He who has the most money can shout their lies the longest and loudest. And now, even more so, that means big business, and those whom they support.
to work around the campaign finance laws anyway. This has been a losing battle for years.
corporate "personhood" should be eliminated. The fourteenth admendment to the constitution never was meant for corporations to do whatever the hell they want. I do not believe corporations should have the same rights as living breathing human beings. The first admendment to the Bill of Rights was intended for people who bleed, who breathe not for corporations, nor unions that have no death. You can't put a corporation in jail. You can't kick a corporation in the ass, and make them hurt. Level the damn playing field.
Essentially what the Supreme Court has done is give unequal protection in favor of corporations. That is not right.
Ya, this is a tough one for sure. Deep down I'm a firm believer in freedom of speech. Hell, I still believe in motherhood and apple pie. I think new stations should be required to clearly denote news reporting from opinion reporting.
But on this one, I know damn well that the end result will not be freedom of speech, it will be whoever has the money get to speak.
But the good news is that so many will view this as not right, that we may get a chance at a constitutional ammendment. If so, it would be a good time to insert language that makes it a felony for a politician for Congress or the Presidency to make a campaign promise that they do not try to honor.
I once had a Harvard Professor teach that if you want to beat the system, all you need do is play by 100% of its rules. I've seen that ring true over and over, and it looks like once again, he was right..
...it's still against the law for politicians to accept bribes in most states (I don't know of any state where this isn't true).
I think an easy way around this is to write a new law that doesn't say that corporations can't give money to such and such, but instead have language that say that politicians may not accept money from such and such.
I think it would be damn near unenforcable to put politicians in jail for breaking campaign promises. Too merky a thing to prove. I think it would be better just to have American citizens have the right to recall (remove) any sitting person from office by popular vote at any time.
I'm thinking someone like me could now become a Senator.."not" me, but someone like me..
All I would have to do is get the backing of the Big Dog running a large corporation to finance me and pay millions for Quad good ads, opponent bad..
I don't have the financing to do it alone..
Now someone like me will be able to run against a guy like Bloomberg who spends a 100 million of his own money to keep the Mayors job...
Has anyone figured out why he wanted that job so much?? lol
Big Dog, that he wants or can really use?
You could already do that before the court's ruling via a PAC. Corporations have always been able to contribute to PACs and this decision does affect that part of the federal election code. Now if you want try to attract PAC money to offset the personal wealth of Michael Bloomberg, good luck.
It is blindly simplistic to think that now the corporations will drown out other speech by being the loudest.
Unlike unions, which are pretty much monolothic in their views, corporations run the gamut from liberal Hollywood to conservative. Even oil companies donate to both parties.
It is not as if the left is without LOUD and WEALTHY voices of its own. I mentioned unions by the score, which also contribute thousands and thousands of hours of its workers. Then there are trial lawyers, who the Dems will not alientate. Dozens of billionaires from Soros to Oprah to Geffin to Bing. Buffet supported Obama.
The fact that a drug company can buy and ad does not bother me in light of the billions and billions at the disposal of the other side.
Oh, and I'm always amused, during elections, to see where the bulk of the money goes, from Big business; overwhelmingly to Republican candidates. Which makes sense for them to do, since Republican candidates typical support their agendas. That's why the Democrats are squawking, and the Republican's like Steele, think it's a great idea. You can point to individual examples where each side benefits, but if you add up the balance sheet, Republicans win big, and the viability for a serious third party diminishes.
The Dems get billions in special intersts. They just don't like other interests having a say.
O
my issue with the recent Supreme Court Ruling. The US Supreme Court is saying a corporation is a person and has the same inalienable rights as an individual. Yes, I have problem with that idea.
A corporation has perputual life, a individual such as you or I or George Soros will die, eventually.
A corporation has limited liability.
A corporation has access to resources that you or I do not. For example: I cannot as individual hire a lobbyist to advocate for me and a write off the expense as a tax deduction. Hell, I just wrote a $100.oo to the State RepublicAn party and when I do they are always kind to remind me my donation is not tax deductible.
The fourteenth Amendment to the constitution states:
"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citzens of the United States; no shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"
The Supreme Court ruling is wrong, a corporation is not a person, they aRE not born; they are chartered. The US Supreme Court is in defacto, creating a superperson, and that is wrong, and frankly I do not understand the US Supreme Court's rationale. This ruling will go down as perhaps the Dred Scott decision of our lifetime.
Obama is bitching that Wall Street money will pour in.
As if he had a hard time raising money. However he got it, it came in by the bucket full.
Now, to be clear, as he would say, I don't begrudge him raising the money. It is just funny that the living proof that the corporations can be outspent is living at 1600 PA Ave.
as compared to McCain? Just like with scales, one side can have a certain amount, but if the other side has more, the scale tips in it's favor.
P.S. I just checked. Obama received more, but I suspect most of that came toward the end when they could see the McCain had no chance of winning, and wanted to have influence with the Obama administration.
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Obama has tremendous support among the very wealthy. If you look at precints, the solid Dem are poor and very rich. Upper East Side, Bel Air and BH. The richer parts of CT.
To ask how much he recieved from "Wall Street" is meaningless. He got lots from ultra rich, many of whom were "Wall Street."
Hey, where do all the rich people in NY and CT come from? A hell of a lot from business.
He ain't hurting in any department.
Money by its self is not the problem in politics it wlll always find a way the problem is YOU the voter being able to know who or what coproration is paying for it. As the system is now some wonderful sounding group pays for the ads and you have to hire a law team to find out who is really behind it.
A simple solution is to make all donations direct to the canidates and make the process transparent and easy for anyone to find out who is behind them. If people would have known who the big money was behind Obama there would be a lot less buyers remorse now maybe none.
Also share holders ain't gonna let the corporartions spend as much as Kehthie O thinks, who has lost his fricking mind by the way
NRA is loving it .
Liberals don't like it when the playing field is made level.