Read this carefully and you will understand why our democracy is being wrecked.

[shockey80]

I believe the Citizens United decision will be remembered as one of the most destructive decisions in supreme court history. One could argue it led to this;

Super Pacs, Dark money, The Tea Party, tea party candidates who are crazy, corrupt, anti democracy puppets of the rich. The destruction of the Republican moderate. It may have led to the election of Trump.

A single person can now give a billion dollars to a party if they want to. So can a single corporation, organization. That is not compatible with democracy. It opened the door to foreign money. It created loopholes you could drive a truck through.

Citizens United was a 5/4 decision. All five republican judges voted yes. Here is one of their arguments they made in favor of Citizens United. You may need a drink after reading this.

"Although the government has the authority to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption, it has no place in determining whether large political expenditures are either of those things, so it may not impose spending limits on that basis." HUH?

That argument contradicts itself. That argument is a lie. They fucking lied. Why? Everyone knows unlimited money going to campaigns leads to corruption. Someone or something made them lie. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Citizens United and democracy are not compatible. One will have to go. The American people will have to decide which one soon.

[dweller]

1. worth the watch

PBS (POV) Dark Money
http://www.pbs.org/pov/darkmoney/

✌🏼️

[jodymarie aimee]

2. you are on fire today...

thank you...

[dlk]

3. The Idea that Money is Free Speech is Irrational--Money Buys Speech and Politicians

This was a Republican plan to legalize corruption.

[CrispyQ]

4. Money equals Speech, & they have more of it.

This article is a little dated, but this site is excellent. http://reclaimdemocracy.org/who-are-citizens-united/



Corporate personhood was the first step in corporations gaining the power they have today. It's worth a look the site's pages on that topic, too.

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-personhood/

Slavery is the fiction that people are property; corporate personhood is the fiction that corporations are people.

[ancianita]

10. Yep, corporate personhood came with Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886.

Justice Hugo Black observed that until 1937, only .005 of 14th Amendment cases before SCOTUS hadn anything to do with African Americans or former slaves, while over half the cases were about protecting the rights of corporations.

Rights guaranteed to the people were proffered, instead, to corporations. (Jill Lapore. These Truths -- A History of the United States, p. 339, 2018.)

If it's not settled law, it's certainly old law. Everything else followed to privilege corporations before people as citizens before the law. Goliaths can now beat Davids, unless the Davids are a class action across states.

[Stonepounder]

18. I looked up the case and, interestingly, the Court did NOT actually rule on Corp Personhood.

The studiously avoided making that ruling, stating that all of the Judges 'were of that opinion' but did NOT rule on it.

So in reality the question of Corporate Personhood has never actually been ruled on, we just pretend it has.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co.

[unblock]

28. It's well established in subsequent case law

There are many precedents that follow.

The key problem, though, is just which rights extend to corporate persons? It's really not very controversial to say that corporations have a right to sue in civil court, for instance.

However, the notion that corporations have a right to contribute to political campaigns, above and beyond what individuals can, is ludicrous, imho. If nothing else, it lets someone make a joke out of individual limits by simply creating more corporations to donate more.

That's the real problem. Not corporate personhood, but to idiotic extension of corporate personhood in recent years.

[Stonepounder]

31. Well, two things.

1. It may be well established in case law, but SCOTUS has actually never ruled definitively.

2. When corporations can be jailed for breaking the law, than I personally will accept their personhood.

[unblock]

32. SCOTUS has ruled deep into the particulars of corporate personhood

Citizens united is just one example. They've already built on the notion that corporations have rights as legal persons.

Your argument is a bit like watching a baseball game in the ninth inning and saying, hey, no one every actually said "play ball". Maybe so, but it doesn't matter. The game is well underway.

As for corporations being jailed, either you're joking or you don't understand the meaning of corporate personhood.

[Stonepounder]

35. Yes, the prison thing was a joke.

And also yes, I understand corporate personhood.

[ancianita]

38. Definitely enough for the courts to agree with corporations when they claim it.

Populism entered American politics at the end of the nineteenth century, and it never left. It pitted "the people," meaning everyone but the rich, against corporations, which fought back in the courts by defining themselves as "persons"....

Jill Lapore, These Truths -- A History of the United States, p. 348 (2018).

We cannot act surprised, or outraged, or even legally contradict, at this point, an issue over something we haven't known about that's gone on for so long in our national legal system.

"Personhood" is counterintuitive to the rest of us, maybe, but the concept of "corp" or "body" was extended into the law, apparently, long before any of our great grandparents showed up.

