As I think about it I am a bit conflicted. One side of me sees this a victory for the likes of Goldman Sachs who can now openly purchase an election. Having said that, the consensus on this board appears to be that the government has already been purchased by Wall Street and the central banks. If that consensus is correct, the existing law did little to prevent the outright purchase of government by special interests. It did on the other hand bridle special interest groups like political action committees. In fact it may have had a greater affect in shutting up the opposition to those special interests.
The one group of corporations that were not in the least bit affected by the law was the yellow journalism that passes for the media in this country. It is difficult to see bias when the bias supports your side of the argument. Sitting on the other side of the existing media bias in this country, it became readily apparent to me that mainstream media had already elected President Obama before a single vote was cast. As evidence, count the stories favorable to candidate Obama as compared to those favorable to candidate McCain. The number of covers devoted to the President by Time Magazine should serve as a quick and dirty survey.
The Court has leveled the playing field for all the biased interests. Now we can all vote with our dollars.
PeakOil is You
Supremes remove all limits on corporate campaign donations
Re: Supremes remove all limits on corporate campaign donations
by Cloud9 » Sat 23 Jan 2010, 11:40:06
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Re: Supremes remove all limits on corporate campaign donations
by Tanada » Sat 23 Jan 2010, 15:01:41
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jotapay', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'C')orporations, big or small, are the places most of us get our paychecks from. They are the bosses, not some mythical demonic force gathering to lord it over all of us. I have a lot more faith in business people running the country with an eye on the bottom line than I do those who got a law degree and went into politics.
Your statements (and others here about corporations) sound like you are defending the practices of Wal-Mart and such, when we all know mom and pop small businesses are preferable. And corporations don't employ most of the private sector. Small business makes up the majority of the economy, as is so often quoted on the news.
Actually almost every small business is a small corporation, don't take my word for it look it up for yourself. Most corporations in the USA have less than 50 employee's.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alfred Tennyson', 'W')e are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: Supremes remove all limits on corporate campaign donations
by rangerone314 » Sun 24 Jan 2010, 03:16:37
God bless Enron and Worldcom and Halliburton and Monsanto.
I want them to run our country. They will do so much better than anyone else.
What can you say about a society and economic system that is based on evading responsibilities for one's actions? We need to eliminate corporate personhood.
We need more power to the states. The country as it is, is too large to be governed efficiently at the Federal level. Delusions of empire.
Its too bad the South didn't win the Civil War. We probably would not have had the Spanish-American war or the US entry in to WWI, and by extension WWII would not have happened as WWI would have ended in a stalemate.
I want them to run our country. They will do so much better than anyone else.
What can you say about a society and economic system that is based on evading responsibilities for one's actions? We need to eliminate corporate personhood.
We need more power to the states. The country as it is, is too large to be governed efficiently at the Federal level. Delusions of empire.
Its too bad the South didn't win the Civil War. We probably would not have had the Spanish-American war or the US entry in to WWI, and by extension WWII would not have happened as WWI would have ended in a stalemate.
An ideology is by definition not a search for TRUTH-but a search for PROOF that its point of view is right
Equals barter and negotiate-people with power just take
You cant defend freedom by eliminating it-unknown
Our elected reps should wear sponsor patches on their suits so we know who they represent-like Nascar-Roy
Equals barter and negotiate-people with power just take
You cant defend freedom by eliminating it-unknown
Our elected reps should wear sponsor patches on their suits so we know who they represent-like Nascar-Roy
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Re: Supremes remove all limits on corporate campaign donations
by Cloud9 » Sun 24 Jan 2010, 08:47:09
Ending the legal fiction that a corporation is an individual will have unseen consequences. Part of the corporate shield doctrine is tied up in the notion that a corporation is a separate person.
Many would end the corporate shield. If you do that you will restrict business activity. As an example, my wife has a little business called Yard Expressions. She puts up characters and signs in peoples’ yards for birthdays, anniversaries and things like that. Often times the signs are put up at night as a surprise for the person celebrating the occasion. In this litigious society the potential for suits are legion. If she were not protected by insurance and a corporate shield, I would force her to shut down her business. I am not going to lose what’s left of my life’s savings over someone tripping over a character we placed in someone’s yard.
One other thought, under the Pinkerton Rule dealing with conspiracies, the acts of one conspirator can be attributed to all the other conspirators. Case law has held that in as much as a corporation is an individual and an officer in that corporation is a separate individual an officer and his corporation can deemed coconspirators.
