Comments on: Campaign finance hearing may have ramifications for corporate personhood

By: Re-examining the axioms of modern liberalism – an introduction | Scholars and Rogues

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:34:19 +0000

[...] press” protections accorded to journalists? And how would they have looked at the rise of corporate personhood and power? We can look to what the Constitution’s authors wrote and said in their own time [...]

By: Scholars and Rogues » Conservative groups running issue ads with corporate money: how to hang this albatross around the GOP’s neck

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:48:13 +0000

[...] The Supreme Court opened the floodgates with their decision overturning a century of established campaign finance law, and we’re starting to see the impacts of the conservative majority’s myopia. I expect, however, that it’ll get far worse before it gets better. [...]

By: Supreme Court overturns ban on direct corporate spending on elections - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:21:10 +0000

[...] of a bunch that i read in the fall which were uneasy that this court decided to take on the case: Scholars and Rogues Campaign finance hearing may have ramifications for corporate personhood corporations are people. money is speech. i dunno..i think this is one of those moments that [...]

By: jeff watson

jeff watson — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:09:35 +0000

Bur none of this angst over corporations influence will matter as we will have the most open, transparent government ever…..Obama said so, and I believe his every word.

By: Kent Duprey

Kent Duprey — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:05:22 +0000

I think we are mixing up the concept of corporation with business in general. Business do provide jobs and products and are, in marco, fantastic. But business can thrive without corporate “personhood”. The corporation concept was originally formed to protect individuals within public institutions (like libraries) from full financial liability in the case of tort action.

Our countries solution to this was to create a legal concept of corporate person-hood, which, to be frank, is beyond bizarre. Legislation could have been introduced to limit the personal liability of business owners without these constitutional gymnastics.

We should avoid allowing corporations to participate in our political process because it would essentially represent a disproportionate increase in the participation of a specific class of people. Understand that the real people that work at these corporations can, and should, participate fully in government. To have corporations participating as proxies causes an over-representation in popularity of the owner’s component viewpoints and ultimately distorts public policy in favor of their interests. This then becomes a closed loop cycle. As this class of people amass more influence over public policy, remaining barriers to even greater influence can be removed, ad infinitum. I believe that we are seeing the progression in this cycle now.

We don’t need corporate person-hood for businesses to do all the things they do well, and their participation in the political process reduces the relative power of citizens to shape their own government, and in turn, their ways of life.

By: Dr. Slammy

Dr. Slammy — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 14:38:25 +0000

So what you’re saying, if I understand you, Jeff, is that our greatest contemporary technology (arguably, at the very least) is the result of a broad partnership between business, government and the academic complex?

See, that didn’t hurt a bit, did it?

By: jeff watson

jeff watson — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 04:35:34 +0000

But who were the subcontractors in the development of Arapanet? Business, universities, and the government.

Jeff

By: Dr. Slammy

Dr. Slammy — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 04:00:15 +0000

I don’t know about you, Jeff, but I was writing my opinions on the Internet without a whole lot of trouble well before it got overrun by corporations. The Internet was invented and developed by the Big Evil Gummint, if you recall. Sure, corps have helped us develop plenty of useful applications of that technology (like WordPress!), but when we pretend that all good issues from the sacred corp, we demonstrate how very ideologically clouded our vision is.

By: jeff watson

jeff watson — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 03:23:13 +0000

And corporations gave more money to Obama last cycle than they did McCain. Corporations are a good thing…without them, you wouldn’t be writing your opinions on the internet, in fact you would need a horse to travel, and would have to make your own clothes after you made your fabric on the loom. Corporations provide jobs, products, and markets.

Jeff

By: VettaKing

VettaKing — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 03:11:18 +0000

If I am in a formal debate and I am using words, and my opponent is handing out $100 bills to every one watching, it’s not really a fair debate. “Corporate personhood” is American right wing irrationality at its’ most perverse.

By: jeff watson

jeff watson — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:33:48 +0000

Corporations are not people. People can vote at the ballot box, corporations can’t.’

Anyways, if the government changes the rules midstream, there will be a greater dislocation and flight of capital than has ever been seen. The government can respond by seizing assets, like they did with the the GM and Chrysler bondholders, but that will be just another nail in the coffin. Capital tends to migrate to where it can earn the highest return, as it should be,

Jeff

By: Kevin Schmidt

Kevin Schmidt — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:25:54 +0000

It has already been indisputable proven that the Supreme Court has never in a case found corporations to have the same rights as humans. An incorrect brief has caused this error for over one century.

Now it is time to right that wrong and reduce “corporate personhood” to second class status beneath the rights of WE THE PEOPLE!

Any and all justices who do not rule in favor of WE THE PEOPLE should be immediately impeached and removed from the Supreme Court.