If Corporations Cannot Vote, Should They Have The Right To Spend Money In Elections?

If Corporations Cannot Vote, Should They Have The Right To Spend Money In Elections?
by Damien Hoffman of Wall St. Cheat Sheet
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-if-corporations-cannot-vote-should-they-have-right-spend-money-elections">Zero Hedge

An irony of Shakespearean proportions is unfolding as I write this: the Town Hall discourse revolves around complaints government is getting too big, yet in the quieter halls of the US Supreme Court corporations are on the verge of capturing the largest swath of power since they were ruled legal persons. Let’s take a closer look before we wake up in an Orwellian distopia:

The Issue: Whether corporations have a First Amendment right to spend money in election campaigns?

According to UC Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, the nation’s leading Constitutional Law expert, “Previously the Supreme Court upheld the ability of the government to restrict corporate expenditures in political campaigns. Now it appears there are five votes on the Court — Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, Justice Thomas, and Justice Alito — who want to overrule those precedents.”

Although corporations have stuffed cash into tons of loopholes such as Political Action Committees, a change in the current law would allow corporations to siphon off money from their wealth-creating machines and directly turn politicians into outsourced independent contractors. If you are pissed about the financial crisis and what Washington allowed to happen, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The proponents of expanding corporate speech insist the current law is an unconstitutional abridgment of First Amendment protected Freedom of Speech. However, speech is curtailed in instances where it can be an extreme detriment to our society (as opposed to our feelings). For example, we do not have the right to go into a crowded place and scream, “Fire!”

Before offering more examples of limited speech rights, this begs several incredibly critical questions about the society we are trying to create under the Constitution. First and foremost, should the legal fiction called a “corporation” be inherently endowed with the full set of rights entitled to human beings under the Constitution? If so, we are saying corporations are now equal citizens under the law and our society should boldly reflect their values and interests even if they compete with those of human beings.

I immediately wonder why corporations even need unlimited Freedom of Speech rights. They already have reasonable Freedom of Speech protections (First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978)). Further, everyone who works at a corporation and all the shareholders already have the highest level of Freedom of Speech rights protected by the Constitution. If we give corporations the same Freedom of Speech rights as humans, we are functionally giving extra powers of speech to corporate executives in the C-Suite. After watching how they ran our economy into a shitpit, should we allow this handful of business people to use their out-sized coffers to drown out the incredibly less financed individual citizens?

If we allow robots to influence elections, that society will reflect the values of robots. If you let corporations influence elections, that society will reflect the values of corporations. Unlike human beings, corporations do not have values. Instead, by law, corporations are legal fictions which operate solely to produce profits for shareholders. Therefore, human values such as life, liberty, happiness, health, spirituality/religion, kindness, relationships, the environment, etc. will all compete with the myopic legally mandated interest of corporations.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-if-corporations-cannot-vote-should-they-have-right-spend-money-elections">More...

There is no such person as 'THE' leading. . . ., fwiw.

I remember reading this some time ago. There are places in the arid South West that in addition to the political structure (counties) have "water districts" that technically are there to allocate irrigation and river water.

To vote in the water district, you have to have a water allocation, which is kind of like a permit you buy. All the allocations have been bought by corporations, so only they vote, and people can't.

have the right to vote. I believe they are not persons and should not have the same rights as persons.

can give them the "death penalty"

goes back to the age of the Railroad Barons, and is the result of a "Headnote" to the decision in: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad by the SCOTUS in 1886. It also revolves around the legal differences between a {i]natural person, and a legal person. The Santa Clara decision relied on the definition of "protection" under the 14th Amendment, and was about taxes allegedly owed by Southern Pacific Railroad.

The premise of corporate "personhood" has never been fully tested by the SCOTUS, and the original 1886 "decision" does not, according to many, establish a legal precedence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad

I think they should be subjected to law for their crimes-like jail time (no doing business-a receivership and all execs do jail time) and the death penalty if the crimes were bad enough.