Warm up the bribes.

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Thank you. Buttering me up always helps.

Well, if a corporation is not a citizen of the United States, should it have Constitutional protections, like freedom of speech?

Constitutional rights that are reserved for US citizens? Like are you saying, individuals who live in other countries?

 

You have to look at the decision in context of the actual case. Company make a movie about Hilliary and wants to release it during the primary season, but the FCC tells them no, so company sues.

During the questioning, I believe Justice Alito asks the Inspector General, arguing for the FCC, if the FCC banned the movie because it was about Clinton, yes they did. What if it had been a book, would they have banned it, again yes they would, surprise from all the Justices, many rise from the bench. Again Alito asks "You would ban a book for being political speech?" Again yes, what if a 500 page book praises a candidate, but on the last page says don't vote for Clinton, again the IG would ban it.

Taken in context of the case, it made sense why the Justices would vote in favor of the Corporation.

 

That's more difficult. Books get banned all the time, for different reasons. But the problem remains that a corporation is not a citizen, and while I'm not belittling your point, which is a good one, GG, a corporation does not have the right to usurp the political insterests and the representation its owners, employees or customers. I was coming to this point later, but I was seeking clarity on the point of who deserves Consitutional protections and who doesn't.

 

I'm not "playing semantics". And, yes, I'm ignoring his argument and will continue to do so, just as I'd ignore the arguments of anyone else who ignores what I write and tries to twist what I say.

Until such time as he responds to what I WRITE, I will continue to ignore so-called arguments as they are based on fraudulent misrepresentations of what I wrote, not what I actually wrote.

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Thank you, NOG.

I get VERY annoyed by people who so obviously and intentionally misrepresent what I write or say. I never claimed nor said that corps were citizens. I used the word "individual", because that was what I meant to say. If I'd meant to say "citizen", I'd have said "citizen". Clearly, there's a difference between an "individual" and a "citizen". While presumably all citizens are individuals, not all individuals are citizens of a particular country (the US, in this case).

 

Do legal immigrants? Do illegal immigrants? It all comes down to how the courts & law decide to handle corporations. You pointed out that a corporation doesn't fit the definition of a citizen, or of a legal alien, so just think of corporation as a new category, with it's own criteria and rights. Just like the rights of a legal alien differ from the rights of a citizen or an illegal alien, the rights of a corporation would be different still.

Try to be more patient. Misunderstandings, honest or not, happen all the time on these forums, and you just have to deal with them.

 

Relax. Not every one is out to get you. NOG (with whom I rarely agree) made a very good point - it is indeed far more likely that people don't understand what you try to express than that they deliberately distort what you say, twist your words or outright lie in order to torment you in one way or another.

That assumption is valid even when the suspects are Liberals and thus obviously cannot be trusted.

 

Of course we can't be trusted!

BTW, I was responding to NOG, who appears to have a real concern about the Consitutional issues raised by this ruling. And I will continue as long as he wishes:

Yes, when they are in our court system, they have Constitutional rights. How do you feel about illegals and foreign companies taking out political ads in the our political process? That is covered as freedom of speech under the Bill of Rights. While they don't have the right to vote, because they are not citizens, it appears that the ruling suggests that "a corporation" can take out an ad and since it does not need the status of "citizen" it would appear that any corporation can do so, even foreign ones.

 

Chandos, I think you missed my point. My point was that different categories of 'individual' have different rights to different extents. A citizen has the right to vote, but no other does. A legal alien has the right to live and move about, and if they are legally working aliens, the right to work. An illegal alien has the right to freedom of religion, and speech, and protection from search and seizure (I think), but not to live in the US, or to work in the US, or to vote. A 'corporate individual' may then have it's own collection of rights, such as not to vote, but still to speak. That being said, I'd still say the same restrictions on speech should apply as do for other types of individual (such as causing a panic, political contributions, etc).

 

I have no idea what a "corporate individual" is. I do know it's NOT a "natural person," but a business/legal contruction. Care to elaborate, NOG? I think DMC is a corporate lawyer and maybe he can shed some light on this subject.

Here is Ralph Nader's take on it:

http://www.nader.org/index.php?/arc...ate-Influences-on-Our-Democracy.html#extended

 

Chandros, it's rather disingenuous to say try to make a claim that because Corps aren't mentioned in the 1st Am that that means that they don't have free speech rights ... because IIRC, the very concept of a private "corporation" didn't exist until sometime in the second half of the 1800's, and they were referred to as "trusts" at that point IIRC.

