Last week, in the case of Citizens United vs. FEC, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that threatens our democracy by opening the door to potentially unlimited corporate influence in politics. It is difficult to believe our political system being any more enthralled to the interests of corporate America, but with this ruling, the Supreme Court has reversed decades of precedent in mistaken deference to the First Amendment. If Congress still has a spine left, both parties will unite to curb the effects of the Court's ruling.
Why is Congressional action necessary? The court's ruling has revoked the longstanding ban on corporate-run political campaigns. In effect, corporations will be able to spend as much money as they want - a potentially unlimited sum - on television, radio, and print ads. They will be able to run campaigns parallel to those of politicians, dropping millions of dollars to defeat candidates and initiatives that threaten their profits. If you think corporate interests have a stranglehold on our politics now, wait until oil companies, electronics giants, financial firms, and big agriculture pour unlimited funds into our democracy.
To be fair, the Court's ruling also repealed similar restraints against labor union spending. However, the unions cannot spend anywhere near the amounts that multinational corporations can. Corporations can clear the field of competition, limiting the already sparse number of voices heard in an election and reducing elections to candidates who support corporate agendas.
Besides the danger that this ruling poses to democracy, it also flies in the face of our Constitution. The Court contends that corporations cannot be banned from campaign spending on the basis on the First Amendment, which protects free speech. There are two problems with this interpretation of the First Amendment. As the New York Times has pointed out, the Constitution enumerates the entities that are protected by the First Amendment - individuals, the press, militias, religions, etc. Nowhere in the Constitution are corporations enumerated. After all, they didn't even exist when the document was written. Therefore, in this case we have to use our own judgment about what's best for our democracy - and corporate spending is not good for our democracy at all.
Secondly, the Court contends that corporations count as "people" under the Constitution. This is completely illogical. Corporations are creations of the state. They are business organizations designed to turn profits, and their interests do not always coincide with the public's. They are not unions or community organizations; those are groups of people whose sole purpose is to advance an agenda on behalf of the public. Corporations only represent a tiny fragment of our population, because they only speak for the interests shareholders, board members, and investors.
Democrats and Republicans must join together in circumventing the Court's ruling. Our leaders cannot allow what little power our democracy has left to be appropriated by Wall Street.
Corporations deserve to use
Corporations deserve to use their money as a form of political speech, just like other citizens have the right to do. It's hard to see how they don't count as people ... when they're composed of individuals, just like any other interest group.
Problems
1) 97% of corporations are single shareholders. They are not the big evil corporations you are talking about. Why do these individual owners not have a constitutional right to use their corporate treasuries for political speech?
2) Corporations also include media. Fox owns the Wall Street Journal. Can congress stop corporate-owned media from publishing opinions during election season? You will probably say no because the constitution explicitly protects freedom of the press. But, then, can corporations all start their own media subsidiaries to publish the corporation's opinions? How can you allow a ban on corporate speech in forum without justifying such a ban in other constitutionally-protected forums? It seems more consistent to say that the first amendment protects all speech.
3) Several states allow unlimited corporate expenditures in their elections. Is there any evidence that those states have experienced a tidal wave of corporate campaign spending?
Response
Baileys Original
1) Those small corporations are certainly not going to play money-ball with our democracy, but those aren't the corporations opponents of this ruling are afraid of. If your math is correct, it's the top three percent of corporations we're afraid of - the ones who control the markets they work in, the multinational behemoths, health insurance companies, and financial corporations that have already proven poison to our democracy. Furthermore, your premise is mistaken in the assumption that people have the right to spend money through their corporations as a form of political speech. That is not a right. Individuals DO have a right to use private funds to advance an agenda through non-corporate entities (the Swift Boat Veterans come to mind). Many corporations already do this; last summer's healthcare fight provided many examples. However, allowing corporations themselves to fund political campaigns is another animal altogether, and is not protected by the Constitution.
2) Corporate owned medial outlets are still media outlets. It's one thing to have Fox News or MSNBC personalities providing opinionated political coverage - after all, the media is allowed to be as opinionated in their speech as they want, as long as it dives with journalistic integrity. It's another thing to have the corporations behind media outlets speaking directly through the media to advance a favorable political agenda (favorable to the corporations, that is) It's hard for me to believe that any corporate media outlet is in the habit of allowing corporate executives influence journalism. I would hope that not even Fox News does such a thing. Confounding these two situations is just an attempt to make the Court's ruling more palatable.
3) Judging from the amount of money that some senators, both Democratic and Republican, received from the health insurance industry last election, and the way that influenced the healthcare reform fight, I'd say that the tidal wave of corporate spending has occurred in some states, and has already had a frightening effect on our politics.
Answers
1) Why does the threat of distortion from one set of corporations justify prohibiting speech by the broad super-majority of corporations? According to precedent, any restrictions on speech must serve a "compelling state interest" and be narrowly tailored to that interest. If stopping the 3% of rich corporations from speaking is a 'compelling state interest,' how is a law that bans certain forms of political speech by *100%* of corporations narrowly tailored to that interest? Regarding the premise 'that people have a right to spend money through their corporations as a form of political speech," I don't see where the constitution makes any distinction between the source of funds individuals use to express themselves. All the constitution says is that congress "shall make no law" restricting freedom of speech.
2) The problem is that under your sweeping injunction against corporate speech, media outlets may not be allowed to be as opinionated in their speech as they want because they are corporate-owned. There are many examples where corporations restrain their media subsidiaries to serve their interests. Recently, GE told Keith Olberman to stop bashing O'Reilly on the Countdown. Corporations can use media as a surrogate for the political interests, so the distinction you're committed to is inconsistent.
