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> "It's part and parcel to a system that fully embraces free speech," said Tom Garrett, a vice president at the Institute for Free Speech. "All Americans have

by lapcat 1mo ago

> "It's part and parcel to a system that fully embraces free speech," said Tom Garrett, a vice president at the Institute for Free Speech. "All Americans have the right to express themselves and exercise their right to political speech to the fullest extent possible." Corporations are people, my friend.

nyc_data_geek1 1mo ago
Money is not speech, no matter what the courts say.
- cooggog 1mo ago
  Free speech is when I scream so loud, no one else can even be heard. Its your fault anyway. Maybe if you cared you should have spent your life learning how to scream louder.
- tokioyoyo 1mo ago
  I agree in spirit, but if not courts, and government, who is the one who gets to decide on it? Since it's a democratic country, if people disagreed or had a strong opinion about it, then would've voted accordingly.
  - mpalmer 1mo ago
    Entrenched power is leveraged to further entrench power. No way such a bill would have gotten through Congress, even before Citizens United. But is that democracy?
  - nemomarx 1mo ago
    When was it put up to a vote? I don't recall many national elections where I was asked my opinion about issues, only to choose between two options. And most of the time between one option really.
- niam 1mo ago
  "Money is speech" is a reddit-ism. The argument is closer to "limiting spending can be tantamount to limiting speech." Should the president of the US (regardless of party) be able to restrict your ability to spend money on a web server because it hosts a forum about humanrights/guns/birthcontrol/etc? Or to run a news channel/blog that focuses on a particular perspective? If not, little prevents the most endowed campaigns from changing their form factor from ads to propoganda platforms. And buying out news platforms becomes more enticing. Whatever line you think is reasonable to draw here, would you trust a bad president with it? And would it actually solve the problem?
  - lapcat 1mo ago
    > Whatever line you think is reasonable to draw here, would you trust a bad president with it? I don't think this is a good argument, because it's oddly specific. You can't trust a bad President to properly enforce any law. That much should be clear right now. A bad President is a general danger to the country and to the world. Among other powers, the President is the commander-in-chief! Of course Congress has the power to impeach and remove a bad President, so you don't get a bad President without also having a bad Congress. In other words, we'd have much bigger problems than campaign finance. And I would claim that we get a bad President and a bad Congress precisely because we have no campaign finance limitations anymore.
    - niam 1mo ago
      The President is an example (and actual) enforcement mechanism for the State. Not the argument. We want to ban independent political expenditure past a certain dollar threshold. Great. How do we do that without torching legitimate civic and commercial participation, and without accidentally entrenching rich participants even more? I'm unconvinced you can do that, and unconvinced that ads are a worthy enough evil to be worth the try, particularly if it requires amending over the First Amendment. ("If" is an operative word.)
insane_dreamer 1mo ago
Citizens United is possibly the worst SCOTUS decision ever, on par with Dred Scott and Plessy v Fergeson. Abomination.
- convolvatron 1mo ago
  I think the idea that we should also be able to hide our large donations started here, but got reenforced by later decisions. ok, it's your money, you get to send it to whoever you like. but you shouldn't be able to hide. companies shouldn't act as cover for their owners, and if a candidate is largely propped up by the billionaire class then shouldn't voters at least be aware? shouldn't we be allowed to connect the dots and say 'wow, so you're removing protection for these wetlands because this guy threw you a couple million to get elected'?
  - insane_dreamer 1mo ago
    the problem is that CU is a way for rich people to get around the limits on individual political contributions (which were designed to prevent the rich from having a lot more influence than regular citizens over the voting process)
- insane_dreamer 1mo ago
  maybe the downvotes should instead state their arguments as to why Citizens United is a good idea
  - tpmoney 1mo ago
    Didn’t down vote, but it was a good idea because the government in citizens united was arguing the FEC (and therefore by extension the president) should have the power to preemptively restrict political speech that mentions a candidate within months of an election. I would think given the current state of American politics, the downsides of allowing Trump to suppress all political messaging about him in the months leading up to an election if it was paid for with “corporate” money to be obvious. But more than that, among the organizations on the side of citizens united and against the government in that case were the ACLU and the AFL-CIO. When the civil liberties people and the unions are all on the same side of an issue as the conservative pundits against the federal government, there’s a very good chance the government is very much in the wrong.
triceratops 1mo ago
> Corporations are people, my friend. Then maybe we should start taxing them like people... File the 1040 take only the standard deduction no matter your income. Revenue, not profit, is your income. Etc.
- quickthrowman 1mo ago
  > Revenue, not profit, is your income. If this was implemented, it would destroy almost all companies. Grocery store net profit margins are 2-4%, if they sell $1B and make $40M and you tax them on 25% of $1B, their loss for the year would be $210M. Apple and NVidia might survive, but any company with profit margins less than 25% or so would lose money simply by operating. Liquidating everything or selling the business outright is the only move if you lose money by operating your business, only everyone else is trying to liquidate their assets since operating a business is guaranteed to lose money so there are no buyers.
  - triceratops 1mo ago
    I agree. So stop treating corporations like people. It doesn't make any sense.
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
ratelimitsteve 1mo ago
Corporations are only people when it comes to rights and profits. When it comes to responsibilities they revert to being nebulous entities whose behaviors are emergent phenomena that no one can actually be held accountable for. Or, to borrow the old maxim, "Corporations aren't people until Texas executes one."
- bigbadfeline 1mo ago
  > Corporations are only people when it comes to rights and profits. When it comes to responsibilities they revert to being nebulous entities whose behaviors are emergent phenomena that no one can actually be held accountable for. You do have a point here. Corporate shareholders do have special protections based on the legal principle of "corporate veil", meaning that corporate owners are usually not personally responsible for the corporation’s debts or legal misdeeds. But they do get to influence elections from behind the veil, as to further grow their privileges, it's a slippery slope indeed.