 

No, it's not really "disingenuous," Crucis. "Trust," as a substitute for "company" does not appear as a natural person in the Constitution either.

Here's a very famous - or infamous company, or "trust," as you call it - from the colonial period that you may have heard of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_East_India_Company

The company was known as a "joint-stock company."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint-stock_company

 

The ruling is badly flawed. It lacks the crucial element of assigning corporations votes according to the number of their employees in America - after all they benefit society as a whole by putting people into work, thus generating wealth. They ought to be rewarded for that crucial contribution to society.

Also, that rule would have the beneficial effect of being a clear disincentive against outsourcing and laying off workers.

 

The shareholders are the ones who actually own the company. Are corporations going let shareholders, the rightful owners, decide which candidates to support with their money and profits?

 

Don't think that they'd have much of a choice if the issue came up in a shareholder's meeting.

That said, remember that it's the board's fiduciary responsibility to act in the best economic interests of the corporation, not the state or the country. If one cannot accept that, then perhaps that person shouldn't own shares in any corp.

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Yes, but did such "companies" exist within anything close to the same legal statuses that have existed for corporations for rough the last century?


Furthermore, note that the 1st Am does not say in any way that freedom of speech was limited to living, breathing people. There's nothing in the 1st Am at all that could be implied to say that groups of people, which would cover unions, corporations, political parties, and many other organizations, can be denied free speech rights.

 

Well, we could always have separate corporations for the different political parties. That way shareholders would have their profits are spent the way in which they choose, politically. Also, customers would know which companies were supporting their political insterests, and could vote with their consumer dollars instead of giving their money to corporations that fail to represent their political interests. There are plenty of corporations who support both political parties.

And because America is such a large consumer market for goods and services - plus all the services and products they spend on various corporations and companies as taxpayers - many corporations may discover that the good of the country is in their economic interests as well.

 

Yeah... you'd have corps that actually did what they were supposed to do ... MAKE MONEY. And those that don't... and don't survive long because they would be utterly inferior at doing their jobs.

 

Indeed! Now, if an American company, registered in the US, was bought and controlled by a company from Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China or Russia, and that company then buys US politicians, strike that, finances their election campaigns through generous donations - all they do is that they are just making money, and spending money in the best interests of their shareholders.

It is inconceivable that national interest and industry bottom line ever fall apart.

That the purchasing power of a large company, say Lockheed Martin, vastly exceeds that of natural persons like Mr. and Mrs. Smith can also not possibly have any ill effects on the US political or legislative process. After all, the invisible hand of the market never fails, and why shouldn't it be felt in elections, too?

 

Every coporation has the right to decide its mission, based upon shareholder expectation or ownership (some corporations are controlled by a single entity, which has 51 percent), and as long as they obey the law of the land, they are free to control their own missions. The problem for them is that customers have expectations as well, and they pay the bills for these corporations, so thusly they are beholden to the local communities in which they do business. Anyone who has ever worked for a large company knows that they do more than just grub money out of customers, but also contribute to the communties in which they reside and do business, at least the good ones. They know that by contributing to a community they keep their customer base happy and can often expand on it.

Those that are only interested in the quick buck, usually reflect the values, or lack of vlaues in those cases, of their management teams, some of which are only interested in turning a quick buck for themselves and will often just raid an otherwise sound company, and turn them into personal piggy-banks for their own personal gain. Generally, those CEOs, CFOs and other officers are sued by the shareholders, or prosecuted for fraud. We saw that after the economic meltdown. AIG comes to mind.

A company like Lockheed is so fat with government contracts and taxpayer money that they prefer to stay under the radar politically. The push at the moment is for less government and less spending. They don't want to end up missing out on all that taxpayer "goodness," with less government spending, as don't many of the large corporations who are bleeding the taxpayers.

As Crucis points out, most of these guys have their eyes on the bottom line, that means more government $$$ for them and an expansion in the size of government to support corporate incomes. I'm not sure there is a "free market" here, but if there were, "some" corporations would have it much harder, especially without all the government welfare. Neverhtelss, not all of them are lucky enough to be on the governmet's payroll.

 

Forget about Lockheed Martin. I meant to speak only of size, and Lockheed Martin is large.

 

Lockheed is one of the largest defense contrators around, on sales of 42 billion last quarter - not too shabby. It not only does defense work, but a variety of different technologies for the government, including work on the space telescope, the Hubble. Take a look at all that government work they do. It is really quite impressive, Ragusa, which I'm sure is why you brought them up:

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/news/photo/Gallery3.html