Supreme court ruling on corporations and politics

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The only method that a court can use is other documentation. Lie detector tests, psycho-analysis and so on usually aren't good methods AT ALL. Lie detector tests are so easily fooled by emotional fluctuations that they aren't that useful. Psychologists usually can't detect lies. And even inconsistencies in stories are often just results of stress, bad memory and all sorts of other similar issues. Can this in theory be caught? Sure, but in practice most of the methods that could be used wouldn't be effective as all a corporate board would have to do is just keep their real motives under the table. As it stands, it is more likely to be an arbitrary way to damage a company, as it will likely be an issue where everybody cheats but only incompetent companies or ones that have made enemies will be hurt, thus we won't see justice, but rather actually EXTEND politics into the courts even further.


Right, but the ways that cost money are still usually better. It takes resources to call. It takes resources to get on television. It takes resources to pass out information, etc.

I mean, yes, youtube videos do help, but you can still do youtube videos despite having a boatload of cash. That being said, I think usually the candidate with more money tends to win the election.

Isn't that what this is all about? ending corporate funding? or at the very least, limiting it.


I don't think that things would really change if the law were changed(the issue isn't passing but rather the supreme court invalidating a law), it is just that I don't think you are appreciating the arguments for the other side enough. I mean, the way I see it is that companies are always going to throw money around, and that as it stands, perverse incentives are likely more than strong enough at the moment where they couldn't really be made too much stronger.


I'll agree.


Actually, I'd really go to the fact that being able to say what you want to say in this society is how we have "free speech" in many ways. As the presses and so on have always required money, and if the government were to prevent certain groups from being able to use money to have access, then this seems a clear violation.

I have ambitions. Different ambitions, though.

If a candidate wins with money, it's my problem, as I think it's wrong.

Not all campaigns are made of lies - but I don't think that some party should have advantage over others because it's endorsed by the rich.

I hate the fact that spending money is considered a form of speech. I have no money, does that mean I have less to say?

I agree with you on this one, but who will foot the bill for their campaigns, the American people?

I will even go a step further and say that corporations are pretty much a bad thing all around. Like others have said, they care about making money, and nothing else.

We're in a new vicious age where the powerful are tearing the rest of us to pieces. Every authority rules for the powerful against the powerless at every occasion, and there's an endless well of ideological and so-called moral justification for this cruelty and injustice. This is starting to turn into El Salvador.

For some reason I cannot account for the powerful in the USA seem intent on destroying everything worthwhile in the USA for gratification of their selfish wealth with no thought to the fact that when the country is finally totally destroyed, and it looks as if it's moving in the direction with speed, there will be no decent place to live anymore. Are they perhaps agents of Al Qaeda ? It seems unlikely but their actions are doing far more damage to the country than the Arab terrorists.

12% of Americans think their taxes went down under Obama, the rest think they went up or stayed the same. 95% of Americans got a tax cut under Obama.

Now think how confused people are going to get when corporations decide to toss out millions in ads based on an issue with the intent to confuse people. If you don't think they have a good reason to, well you didn't notice the banks getting billions of dollars of our money for their mistakes, or the fact they are continuing to make those mistakes.

Corporations being punished by consumers for bad behavior is a lie. If it wasn't for all those evil regulations you wouldn't even know those companies did anything wrong. Corporations are like a dictator, when they have little power they don't really matter, but give them full power and you are in trouble.

Since corporations have the right to free speech I guess they also have the right to vote...... wait nevermind, they just buy it.

If you are wondering why people keep defending anything to put a stop to big money, the answer really is simple. The average person thinks they will be the rich person getting hammered with taxes. Currently most high school graduates think they will be making $70K+ by age 30. They are voting against their interest today, with the idea that tomorrow they will be rich.

Sand: "For some reason I cannot account for the powerful in the USA seem intent on destroying everything worthwhile in the USA for gratification of their selfish wealth with no thought to the fact that when the country is finally totally destroyed, and it looks as if it's moving in the direction with speed, there will be no decent place to live anymore"

I have two reasons I can think of for this, and you would have to be crazy to believe any of it (the need to destroy the planet) would be, everything we hear is controlled lies to keep us under control. There is some secret group of people controlling everything.

