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In order to understand this you have to understand that in American corporations are persons. When Mitt Romney said, "Corporations are people too" at the Iowa S
by noahc 15y ago
In order to understand this you have to understand that in American corporations are persons. When Mitt Romney said, "Corporations are people too" at the Iowa State Fair he wasn't sharing his own personal beliefs. Instead he was telling the truth. See Corporate Personhood[1] for more.
From this it follows that Corporations have the right to free speech. This is where the supreme court ruled[2] that it is unconstitutional to deny corporations the right to political speech.
The legal requirements are disclosures and that's why you hear "paid for by Americans for a better tomorrow" or something like that. Corporations don't directly give to campaign coffers, but through a series of transactions often via PACs (political action committees) it eventually gets to where it's going. It is illegal for PAC's to coordinate with the campaign, but this does happen in subtle and less than subtle ways.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Elec...
- asdfasdghasdf 15y agoWhile this has been true for the past year, the linked page gets its data from OpenSecrets which tracks only hard money donations to campaigns. It's tracking almost entirely donations from people who work in the given industries, so I think it's misleading to bring up corporate personhood here.
- noahc 15y agoIt's not hard to imagine that hard money can be used as a proxy for soft money to some multiple. For example soft money is 78x what the hard money is. Hard money donations are often given by corporations through PACs as well. The reason this is allowed? Corporations have personhood. Your other post is correct and I'm not down voting you, but if you really want to understand corporate money in politics you need to understand corporate personhood. If anything the numbers are misleading, because all it really tells you how much people who identify their employer are really giving. That's just demographic data, not proof of a particular policy.
- Aaronontheweb 15y agoUhh, campaign donations from corporations to politicans have been around for way longer than Citizen's United dude. That case is not the central issue here.