The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.
–Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (1/21/10), granting corporations the power to spend untold billions to do our thinking for us
Jim Naureckas
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org, and has edited FAIR's print publication Extra! since 1990. He is the co-author of The Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error, and co-editor of The FAIR Reader. He was an investigative reporter for In These Times and managing editor of the Washington Report on the Hemisphere. Born in Libertyville, Illinois, he has a poli sci degree from Stanford. Since 1997 he has been married to Janine Jackson, FAIR’s program director.
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Comments
Doubleplusungood!
i used to hold the supreme court in the highest regard until they voided the 2000 election, but what they have done to the american people this week is a travesty of the highest order. i weep for america, now that it has been handed to the corporations to rape at will.
Big money has always done most of the talking in our country anyway. This confirms that, again. The billboard (blight) industry will benefit, that’s for sure (except in progressive Vermont, where billboards were outlawed 40 years ago).
There is something rather pathetic, desperate, about the progressive pundits who now call for legislative action or a constitutional amendment to undo the harm clearly done to American democracy. Ya, sure, let’s get Congress (which is already owned by the corporations) and our politicians (whom are also already owned by the corporations) to break free of their chains. But, in point of fact, that is precisely what you will have to get past before We The People every get to vote on it. Fuggetaboutit!
Corporation do not vote, corporations do not go to jail when they break the law, corporations are not even citizens! Indeed, the multinational corporations have no allegiance to our flag. They go here they want, do what they want, and they tell the various governments to do as they say or they will pick up there operations and move out.
It is time for the AMERICAN PEOPLE to consider another revolution. It is so obvious that BIG Business wants the whole pie. Slavery will be reinvented and we will work as they see fit, when they see fit and for wages that will reduce our standards of living and further enrich the elites. “We the people” has largely become a fantasy of our fore fathers. I am absolutely disgusted with the brazen actions of the US Supreme court. They have decided that corporations are now ‘we the people.” How absurd !!!!!
I think that you must mean big business when you say corporations. A corporation is a business structure, and can be very small. A corporation is a business structure in which one or more people form a relationship to conduct business. At its core a corporation is people–its owners. When a corporation speaks, its owners speak. To deny a corporation the right to speak is to deny its owners the right to speak collectively. You would deny them this because you believe their voice is too loud collectively, not because their argument is wrong (because you cannot know what their argument is, unspoken). But corporations come in many sizes, and their voices are large and small. And you can join together in many voices and speak also. You have this right, and duty, as Americans. Don’t lament this court decision. Do not be a victim and shrink from the responsibility to raise your voices and challenge the voices of big business, and unions, and others who collectively have loud voices. A fully informed electorate needs every opinion and every argument.
I disagree with some of your statements, Mr. Fnortner. The problem with this decision is that it makes an already unequal playing field even more unequal. Grass roots organizations do not have the budget to put out slick focused –group ads that corporations do, and they can’t get it aired every 20 minutes like big business can. Of course we can “join together in many voices and speak” – but we can’t “donate” (bribe) the candidates to do our will.
“A fully informed electorate needs every opinion and every argument.” – Mr. Fnortner
And what this means is that the side with least money does not get heard in the media…AND the candidate on the side of the least-monied interests does not get supported.
This decision is not merely about expressing an opinion. It’s about further enabling sanctioned bribery, and making it that much harder for an non-corrupt candidate to be supported, especially if that person holds views that may threaten corporate profitability. I suspect Thomas, Scolia, Alito, Roberts and Kennedy understand this perfectly.
Money is not, never was, and never equivalent to Speech.
Watermia, we shouldn’t take this blog for our private conversation, but I do want to respond. I find it hard to support the position that people have the right to speak without interference from the government if they do so singly, but that they do not have that right if they do so in groups. And I especially feel strongly that speech about government should not be interfered with by the government under any circumstance. Toward that end, speech on political issues, or for or against candidates, should be sacrosanct.
The law that was struck down prohibited all corporations from speaking–though I did point to big business–and prevented non-profits and other non-commercial enterprises of all stripes from speaking. It did not matter that what an organization wanted to convey was not audio or video. A corporation could not even publish a book close to an election that contained an element of advocacy. This was unconscionable censorship of political opinion by the government and should not have been allowed to stand.
And finally, I believe you may have unfortunately conflated bribery and corruption of candidates and public officials with support of their candidacy. It does not necessarily follow that endorsing a candidate equates to the required giving of an item of value to influence the conduct of a public official that constitutes bribery. The laws governing campaign contributions clearly describe the legislative position on what constitutes acceptable behavior, and advocacy is well within bounds, although I do appreciate your passion.
So corporations are now “persons”? Good. Let’s start arresting them now for numerous crimes against humanity for starters (the Hudson River and GE come to mind).
The free speech of corporations is in the narrow interests of the profit motive and has nothing to do with promoting freedom, rights, or democracy. Need proof? You are living in a society that is pretty much dictated to by the corporations now. Just look at the so-called healthcare reform bill. It was largely written by and for insurance companies and pharma. How much input did you have? You had none. Why were advocates of single-payer, for example, shut out early on? Why is Congress willing to shed the public option and medicare buy-in for persons between 55 and 65? Because the coporations do not want us to have any alternative but them.
Has anybody actually read the First Amendment? The operative part is “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”
I can’t fix everybody here, but if one person rethinks his or her position it will be a good day. There is no part of that amendment that restricts this protection to individual persons, to citizens, to males, to whites, to freemen, to those over 21, to landowners, to taxpayers, to the employed, to voters, or to any other category you could imagine. The right held by all of us within the reach of the government of the United States, by virtue of our existence on this planet, cannot be abridged by that government, by law. By the Supreme Law of the Land. Merely because we choose to exercise this right as a group we are not to be abridged in the exercise of this right by our government.
There are some pretty disgusting corporations out there whose point of view I don’t particularly want to hear. Nor do I want them running my Congress. There’s not much I can do about the former, and censorship is no way to handle the latter. By the way, how do you know that the very corporations I abhor are not the exact ones that you find eminently commendable?