[ancianita]

37. I'll go with Jill Lapore and Wikipedia. They did not "studiously avoid."

...in 1886, when...Santa Clara [etc.] ... reached the Supreme Court, the court's official recorder implied that the court had accepted the doctrine that "corportions are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment." 62 [footnote]

Justice Hugo Black observed that until 1937, only .005 of 14th Amendment cases before SCOTUS had anything to do with African Americans or former slaves, while over half the cases were about protecting the rights of corporations.

Rights guaranteed to the people were proffered, instead, to corporations

.

Jill LaPore.These Truths -- A History of the United States, p. 339 (2018)


Your wikipedia page states:

This was the first time that the Supreme Court was reported to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause granted constitutional protections to corporations as well as to natural persons, although numerous other cases, since Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819, had recognized that corporations were entitled to some of the protections of the Constitution.

If you have better sources, please share. (Sorry for the slow reply. I've been out all day.)

[Stonepounder]

40. I didn't mean to start a big discussion. I relied on the Wikpedia entry.

Specifically:

Before publication in United States Reports, Davis wrote a letter to Chief Justice Morrison Waite, dated May 26, 1886, to make sure his headnote was correct:

Dear Chief Justice,

I have a memorandum in the California Cases Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific &c As follows. In opening the Court stated that it did not wish to hear argument on the question whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to such corporations as are parties in these suits. All the Judges were of the opinion that it does.[5]

Waite replied:

I think your mem. in the California Railroad Tax cases expresses with sufficient accuracy what was said before the argument began. I leave it with you to determine whether anything need be said about it in the report inasmuch as we avoided meeting the constitutional question in the decision.[5]

(Bolding mine.)

I don't claim to be an expert on SCOTUS or Constitutional law or a Constitutional scholar, so I am more than willing to defer to the experts.

[ancianita]

42. Maybe not. But if you intended to, you should, because this is fucking big in the long history

of how leaders have looked at us, The People, compared to corporations.

That there, my friend, is one big fucking deal, and should be a source of real anguish for all Americans to this very day.

Democracy paved the way for capitalism, and now we know that fucking capitalism will use its fucking laws to take majority rule away from us.

That should anger every last citizen of this country.

FUCK. I'm so mad, and none of it is directed at you or anyone here.

I wish I could do a wave emoji but I'm so fucking mad when I finally learn these SCOTUS rulings.

[Stonepounder]

47. There you and I agree.

1. At the start of this sub-thread I indicated that I had hated Citizens United from the day it was passed. It allows big corporations and big money to literally give us "The best government that money can buy". (I think a large plurality of voters don't pay any attention to elections until the ads start and either are "proud R's or proud D's without having a clue who they are really voting for.)

2. Our current government is proving for absolute certain that they don't give a damn about their constituents, they only care about their big donors, since it is the big donors who get them elected and/or re-elected. (See point 1 above.)

On a slightly different, but related, topic; I have been saying for a LONG time (like over 50 years) that our government (and our ethics) have not been able to keep up with the incredibly rapid advancement in technology. My father remembers going with his aunt to the farmer's market in a horse drawn wagon. He also remembers watching the first successful test of a helicopter. I remember the first ATM being installed in Columbus, OH. We had family friends who lived in the country and had no indoor plumbing. I was at Ohio State when they became the first college library to computerize their card catalog. And on and on.

The founders could never have imagined current day America. We gotta figure out something or our currently living descendents may witness the next geological die-off (quite possibly including the human race) due to global warming. And our government doesn't give a shit.

[ancianita]

48. Absolutely. This country's citizens haven't known for over 100 years how well and truly fucked we've

been. Through capitalism, the courts, and our sold out legislative branch, and now the executive branch.

We have GOT to do something. And base it on your very premise about what the Founders wanted but could not have known to prevent. We have many founding documents on our side.

I've even been touting for at least three years that citizens need to hold a nationwide TAX STRIKE.

They can't put us all in their fucking privatized prisons.

They're already trying to squeeze every last asset and dollar from the body politic, and so I say, hit 'em hard and shut this shit down to MAKE them come to The People's table and get the Constitution and court rulings straight for OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY.

A tax strike seems to be the only mass action we have left.

Otherwise, we'll have David & Goliath fights across 50 state jurisdictions, 94 federal judicial districts are organized into 12 regional circuits, each of which has a court of appeals -- until we fucking die.