Many would end the corporate shield. If you do that you will restrict business activity. As an example, my wife has a little business called Yard Expressions. She puts up characters and signs in peoples’ yards for birthdays, anniversaries and things like that. Often times the signs are put up at night as a surprise for the person celebrating the occasion. In this litigious society the potential for suits are legion. If she were not protected by insurance and a corporate shield, I would force her to shut down her business. I am not going to lose what’s left of my life’s savings over someone tripping over a character we placed in someone’s yard.
One other thought, under the Pinkerton Rule dealing with conspiracies, the acts of one conspirator can be attributed to all the other conspirators. Case law has held that in as much as a corporation is an individual and an officer in that corporation is a separate individual an officer and his corporation can deemed coconspirators.
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Re: Supremes remove all limits on corporate campaign donations
by galacticsurfer » Sun 24 Jan 2010, 12:21:19
http://www.google.de/reader/view/?hl=de ... %2Fdefault
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Conservative Republicans, with plenty of help from Democrats, have been hard at work since 1980 undoing not only the New Deal itself, but the social and economic structure that gave birth to it. The primary electoral muscle of the Democratic coalition came from unions, and union power was largely broken by the long recession under Reagan and the beginning of the de-industrialization of America, as well as by the movement of numerous industries into the un-unionized South. (Those same industries have now moved further south, out of the United States altogether.) Reagan also put a huge dent into the progressive taxation system that had funded the federal government since the Depression, cutting high bracket income taxes while raising the lower-bracket payroll taxes (and putting the proceeds into general revenues, as I pointed out here back in 2005.) Deregulation of S & Ls was followed under Bill Clinton (who restored some fiscal responsibility but did nothing else to fight the ongoing trend) by the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the resultant creation of huge investment banks fueled by depositors' money and credit cards.
All this made money more and more important in politics, far more important than either Republican or Democratic ideology. That is why, since the 1960s, no Democratic President has been able to put through a serious liberal reform. Democrats (at least in bluer states) talk a good game at election time, and sometimes put through legislation that looks like change, but a closer reading always reveals the work of lobbyists at play. When Bill Clinton threatened actually to reverse the decline of the government's role during his first year in office with health care reform, Boomer Republicans (led by Bill Kristol and Newt Gingrich) announced that he could not possibly be allowed to succeed and organized all-out opposition, aided by corporate allies. The same thing has happened during the last year. The increasing role of money has two related consequences: it not only insures corporate influence, but discredits the whole process. It was extremely difficult even for a lifelong Democrat like myself to swallow the compromises necessary to get the health care bill through the Senate. The Medicaid concession to the state of Nebraska was a national disgrace, as was the failure to repeal the anti-trust exemption for the health care industry. (How can anyone believe that exchanges will increase competition when the anti-trust laws do not apply?) I'm not surprised that Massachusetts voters were not impressed.
Now the Republicans have had to cope with one big problem: their policies are bad for America and bad for the American people. They have increased the gap between rich and poor and stripped working people of fundamental protections. Health care is becoming less and less affordable. Millions have fallen to predatory lending. Worst of all, economic de-regulation has brought back the frequent, devastating boom-bust cycles of the late nineteenth century. All this has led to periodic Republican setbacks at the polls, most notably in 2006 and 2008. (We must keep in mind that we are not fighting today over ideological or aesthetic preferences about the distribution of income in America: we are learning again that allowing rich people to keep too much money simply does not work for anyone but them.) They managed to moderate their effects, however, by packing the least democratic part of our system, the courts.
As James MacGregor Burns made clear in Packing the Cout, which I reviewed here some months ago, judicial activism was not an invention of the Warren Court, but has played a huge role in our history since the beginning of the Republic. The Warren Court, which almost for the first time deployed its power on behalf of minority rights, was exceptional only because it favored the Left. During the Progressive Era and New Deal the courts had thrown out literally dozens of regulatory measures, concluding, for instance, that state minimum wage laws were unconstitutional. And on no issue have Republican activists been more single-minded than bending the judiciary to their needs. They have worked at all levels, organizing the Federalist Society, for instance, to recruit young candidates. Until 2000, countervailing factors ensured that even Republican Presidents would veer from ideological orthodoxy in their appointments occasionally, as Ronald Reagan did to appoint the first female justice and George H. W. Bush did to pick the estimable David Souter. But those days are over. During the last twenty years, Republican appointments have been far more ideologically committed and considerably younger and healthier than Democratic ones. Three of the four Boomers on the Court are now Republicans, and Sonia Sotomayor, the Democratic choice, is a diabetic. This strategy first paid a gigantic dividend in the legal coup d'etat of 2000, when a 5-4 Republican majority disclaimed any interest in determining the actual wishes of Florida voters and gave the Presidency to George W. Bush. (Al Gore's ineptitude was also largely to blame, since he never even tried to insist on the full statewide recount which later studies showed would have given him the election.)
