[xjcsa]

In my view this story has received inadequate attention here. This case was re-argued today, and the Supreme Court appears likely to strike down the remains of McCain-Feingold completely, and also to strike down bans on corporations (and unions) airing advertisements supporting and opposing candidates.

A complete transcript of today's oral arguments is here (PDF).

SCOTUS Blog's analysis is here.

As mentioned at the end of the article, it appears that the court's scheduling of this early special hearing in advance of the fall term (which begins October 5) may have been intended to allow the issuance of a ruling as early as possible, so as to give Congress and the states time to pass new legislation within the court's Constitutional framework in time for next year's political campaigns.

Bottom line: this appears to be a Big Deal, and may completely remake the campaign process and campaign finance laws, with the emphasis (finally) on First Amendment free speech rights.

[MinorityRepublican]

Wow some good news!

[Huck]

Thanks for the post.

[Ladysmith]

Mark!

[Hattie]

McCain is already worried about this, heard him on radio tonight saying the high court doesn’t understand any of this. LOL

[dr_who]

Won’t happen until it happens.

[Always Right]

I think it comes down to whether Kennedy will flop on this.

[nomad]

Now if we can kick out it`s author,McLame.

[rlmorel]

YES! YES! YES!

McCain-Feingold was the single piece of legislation that soured me on the workings of our government (not that there weren’t OTHERS, this one was the proverbial straw!)

If this could be overturned, it would be like removing a black stain.

[alrea]

"Congress has a self interest," Scalia told Kagan during her presentation. "I doubt that one can expect a body of incumbents to draw election restrictions that do not favor incumbents.

Priceless stuff here. Thanks for posting.

[freekitty]

I listened to it instead of the Commie in Chief spewing his usual lies.

I was absolutely fascinated.

[Shermy]

“In my view this story has received inadequate attention here.”

Didn’t you know? It turns out that lack of campaign money limitations helps Democrats more than Republicans.

[tioga]

we can only hope at this point.......

[Lancey Howard]

That sick scumbag who writes for the Washington Post will not be pleased.
EJ Diane or something...

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Thank GOD!

[Mariner]

"Would that leave the country in a situation where corporations and trade unions can spend as much as they want in the last 30 days on television ads, et cetera, of this kind, but political parties couldn't, because political parties can only spend hard money on this kind of expenditure?" he asked ex-Solicitor Gen. Ted Olsen, who was representing Citizens United. "And therefore, the group that is charged with the responsibility of building a platform that will appeal to a majority of Americans is limited, but the groups that have particular interests, like corporations or trade unions, can spend as much as they want?"

The answer is glaringly simple: Let any US entity spend whatever they want in advocacy...as long as the ORIGINAL source of the money is identified.

[Uncle Miltie]

McCain / Feingold: Gut the First Amendment.
McCain / Kennedy: Amnesty
McCain / (Next Democrat, Please!): Sellout Extraordinaire!

[GeronL]

I hope you are correct. And I expect Obama to propose adding 3 new seats to the SCOTUS soon afterwards.

[magellan]

"We don't put our First Amendment rights in the hands of FEC bureaucrats."

Yes, yes, yes!

[Rastus]

I seem to remember GWB saying he was going to sign it and leave it up to SCOTUS to overturn it. I didn’t like the attitude, but maybe he was playing the long game.

[Salvation]

ROTFLOL!

[Buck W.]

How will the wise Latina vote?

[Rick_Michael]

The arguement is that corporations and unions are somehow different from “institutional media”. I find that VERY hard to believe. Not all corporations have a ‘right-leaning’ philosophy and most unions are atleast somewhat to the left if not more.

“Institutional media” is incredibly bias to the left. There are very few exceptions I can think about. So as I see, one can eliminate all speech that isn’t formerly approved by the funders, which is incredibly unlikely or one can find a way to improve the ethics within a system of diverging opinions.

That is... honor the right to speech, but find a way to eliminate outright corruption. Either way, it all seems difficult.

[Christian4Bush]

bump for later

[St. Louis Conservative]

A BIG victory for free speech if true.....

[brityank]

If I had my druthers, I'd go back and do what the supreme Court or Congress should have done back in 1886, and fired the Court Clerk that used an instruction to the attorneys which was never brought up or debated in the case, but added to the Syllabus illegally:

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U.S. 394 (1886)

Syllabus: "The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

By referencing that as stare decisis the Courts have enabled any and all groups granted Priviledges under governance to acquire the same Rights as Man. I don't believe the Founders ever thought their progeny would be as stupid as to enable something they had fought against throughout the 1700's, British Corporations taking liberties with the Colonies and their inhabitants.

An interesting read on Corporate Personhood is contained at Multinational Corporations (MNCs): Beyond The Profit Motive

(From Intro)

... [C]orporations are themselves centrally planned economies. Decisions are not open to question within a corporation and absolute control is exercised over production and distribution networks by management. Also, whereas public companies are required to be transparent to public scrutiny, the contracts that corporations have with respect to resource management or service delivery remain a commercial secret, removing an important level of accountability.