[shockey80]

5. Citizens United is only eight years old.

We are only starting to understand the damage it has and will cause. It is a Democracy killer.

[SWBTATTReg]

6. Citizens United was a scam performed upon the voters of this country by the ...

ultra rich and repugs. It served no purpose other than to allow massive amounts of money into our elections and skew the results. He who has the gold makes the rules.

This is not what a democracy is about. We need to take back our country in Nov. 2018, and one of the things that must be done is to prevent the massive amounts of money (especially foreign) coming in and overwhelming many true facts and good people from running. It's hurting our democracy.

Write a law (or laws) that will be less apt to be overturned.

[shockey80]

7. Do you know where Citizens United got its start?

It started with a Propaganda film about Hillary that was blocked by the law. They took it to court and it went all the way to the supreme court. Unreal.

[Pepsidog]

9. To add, CU was ordered to be rearguard by Roberts which dramatically enlarged its scope.

This opinion is a disgrace.

[ancianita]

43. Yeah, I read about that. It's rich folks' funded group, which has REALLY has pissed me off,

because it's done nothing but sue against liberal and democratic structures.

[Farmer-Rick]

8. And take that logic one step further

Why would a supposed democratic government want to allow huge amounts of money to be able to buy up our politics? Because the people with all that money want it that way.

Why do we let these people have so much money they can buy up our politics? Because we allow capitalism. Because our economic system is NOT democratic. Capitalism is just a minor variation of feudalism. Instead of simply heredity determing rulers and control, capital...passed through heredity, does.

You can NOT have democracy if you do NOT have a democratic economic system. Those with the majority of the nation's wealth will always take over the government even if they are stupid, selfish, ignorant and lazy.

[KT2000]

11. Excellent

Democracy and capitalism are indeed incompatible so there is a pendulum that has swung back a forth since our country's founding. It appears that clock is about to stop all the way at oligarchy. This is being done with the support of about one third of the population. They figured out a way to use democracy to accomplish this.

[ancianita]

12. Giving corporations personhood and constitutional rights, courts also helped to wreck democracy.

Why lawyers haven't told us more about corporate legal history is maddening.

It makes me all the more angry that we made fun of Romney, but were actually being made fun of by Romney when he said, "Corporations are people, my friend."

[greymattermom]

20. So vulture capitalism should be outlawed

because if corporations are people, vulture capitalism is murder.

[ancianita]

39. Well, it's definitely "predatory" in many respects. "Hostile takeovers" are one example.

Its preservation in North Dakota protests over humans is another.

Its "externalities" which applies to "accidental deaths" or pollution, is another.

[Stonepounder]

13. I have been saying this for years.

Citizens United is one of the two or three worst SCOTUS decisions in the history of the US. It ranks right up there with Dred Scott.

And I am afraid that the only way to get rid of it any time soon enough to save the Republic would be with an Amendment to the Constitution, which, of course will never happen. Now that Kavanaugh is on the Court they sure as Hell aren't going to do anything about reversing it.

[jmowreader]

15. I think it's worse than Dred Scott, because its damage is more widespread

[uponit7771]

22. +1, both undermine the concept of democracy but Dred Scott was more aimed at liberal democracy and

Last edited Sun Oct 14, 2018, 11:45 AM - Edit history (1)

... all being equal.

I remember Alito shaking his head in disagreement when Obama said CU would allow money from foreign governments during a SOTU speech.

It does, there's no way to trace money from companies if the campaigns wanted to do what Red Don did with his shell companies.

They knew, we've had hack USSC for decades now.

[uponit7771]

50. Thx, edited

[ancianita]

41. Dred Scott answered the question of equality under the Constitution, and the answer was no.

It did not in any way "aim at liberal democracy." It aimed at the very question of whether slaves had equal protection.

Justice Roger Taney, named to the court by Andrew Jackson, said that Congress had no power to limit slavery in the states ... because the men who wrote the Constitution considered people of African descent "beings of inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." ... No "negro of the African race," he ruled could ever claim the rights and privileges of citizenship in the United States.

Jill Lapore. These Truths -- A History of the United States. p. 269 (2018).

This wouldn't sound, even one bit, as if it aims at anything liberal or democratic. It reads completely the opposite, and would affect over 42 million African Americans today if it held as settled constitutional law. So only legislation toward a constitutional amendment could change it.

