Posted on 02/11/2010 12:40:18 PM PST by ricks_place
Last month, by a vote of 5 to 4, the U.S. Supreme Court gave carte blanche to the world's largest corporations to spend unlimited sums of money to support or oppose candidates for elected office. Big Business domination of Washington and state capitals will now intensify.
The case of Citizens United portends dire consequences for the nation's constitutional premise of "we the people," not we the corporations. Our constitution, at its origins and through all of its amendments, makes no mention of corporate entities, only human beings and their government.
For 120 years, it was not Congress but the Supreme Court that expanded the definition of "persons" to include for-profit corporations for the purposes of applying constitutional protections. For 30 years, the court has granted First Amendment speech protections to corporations as "artificial persons."
But not until last month has the court declared that the First Amendment gives corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. The court majority, self-styled believers in precedent and judicial restraint, overturned two major Supreme Court decisions and reversed decades of campaign-finance laws aimed at preventing corporations from having undo influence over local, state and national elections.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Is he going to mention again how unsafe the Covair is (it was an excellent car btw)?
Discount anything from this secretive and paranoid prick.
The Consitution say nothing about unions, either, Mr. Nader.
They’re not bribes.
They’re $Freedom Bux$!
I was going to reply how SCOTUS leveled the playing field between corp and union, but seeing it was written by NADER.. I’ll put it in terms he can understand...
“WAAHHH!”
The only thing wrong with the 5 to 4 decision is 4 judges who need to be removed from office.
So which are corporations, morons, government or human beings?
Actually, the law they overturned prohibited direct spending by both corporations and unions.
Does the phrase "No taxation without representation" ring a bell?
Seems “we the people” only applies to unions and not to corporations. I wonder if we classified unions as corporations if their enthusiasm would be equal?
If liberals could use logic ... they'd be conservatives.
Titans
excellent point and I hope some pundit addresses that very issue in a WSJ answering oped.
This is the same tactic odumbo used when he insulted the SCOTUS during his state of obama speech. Demonize big corps but ignore the 140 million unions spent on you.
Nader is as big a POS as odumbo but at least Nader isn’t in a position to hurt the country
So which are corporations, morons, government or human bengs?
Actually, his argument seems to depend on corporations being neither ... they're made up of Martians, I guess. (Maybe he's projecting; he's always seemed like a Martian to me.)
Corporations are corporations, and corporations are voluntary assemblies of citizens and legal residents, protected by the 1st amendment, just as much as any political party or flower club.
But that NEVER STOPPED those ****ing UNIONS (which in my state I have to belong to 3 of the effing things in order to work in my field.)
People should be able to do whatever they damn well please with their resources
I stand corrected.
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