by lapcat 1mo ago

nyc_data_geek1 1mo ago

Money is not speech, no matter what the courts say.

cooggog 1mo ago
Free speech is when I scream so loud, no one else can even be heard. Its your fault anyway. Maybe if you cared you should have spent your life learning how to scream louder.
tokioyoyo 1mo ago
I agree in spirit, but if not courts, and government, who is the one who gets to decide on it? Since it's a democratic country, if people disagreed or had a strong opinion about it, then would've voted accordingly.
- mpalmer 1mo ago
  Entrenched power is leveraged to further entrench power. No way such a bill would have gotten through Congress, even before Citizens United. But is that democracy?
- nemomarx 1mo ago
  When was it put up to a vote? I don't recall many national elections where I was asked my opinion about issues, only to choose between two options. And most of the time between one option really.
niam 1mo ago
"Money is speech" is a reddit-ism. The argument is closer to "limiting spending can be tantamount to limiting speech." Should the president of the US (regardless of party) be able to restrict your ability to spend money on a web server because it hosts a forum about humanrights/guns/birthcontrol/etc? Or to run a news channel/blog that focuses on a particular perspective? If not, little prevents the most endowed campaigns from changing their form factor from ads to propoganda platforms. And buying out news platforms becomes more enticing. Whatever line you think is reasonable to draw here, would you trust a bad president with it? And would it actually solve the problem?
- lapcat 1mo ago
  > Whatever line you think is reasonable to draw here, would you trust a bad president with it? I don't think this is a good argument, because it's oddly specific. You can't trust a bad President to properly enforce any law. That much should be clear right now. A bad President is a general danger to the country and to the world. Among other powers, the President is the commander-in-chief! Of course Congress has the power to impeach and remove a bad President, so you don't get a bad President without also having a bad Congress. In other words, we'd have much bigger problems than campaign finance. And I would claim that we get a bad President and a bad Congress precisely because we have no campaign finance limitations anymore.
  - niam 1mo ago
    The President is an example (and actual) enforcement mechanism for the State. Not the argument. We want to ban independent political expenditure past a certain dollar threshold. Great. How do we do that without torching legitimate civic and commercial participation, and without accidentally entrenching rich participants even more? I'm unconvinced you can do that, and unconvinced that ads are a worthy enough evil to be worth the try, particularly if it requires amending over the First Amendment. ("If" is an operative word.)

insane_dreamer 1mo ago

Citizens United is possibly the worst SCOTUS decision ever, on par with Dred Scott and Plessy v Fergeson. Abomination.

convolvatron 1mo ago
I think the idea that we should also be able to hide our large donations started here, but got reenforced by later decisions. ok, it's your money, you get to send it to whoever you like. but you shouldn't be able to hide. companies shouldn't act as cover for their owners, and if a candidate is largely propped up by the billionaire class then shouldn't voters at least be aware? shouldn't we be allowed to connect the dots and say 'wow, so you're removing protection for these wetlands because this guy threw you a couple million to get elected'?
- insane_dreamer 1mo ago
  the problem is that CU is a way for rich people to get around the limits on individual political contributions (which were designed to prevent the rich from having a lot more influence than regular citizens over the voting process)
insane_dreamer 1mo ago
maybe the downvotes should instead state their arguments as to why Citizens United is a good idea
- tpmoney 1mo ago
  Didn’t down vote, but it was a good idea because the government in citizens united was arguing the FEC (and therefore by extension the president) should have the power to preemptively restrict political speech that mentions a candidate within months of an election. I would think given the current state of American politics, the downsides of allowing Trump to suppress all political messaging about him in the months leading up to an election if it was paid for with “corporate” money to be obvious. But more than that, among the organizations on the side of citizens united and against the government in that case were the ACLU and the AFL-CIO. When the civil liberties people and the unions are all on the same side of an issue as the conservative pundits against the federal government, there’s a very good chance the government is very much in the wrong.

triceratops 1mo ago

> Corporations are people, my friend. Then maybe we should start taxing them like people... File the 1040 take only the standard deduction no matter your income. Revenue, not profit, is your income. Etc.

quickthrowman 1mo ago
> Revenue, not profit, is your income. If this was implemented, it would destroy almost all companies. Grocery store net profit margins are 2-4%, if they sell $1B and make $40M and you tax them on 25% of $1B, their loss for the year would be $210M. Apple and NVidia might survive, but any company with profit margins less than 25% or so would lose money simply by operating. Liquidating everything or selling the business outright is the only move if you lose money by operating your business, only everyone else is trying to liquidate their assets since operating a business is guaranteed to lose money so there are no buyers.
- triceratops 1mo ago
  I agree. So stop treating corporations like people. It doesn't make any sense.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]

ratelimitsteve 1mo ago

Corporations are only people when it comes to rights and profits. When it comes to responsibilities they revert to being nebulous entities whose behaviors are emergent phenomena that no one can actually be held accountable for. Or, to borrow the old maxim, "Corporations aren't people until Texas executes one."

bigbadfeline 1mo ago
> Corporations are only people when it comes to rights and profits. When it comes to responsibilities they revert to being nebulous entities whose behaviors are emergent phenomena that no one can actually be held accountable for. You do have a point here. Corporate shareholders do have special protections based on the legal principle of "corporate veil", meaning that corporate owners are usually not personally responsible for the corporation’s debts or legal misdeeds. But they do get to influence elections from behind the veil, as to further grow their privileges, it's a slippery slope indeed.