[uponit7771]

49. Part of the meaning of liberal democracy is equal protection and has little to nothing to do with...

... North American political idealogy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy

Liberal democracy is a liberal political ideology and a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of classical liberalism. Also called Western democracy, it is characterised by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either formally written or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. After a period of sustained expansion throughout the 20th century, liberal democracy became the predominant political system in the world.

People like Trump and Putin hate liberal democracies because the equal protection parts of it, they don't believe it even when they say the opposite.

Their actions and words as a whole let us know that they don't think equal protection part of liberal democracies don't belong.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/liberal_democracy

A democratic system of government in which individual rights and freedoms are officially recognized and protected, and the exercise of political power is limited by the rule of law.

[spanone]

14. citizens united was the antithesis of democracy

[A HERETIC I AM]

16. The decision has already been made.

Profit trumps the public good in this country, plain and simple. Conservative political and economic ideology serves that purpose AND NO OTHER.

It will take a constitutional amendment to do away with Citizens United.

The deck is clearly stacked against that happening.

[DFW]

17. I am convinced that Citizens United was planned by Rove and Cheney in the Bush Jr. White House

Rove and Cheney saw already in late 2004 that no Republican was going to win the White House in 2008. Iraq was going badly, and I'm sure that the economic crisis that nearly brought America to its knees in 2008 was starting to give hints of its impending arrival years before it actually exploded. I am also convinced that this is why McCain coasted to the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Rove and Cheney knew that not only would it give McCain the nomination he had sought for so long, but it would ultimately provide an electoral humiliation for him they wanted, but could never have engineered on their own.

So, if they knew the White House was lost in 2008, what was left? Either crawl into a hole and enjoy their money, or else start to put something in place that would ensure that the Republicans would have a financial advantage no Democrat (or Democratic congress) could ever overcome in the foreseeable future. The lawsuit that would become Citizens United (in my opinion) HAD to have been discussed with both Roberts and Alito while they were being interviewed for the Supreme Court. Only after promising upon the lives of their children that they would vote for such a measure, no matter what form it took, were their nominations allowed to proceed. This is EXACTLY the sort of thing the wily Karl Rove would have dreamed up, and he was their long-term strategy thinker. Cheney would have loved it, and their propagandists like Frank Luntz were probably brought in to help with the PR to make it palatable to their base.

[BigmanPigman]

19. I believe you're correct.

That seems to be their MO.

[ancianita]

44. I'm sure you're right.

[uponit7771]

21. K&R, Not only that but they get to hide where the money is coming from. It could come from Russia or

... China or anyone that wants to screw the US.

China and Russia have plenty of billions to spend for a US election.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

23. K&R...

The platform of PNAC is a chapter of the story that told us what to expect, but it got worse more than we ever thought. They pulled the plug of this country and we are circling the drain, but not down yet.
GOTV as never before.

[Crunchy Frog]

24. It still really rankles me that the ACLU supported it.

[lordsummerisle]

26. Move to Amend

is one of the groups solely dedicated to undoing the Citizens United clusterf*ck...

https://movetoamend.org/

[czarjak]

27. I just remember how giddy Ann Coulter was over the decision...

[unblock]

29. Citizens United is only one in a trend of allowing money to massively pollute our politics.

It's as good a marker as any to symbolize the problem, but it is not, all by itself, the whole of the problem.

[benld74]

30. Totally agree. My thoughts exactly

[rwsanders]

33. Corporations are not people. Money is not speech.

With those decisions, representative government was dead and we entered the era of fascism.
Now the question is how soon can we take the government back and will it be peaceful or not?

[ancianita]

45. Say that all you want, but you'll have to overturn over 130+ years of "personhood" law first.

I agree with you, but our being passionately right won't even begin to end the legal Titanic that the rich have built for themselves. Since Andrew Jackson.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

34. Excellent points! I've always thought the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United defied

all common sense.

[myohmy2]

36. the fake...

...impartiality of the Supreme Court has long been dispelled...the right-wingers on the Court have proven themselves little more than 1%/Republican hacks...every 8 year old child understands that unlimited contributions are just bribes...

...you buy the politician, you call the legislation and governance...pure and simple...

...when have you known a capitalist to give up money without expecting something in return?...there's no money to be made by throwing money away...

"One will have to go."

...one nearly has disappeared and it isn't Citizens United...

[ancianita]

46. Right. Charles Koch has actually said, "If you don't have the courts, you've got nothing."

[dchill]

51. The Supreme Court and democracy are not compatible.

[calimary]

52. Citizens United and Bush v Gore. My two LEAST favorite SCOTUS rulings.

Hall of Shame time for sure.