speeding ticket with a wallet full of bills?
    - mseebach 17y ago
      > The ruling isn't really about speech, though, it's about money. Its about money spent on speech. Free speech that you can't spend money on, isn't free speech. If a news paper was told that it was welcome to print a specific story, except you can't spend money on ink for it, it'd still be censorship. > spend its money on political candidates, with a clear expectation of a positive ROI. How can that possible be legal It's not, that's corruption. What you're referring to is rent-seeking, and it's been around as long as politics itself. The best solution is to give politicians less power, simply because there's less rent to seek.
    - yummyfajitas 17y ago
      It is legal to use money/speech to talk yourself out of future speeding tickets. You can spend money on posters entitled, "Vote Smith, No More Speeding Tickets!" in the hopes that it will persuade people to vote for Smith (who presumably promised to end laws against speeding).
  - DannoHung 17y ago
    > No, but you can sue it and rule against it. Ever seen a ruling with a name like "Smith vs. Acme Inc."? Not in a criminal court. > No, and corporations also can't speak. So free speech for corporations is an oxymoron if you don't mean free speech by the people that make up a corporation. The board of directors, actually, or, even more accurately, whoever holds a controlling share of the corporation.
- hga 17y ago
  You're essentially wrong: while arrest and jail are obviously not in the cards for corporations, they are subject to criminal charges (RICO was in fact established to do this with a lower threshold for making the charge). Arthur Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice WRT to Enron, and while that conviction was reversed, it was too late since it had lost its CPA license as a result. You're also wrong about the draft bit: while the mechanism is different, private companies have found themselves taken over by the Federal government during e.g. WWII ... or at least the credible threat was made (most recently I read such a case WRT to the Manhattan Project, that threat was required to light a fire under one company that supplied them).

sethg 17y ago

Before the Citizens United case came down, thousands or millions of people were free to get together to say the same thing at the same time by donating money to organizations (“527 corporations”) whose specific purpose was political advocacy. (Or they could give money directly to their favorite political parties or candidates, but then each person involved faced limits on what he or she could contribute.) What wasn’t legal was for another kind of corporation to use its general-treasury funds for the same purpose. The laws banning that kind of spending were based on the idea that when a for-profit corporation injects itself into the electoral process¹, it creates the appearance of political corruption if not actual corruption. After all, if the corporate directors authorizing the donation didn’t expect to get some kind of benefit from the politician in return, then they were wasting their stockholders’ money. The majority in Citizens United acknowledged that preventing the appearance of corruption was a legitimate concern (which is why restrictions on direct donations to political parties and candidates were allowed to stand), but was so committed to the “treat corporations as people” principle that they didn’t see the point of restricting contributions from corporations. ¹I.e., corporations could run ads saying “nuclear energy is great”, but not “vote for Smith, because he supports nuclear energy”.

ShabbyDoo 17y ago
"After all, if the corporate directors authorizing the donation didn’t expect to get some kind of benefit from the politician in return" Of course. But, that thing in return might not be corrupt. Let's say you are a gun manufacturer and you give money to politicians who support the NRA. Corrupt? No more so than a gun owner making contributions for similar reasons. Beneficial? You bet.
hga 17y ago
I'm pretty sure you're essentially incorrect, in that one of the things Citizens United struck down was the ban on "vote for Smith" by any non-media corporation in the 1-2 months before a Federal election (1 for a primary, 2 for a general). Wasn't it a specific ban from that provision in McCain-Feingold on their anti-Hillary movie that prompted them to file the lawsuit? I wasn't able to quickly determine if Citizens United itself is a 527, but they are affiliated with one (http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtes2.php?ein=&cycle=2008&tname=Citizens+United http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtes2.php?ein=&cycle...).