3) This isn't responsive. Those are state laws which allow unlimited corporate expenditures in state elections. The federal campaign-finance law (the one that applied in those states) still applies in those states to federal elections. Do you have evidence that democracy has collapsed in those *state* elections because of the deregulation?
More responses
Baileys Original
1) You're right, the Constitution makes no mention of corporations or corporate political speech. Therefore, it is the duty of Congress and the Court to do what's in the nation's best interests. The Constitution doesn't mention specifically if corporations are allowed to engage in political campaigns, so how can a ban on corporate political expenditures be unconstitutional, as the Court contends? It is up to the judgment of Congress. That's the kind of loose constructionist thinking our nation is built on.
Like I said, I have no problem with individuals taking private funds and using them to launch campaigns. If a corporate executive wants to take his money and fund a political action committee dedicated to defending a corporate agenda, more power to him. The same goes for any individual involved in a corporation. But an entire corporation bankrolling a campaign has an entirely different effect on our politics. That's a lot more money and a broader reach. Like you said, the Constitution makes no mention of corporations as organizations or individuals, so they don't have a readily defined "right" to political speech. Only people have the right to political speech. I don't know where your math is coming from, but if you're right, then I would applaud a move by Congress to limit the speech of the top 3% of corporations while leaving smaller corporations untouched. My point that corporations, as creations of the state, have no right to political speech still stands, though. If you want more background on that fact, check this out: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/a-principled-and-pure-fir_...
2) Your assertion doesn't make any sense. The ban on political spending had been in place for over a century. The corporate media was able to grow more powerful and influential throughout the twentieth century and the last decade. Moreover, they got as opinionated as we've ever seen, as evidenced by Fox News and MSNBC. Obviously the ban didn't adversely affect them.
The Olberman-O'Reilly spat was an incident that corporate bosses intervened in because it affected their branding and ratings. It was a corporate matter, not a political one. You can't hold up that example to prove anything.
Yes, I'm sure corporations can use the media as surrogates for their political interests. They shape what we see and hear every waking hour. But that's not the same as a corporation blatantly advancing its agenda through a campaign. You can't confound the two situations.
3) Once again, judging from the state of our nation and the amount of influence corporate interests have over elected officials at every level of government, I'd say our democracy is already dangerously dysfunctional.
Theoretical Issue
We might have to accept a disagreement on this one, but I at least one to contest one of your theoretical premises.
"Our democracy is dangerously dysfunctional" and congress should do what's in our "nation's best interests." Neither of these make vaild rationales for suspending fundamental rights. The point of civil liberties, following people like John Stuart Mill, is that one judgment about what is good or bad or "dysfunctional" does not justify interfering with expression. The Supreme Court has limited that slightly to make exception for cases of "compelling state interests." This includes things like hate-speech or speech that directly endangers people (yelling fire in a theater). It does not include things like "improving democracy." Even though you're concern is probably valid and unlimited corporate spending will damage politics, the point of having rights is that they are things that can come before concerns about a desirable outcome. What if one day some corporation produced a movie that rivaled Socrates or Jesus for its genius, but no one in the media believed them or liked it enough to broadcast it. What if they were barred from using their own funds to distribute the movie right when the general public needed to see it most? How can we justify barring political speech based on our own speculative assessment about the value of the speech?
Speaking practically ...
Baileys Original
I agree with the theoretical concept that speech is an inalienable right that should not be tampered with, except as it applies to the public good. However, we have to acknowledge that the rights and principles we hold dear are all compromised or transgressed sooner or later, especially when dealing with issues of practical government. Our thinking should not be geared towards protecting a theoretical concept, but in protecting the quality of our democracy. Yes, we can bring Mill into this and dream up scenarios to validate idealism all we want, but none of that means anything if our democracy isn't serving the purpose it was created for. I'm not interested in giving up my voice in politics to protect a principle. I am interested in preserving this democracy in concrete form. We shouldn't think "Even though this will irreparably damage our nation, it's fine because we're being true to the principle". What good is the principle if the democracy it safeguards is corrupted? We should think, "Even though this might compromise a principle, it's a practical move to preserve democracy". We're not talking about a theoretical movie that could enlighten our nation - we're talking about corporate money in politics and the distrust and corruption it could engender.
Baileys Original Not that
Baileys Original
Not that corporations are in possession of this inalienable right - they're state-created organizations, not people. Philosophically speaking, inalienable rights are given to humans by right of existence (or from God, whatever floats your boat); corporations don't have these rights, because they don't exist as humans do. We created them. They're economic organizations. It's like saying that a baseball club has an inalienable right to free speech. It doesn't, unless we decide that it does.
Last rebuttal
But that "quality of democracy" is different things to different people, and when someone comes up with an idea of the "quality of democracy" that takes precedence to the basic principles of democracy, and it turns out that their idea is really bad, no one would have any recourse against it.
On whether corporations have these basic rights, I would argue that the relevant text of the consititution should be considered first. The first amendment does not specify individuals. It includes a provision about assemblies. And it protects "speech" full stop, regardless of its source.
Thanks for your views about it.
i gotta agree with you ...
i gotta agree with you ... how can we give wall street more power especially when they are screwing us over now. doesn't make any sense. government's not for the people, it's for the richest two percent, man.
Post new comment