SCOTUS overturns 100 years of speech law

[kandrathe]

I must say Kandrathe that you're exhausting to discourse with, as you don't specify what you're responding to. Your response to the first quote would have been much easier to respond to if you had just used my first sentence about corporation definition that you objected to and not quoted the rest of my response which was the actual meat. Explaining corporation while ignoring the points on rights, access and the very heart of my objection, corruption, leads me to believe you're not actually interested in discourse. I very well could be wrong, but that's how it comes across.

Sorry. I feel as you do that democracy shouldn't necessarily be relative to the size of your wallet. Warren Buffet (or George Soros) is actually a good example. His personal wealth is very large, and he has every right to sell shares of BH (paying the government taxes for his capital gains) and divert his own money to place ads on the TV. But, BH would in many cases have no free speech rights of defending their own actions. Should corporations have to rely on the benevolence of wealthy shareholders to speak on their behalf? The other concern you did not mention (which was discussed in the brief) was that shareholders/union members may not all have a common view, so who decides on what gets said. For unions, there is the Beck decision, which allows for union members to now designate whether their dues should be involved in political advocacy (however I doubt anyone is auditing them yet). I would say for corporations, you need to vote with your shares, or feet. If a person does not agree with the controlling shareholders opinion, then they can always divest themselves from the corporation.

We need to find a way to keep public servants honest, or expose the ones that are dishonest. More attention needs to be focused on vetting candidates, meaning that people and the press need to expose the candidates record and motivations. Also, I would like to see some serious term limits to be implemented for federal office. Something like 3 times for Representative (max 6 years lifetime), and 3 terms Senator (max 18 years lifetime). We need to trust everyday people more to represent us everyday people. If a bill is too complicated for a representative to understand, then it is too complicated for the American people to understand, and shouldn't be passed. No more multi-thousand page laws. Bills that are unreadable due to size or complexity are ridiculous.

Also, those are specific show hosts not anchors for 'news' and, specifically, they weren't running campaign ads, just commentary.

I'm not saying they are news anchors. They have an open forum for promoting their opinions, even the day before or day of the election. They are spokespersons for the corporations that have put them on the air. You and I don't have access to vent our opinions on a prime time network TV or Radio show. What is "advertising" versus commentary and opinion. Some of this commentary smells much like coercion or propaganda.

This ruling was nothing short of spectacular and very disturbing as this was a radical departure from precedent, as well as taking such a limited scope case and applying it to an entire series of laws.

Yes, it was a surprise. I do understand why they backtracked from Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, and also why they could not rule on just the narrow grounds of just Citizen United v FEC. Roberts writes regarding stare decisis, "When considering whether to reexamine a prior erroneous holding, we must balance the importance of having constitutional questions decided against the importance of having them decided right." The logic of Austin would enable prohibition of speech (political advocacy) by even media corporations, newspapers, TV, internet, and publishers 30 and 60 days prior to elections. This clearly violates the First Amendment protection of speech by the "press", and so then Austin is clearly in violation of the 1st Amendment for some corporations. Section 431(9)(B)(i) of the campaign-finance laws wholly exempts from the definition of campaign expenditure: "any news story, commentary or editorial distributed through the facilities of any broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication." Couldn't all corporations add a minor "publishing" capacity and also then avoid the speech restrictions?