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Conservative Republicans, with plenty of help from Democrats, have been hard at work since 1980 undoing not only the New Deal itself, but the social and economic structure that gave birth to it. The primary electoral muscle of the Democratic coalition came from unions, and union power was largely broken by the long recession under Reagan and the beginning of the de-industrialization of America, as well as by the movement of numerous industries into the un-unionized South. (Those same industries have now moved further south, out of the United States altogether.) Reagan also put a huge dent into the progressive taxation system that had funded the federal government since the Depression, cutting high bracket income taxes while raising the lower-bracket payroll taxes (and putting the proceeds into general revenues, as I pointed out here back in 2005.) Deregulation of S & Ls was followed under Bill Clinton (who restored some fiscal responsibility but did nothing else to fight the ongoing trend) by the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the resultant creation of huge investment banks fueled by depositors' money and credit cards.
All this made money more and more important in politics, far more important than either Republican or Democratic ideology. That is why, since the 1960s, no Democratic President has been able to put through a serious liberal reform. Democrats (at least in bluer states) talk a good game at election time, and sometimes put through legislation that looks like change, but a closer reading always reveals the work of lobbyists at play. When Bill Clinton threatened actually to reverse the decline of the government's role during his first year in office with health care reform, Boomer Republicans (led by Bill Kristol and Newt Gingrich) announced that he could not possibly be allowed to succeed and organized all-out opposition, aided by corporate allies. The same thing has happened during the last year. The increasing role of money has two related consequences: it not only insures corporate influence, but discredits the whole process. It was extremely difficult even for a lifelong Democrat like myself to swallow the compromises necessary to get the health care bill through the Senate. The Medicaid concession to the state of Nebraska was a national disgrace, as was the failure to repeal the anti-trust exemption for the health care industry. (How can anyone believe that exchanges will increase competition when the anti-trust laws do not apply?) I'm not surprised that Massachusetts voters were not impressed.
Now the Republicans have had to cope with one big problem: their policies are bad for America and bad for the American people. They have increased the gap between rich and poor and stripped working people of fundamental protections. Health care is becoming less and less affordable. Millions have fallen to predatory lending. Worst of all, economic de-regulation has brought back the frequent, devastating boom-bust cycles of the late nineteenth century. All this has led to periodic Republican setbacks at the polls, most notably in 2006 and 2008. (We must keep in mind that we are not fighting today over ideological or aesthetic preferences about the distribution of income in America: we are learning again that allowing rich people to keep too much money simply does not work for anyone but them.) They managed to moderate their effects, however, by packing the least democratic part of our system, the courts.
As James MacGregor Burns made clear in Packing the Cout, which I reviewed here some months ago, judicial activism was not an invention of the Warren Court, but has played a huge role in our history since the beginning of the Republic. The Warren Court, which almost for the first time deployed its power on behalf of minority rights, was exceptional only because it favored the Left. During the Progressive Era and New Deal the courts had thrown out literally dozens of regulatory measures, concluding, for instance, that state minimum wage laws were unconstitutional. And on no issue have Republican activists been more single-minded than bending the judiciary to their needs. They have worked at all levels, organizing the Federalist Society, for instance, to recruit young candidates. Until 2000, countervailing factors ensured that even Republican Presidents would veer from ideological orthodoxy in their appointments occasionally, as Ronald Reagan did to appoint the first female justice and George H. W. Bush did to pick the estimable David Souter. But those days are over. During the last twenty years, Republican appointments have been far more ideologically committed and considerably younger and healthier than Democratic ones. Three of the four Boomers on the Court are now Republicans, and Sonia Sotomayor, the Democratic choice, is a diabetic. This strategy first paid a gigantic dividend in the legal coup d'etat of 2000, when a 5-4 Republican majority disclaimed any interest in determining the actual wishes of Florida voters and gave the Presidency to George W. Bush. (Al Gore's ineptitude was also largely to blame, since he never even tried to insist on the full statewide recount which later studies showed would have given him the election.)
"The horror, the horror"
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). 