The other would be that all the people in power/money are evangicals and think the world is going to end soon so it is ok to destroy the planet.......


or we could go with the logical one. The majority of humans are total idiots and have no idea what they are doing. I am going to stick with this one. Personally I have been looking for another online discussion group that isn't full of morons but honestly I don't think it is possible. wrongplanet.net has a few people that are more closely related to monkeys than humans but at least they are not the majority.

In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond addresses the question of what the guy who cut down the last tree on Easter Island must have been thinking. I'm not going to quote extensively from that book, but those in this thread who keep wondering how people can be so self destructive would do well to read it, it's very insightful.

Awesomelyglorious, can I call you AG? anyway:

Yeah, I know, I know, I was really more proposing a way to end false advertising than government bribery. To me if companies couldn't lie to consumers, they could not get money they did not deserve, and then corrupt companies would have a much harder time bribing politicians, thus I didn't really put to much thought into how to try people for bribery because I was more thinking of ending false advertising as a preventive measure. I should have said that from the beginning.

But one doesn't need a corporation's backing to make huge amounts of money. I mean, Look at how much money Obama raised from people donating to him.

I'm not saying corporations are not corrupt, I just find most of the suggested ways of dealing with it to be a lot like... Oh I don't know the standard simile for this so I'll try and make one up... like ah crap, All I can think of involves mythical creatures. oh well, I'll go with it. Like taking away a goblin's axe and handing it to an ogre. You where better off fighting the goblin.

Omerik:

I didn't say everyone with ambitions becomes a corporate suit. I have different ambitions too.

Then don't vote for the candidate with the most money.

neither do I. Let's get rid of the party system. that will accomplish a lot more.

No, it means you have less ability to say it in mediums that cost money to speak through. You can still go around preaching in the streets about whatever you want.

That sounds interesting. Of all the history we refuse to learn anything from, the story of easter island is my favorite.

Most do, and I wouldn't care if you called me Shirley, just so long as I knew to expect it.


Corruption isn't just a single variable, but rather corruption varies a lot on context. Getting rid of false advertisement companies won't have any impact on political influence because companies are just machines that respond to the institutional context. If there are laws against lying but not murder then corporations will do the latter, and if vice versa, then they'll lie, but outlawing murders won't reduce many of the lies. I am not trying to be too negative either, as I know that murders are probably likely to reduce profitability of a company is caught, if only due to the shock value. (of course there'd have to be a trial and public knowledge for the shock value to be sngificant)


He still got a lot of money from corporations though. Millions, y'know.


I'll agree with that, however, I would guess that you might be a person who likes fantasy novels or RPG games or some such.

I think the ambition to become much more rich than other people, and in the way that corporations do, is somewhat against my morals.

That's exactly what I'm saying - because I have less money, I have less ability. I don't think it's fair. There was a succesful campaign for a candidate for the Tel-Aviv mayorship that was voluntary, and with people talking everyone about his policies, him speaking everywhere, to every crowd, answering all questions, and it spread to the entire city, and he got a percentage of votes that no one believed he can in the beginning - although still failed to win. Some say it's because of his ideas regarding Israel as a whole. and the title "communist" and "anti-zionist" (although he describes himself as simply "non-zionist", and favours democracy), others say that what makes it even more successful. By talking, and spreading awareness, people who at start rejected him then voted for him - despite being considered radical and "extreme".

I was really impressed with this campaign, because it was "underground". Mouth-to-ear. No advertising, no use of media, unless you consider their website as such, and the people giving links to sites, and uploading youtube videos. There wasn't any strategic way to show him under some light, no advisors, no TV ads - just words, and answers, and going to speak in front of small crowds - but many small crowds. And answering all questions, and all criticism. He told the crowds to ask questions so he can show himself, unlike most politicians do. He asked them to say why they are not convinced yet, so he can convince them.

This campaign wasn't about slogans and media, it was about spreading ideas. That how I would want it to be. The use of media by people with more money is usually distorted and displays fallacies and brainwashing. That's why I don't like it in the first place, and don't like its use.