Many of these unaccountable corporations now have a greater turnover than the GDP of most countries. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 52 are corporations and 48 are countries, and these corporations have sales figures between $51 billion and $247 billion. Seventy percent of world trade is controlled by just 500 of the largest industrial corporations, and in 2002, the top 200 had combined sales equivalent to 28% of world GDP. However, these 200 corporations only employed 0.82% of the global work force, highlighting the reduction in employment created by excessive economies of scale. In the US, ninety-eight percent of all companies account for only 25 percent of business activity; the remaining two percent account for nearly 75 percent of the remaining activity. The top 500 industrial corporations, which represent only one-tenth of one percent of all US companies, control over two-thirds of the business resources in the US and collect over 70 percent of all US profits. Thus there is also a disproportionate distribution of financial benefit from economic activity, which clearly does not pass to local communities through opportunity or wages. It is retained instead by a small number of major shareholders of an even smaller number of corporations.
------
Corporate profit is exaggerated by what is effectively publicly funded corporate welfare. The package of corporate welfare begins with governments who offer incentives to corporations in order to attract their business, increase their GDP and compete with other nations. National resources that rightfully belong to the public are the first carrots on the stick, and are offered at highly discounted prices to corporations without public consent. Governments even give away valuable common assets at no cost to corporations, such as oil and mineral rights, saving corporations billions of dollars in costs.
------
30% of farmers in the US do not receive any of the $26 billion of US subsidies, and over 85% go to only 20% of the largest farms, a pattern repeated in the EU.
------
... [T]he number of small farms in the US has decreased from 6.8 million in 1935 to 1.5 million in 1998.
------

Securing Legal Rights

Corporate lawyers established the precedent of ‘Corporate Personhood' in US law, which granted them the same constitutional rights as ordinary people. They first began manipulating the courts perception of the Fourteenth Amendment, originally designed to protect the civil rights of slaves. They argued that ‘equal protection rights' and ‘Due Process' should apply to corporations as well as people, and in 1889, the supreme court bestowed these rights on corporations under the authority of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus corporations became ‘persons'. This was a major turning point, allowing corporations to use these new powers to undermine the democratic rights that the constitution originally intended to confer on citizens: the right to a republican form of government, derived exclusively from the consent of the governed.

The enshrining of limited liability in British and US law in the latter half of the 19th century removed the risk factor from corporate business. It allowed investment funds to be obtained by the public trading of company shares, without imparting any legal responsibility upon the shareholders for the actions of the company. One by one, states in the US began encouraging local investment by lifting restrictions that prevented corporations from merging and acquiring other corporations and stock. Soon corporations were allowed to exist indefinitely and have business multiple interests in multiple states.

In 1906, corporate lawyers secured Fourth Amendment Constitutional Rights for their clients, which originally protected people's possessions from unreasonable searches. The corporations used this protection to limit health, safety and environmental investigations in corporate facilities and to keep corporate documents private. This has undermined the public's right to proper heath and safety standards and environmental protection ever since.

Corporations were also granted protection under the Fifth Amendment, preventing corporate powers from being revoked without due process. This allowed corporations to be compensated if they loose revenue from local laws designed to protect citizens.

Under the First Amendment (Freedom of Speech) corporations have been granted the right to influence legislation that is unrelated to their business. As a result corporations have infringed upon the very heart of democracy. States can no longer limit corporate advertising, even when politically motivated, or limit financial contributions to political campaigns.

These, and other changes, have undermined the people's right to treat corporations as subordinate, man-made entities. Corporate rights now directly compete with the public's right to their health, safety and welfare. The courts have chosen not to address this conflict of interest and the undermining of the democratic process. They have instead allowed modern corporations to use these rights to amass greater wealth. Economic power creates political influence, a fact that, given their new protections under US law, corporations use to their full advantage.

Don't take this the wrong way - profit is good; greed is bad. By allowing groups to assume the same position in society as Man enhances the greed factor and inhibits Man's profit, and ultimately his ability to control his political society. Is it any wonder that the corporations are not averse to making the US into a socialist society? After all, they get to run the show without meddlesome restrictions.

As to the limitations in politics, only live humans should be able to contribute, individually, to any politician directly - and only to those for whom he can legally vote. Maybe after the next Revolution and rewrite of our Constitution - if we survive!

[KansasGirl]

This is an important case to watch. It is likely that if they strike this down they will also rule on the side of talk radio when the obama administration moves to silence them.

[nina0113]

seen this?

[stephenjohnbanker]

Good post!

B U M P

[BluesDuke]

The campaign finance reform issue was, in fact, one very major reason why Lame McCain wasn't going to get my vote last year even against His Excellency Al Haaji Field Marshmallow Dr. Barack Obama Dada, COD, RIP, LSMFT, Life President of the Republic Formerly Known as The United States (who didn't get my vote, either), not just because he was the co-author and chief instigator of this flagrantly unconstitutional abomination but because he was lying through his damn teeth when he said he'd appoint Supreme Court justices of the Roberts/Alito mold . . . even as Roberts and/or Alito were two of the prime movers behind the high court's systematic dismantling of CFR begun a year and a half or so ago.

Anyone who believed McCain really would appoint justices willing to euthanise his pet was a fool.

[McGavin999]

Please God, let it happen. Anyone with eyes has seen how corrupt the system has become since McCain Finegold went into effect. What was supposed to “clean up the system” has merely made it corrupt. Let anyone donate, but make ALL donations public, including small donations. I’m sick to death of Soros and the out of country frauds who purchase prepaid Visa cards to run (ruin?) our elections.