Posted on 01/20/2023 11:55:07 AM PST by Sam77
Adam Schiff and a group of Democrats introduced a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision, one of the greatest free-speech victories in history.
It’s just a political stunt, of course, as Schiff doesn’t have the votes. But it does reflect the authoritarian outlook of the contemporary left on free expression. From the day the decision came down, 13 years ago this week, Citizens United was a rallying cry for those threatened by unregulated discourse. President Barack Obama infamously, and inaccurately, rebuked the justices during his State of the Union for upholding the First Amendment. Since then, Democrats have regularly blamed the decision for the alleged corrosion of “democracy.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
There it is.
Whoever the hell they are
Their selves nobody else
They have individual rights just like the rest of US. What they shouldn't be able to do is use the power and wealth of their corporate entity to represent themselves to our .gov toads.
Last thing Democrats want is to repeal Citizens. This is a show for their base.
Corporations have resources that individuals lack. Individuals should be 100% able to voice their point of view and use their individual resources to do so. Corporations should not. A corporation using its (potentially) millions of dollars to push their agenda is a false amplification of the corporate viewpoint. What’s more, all the people working for the corporation or buying from the corporation may not share that same point of view\agenda.
The way things stand, the massive resources of a corporation being used for “freedom of speech” efforts are very similar to cheating at voting.
Consider:
if 1 person votes 1000 times, then they are disenfranchising 999 people.
if 1 corporation spends $10,000,000 on pushing their agenda, they are basically overwhelming the spending of 6600 people (if each such person is limited to $1500 in political spending.)
Does that sound fair to you?
How about this:
You own a company making 50 million dollars of profit per year. You are essentially rich and want things to continue in the vein. You decide to spend 5 million dollars on supporting state-level candidates that will be legitimately sympathetic to the success of your business since it will bring more tax revenue to the state.
Along comes Walmart (138 billion dollars of profit in 2021) or google (252 billion dollars of profit in 2021) and their agenda differs from yours. Their agenda includes mass importation of low-paying labor, which is counter to what your workers want and what you want because you happen to care about your workers.
SO- is it fair that these mega corps can come in and undermine your efforts to Henry Ford your labor pool just because they ahve vastly more resources than you could ever marshall?
Its the same exact thing for an individual and a corporation. Its such a huge gap in resources that there is no potential for your individual efforts to overcome those of the big spenders.
How you fix this is to make poltical activity by businesses illegal. If their CEO or ownership wants to move things politically, they should be constrained by the same limits that individuals enjoy. https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate-taking-receipts/contribution-limits/
this would also eliminate political action committess that are not affiliated with a candidate’s campaign.
Money is NOT free speech. Free Speech is free speech. Having truckloads of money does NOT make your opinion more important or better than other peoples’ opinions.
And as much as people will deny it, as long as this goes on, we are not a nation Of the People and for The People.
Đúng rồi! Well said.
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