A new morality of the powerful has been imposed successfully. I will give you an example from recent times. Much of the US has decided that the fault for the recent troubles belongs to the debtors. They are said to be irresponsible and must pay dearly for what has happened, with debt slavery if need be. In the old days, responsibility for bad loans was shared between creditor and debtor. Today, the prevailing opinion is that it's completely the fault of the debtor and that it's the obligation of the debtor and of society to make the creditor 100% whole on the debt.

The economy is being weighed down with an incredible, unsustainable debt overhead - I speak of private debt, not public debt, all of which can be covered. This debt overhead adds to the cost of production, of life, and will destroy the United States. This morality of the powerful prevents all measures to change this, to lighten or remove that overhead, because the prevailing morality is that the creditor must be made whole no matter what the cost. The creditors are overwhelmingly the top 90-98% of the wealth scale.

By the way, the Roman historians who saw it happen reported that this, more than any other factor, doomed the Roman Empire.

AG: Just wanted to check first.

The way I see it is that once it is revealed that a corporation has been lying to it's consumers, it will have the same shock value as said murder and the corporation will die overnight from consumer rejection.

But hey, I'm an optimist

A depressed optimist, but an optimist

And if Obama lets that money cloud his judgement, he has no buisness in politics and should be banished for acting like he did.

Novels and movies, not really. I'm more enthralled by my own imagination than anybody else's, to the extent I get angry when movies trailers say "enter a world beyond imagination!" THEN HOW DID YOUR WRITERS COME UP WITH IT YOU DYGARS*!?

I do love mythology however, as well as fantasy games.

Omerik:

I didn't say ambition has to be about money.

It may not be fair, but those who have more resources will always be able to manipulate these things. making it illegal will just push it under the table.

That sounds like one sweet campaign, and I would do something like that If I ran for office, though I probably wouldn't shun TV entirely.

I think a law that would require all information in adds to be factual and not taken out of context would do far more good than getting rid of donations.


*Dygar is a swear word in one of the languages of my personal fictional cosmology. I usually don't use it's terminology on forums, but it seemed appropriate in this situation.

This I strongly doubt. It seems to me that lying will be taken about as negatively as if there was a recall, maybe a little bit worse. Actual explicit murder would however likely be seen worse than cases of passive murder.


People will always let that money influence them, even unconsciously, and I doubt that money will stop playing a role in political power as well.

There is a distinction between CEOs using their own personal wealth and using their role as officer in a corporation to use the funds of a corporate treasury directly. A business corporation could legally "invest" its capital, earned off the backs of its employees, to support political campaigns and causes that, though may be in the interest of the corporation's profitability, may not be in the interest of its individual employees (e.g., laws/politicians that are "anti-labor" or "anti-consumer"). Can you imagine being denied a pay raise because your employer decided instead to contribute to McCain's campaign (or Obama's)? If you think about it, some share of the revenue your labor produced for the corporation is going to support policies you may directly oppose (and if you happen to support them in one instance, what happens when the stakes are turned?). Decisions made by a few corporate officers may not accurately reflect the interests of a corporation's employees or even its shareholders.

The Roberts Court decided to frame this as a free-speech issue, but I don't see it that way. There are a few assumptions to the majority opinion that I do not share:

• The corporation is a legal person.
• Money is speech.

If you reject both these assumptions, their argument does not logically follow.

I think both assumptions are true in some sense.

What the legal personhood for a corporation means though is the real question. It is without question that they are in some sense persons, but one might argue that the notion of legal personhood in their case does not and should not go as far as it was taken.

I certainly don't see how money could meaningfully be separated from speech in a society in which the ability to communicate is partially a matter of private production of news though. Unless one is going to severely limit "speech" to only spoken words, it seems that curtailing expenditures is to curtail speaking, and the 1st Amendment is more of a prohibition against curtailing speech than a statement of a right to speak.

It should be noted that both speech and personhood are variable qualities, more or less as you intimated. But where important policies are determinable by the quantity of money involved there is a clear indication that the wealthy are overpowered in the matter of speech. To a certain extent, this has always been true as the average person has not, in the past, has control of large media. The internet has changed this to a degree but the growing determination of almost all governments to limit internet speech threatens this.

The personhood of a corporation was created to permit financial freedom, not policy influence and the Supreme court violently distorted this purpose for what seems to me to be suspicious motives.