The choice is both and neither, as they are false choices. You have
conflated 'media', 'person', 'corporation', and 'forum'. Congress may
very well restrict media, for example, I may take it as my freedom of
expression to jam some competing media channel with noise, or stray
outside my FCC sanctioned portion of the radio, broadcasting, say,
"Pepsi Cola hits the spot, 12 full ounces that's a lot", over and over
at very high power, such that you receive it in your tooth fillings.
(One might also talk here about BP). Anyhow, if I were to do so, I
might rightly expect a visit from representatives of my government. The
government certainly also has an interest in folks not using media to
explicitly incite the citizenry to violence against others.
The point at issue may be less whether corporations are persons or
persons are corporate (one may be happier or not with the latter notion)
but whether corporations are citizens with citizen's rights. All states
to some degree regulate commerce and thus corporations (for example in
their role as guarantors of contracts), in ways they do not regulate
persons who are citizens or persons in general. The relation is not
symmetrical. Corporations and citizens accordingly have different kinds
of rights and responsibilities, but those of corporations are statutory
and not inalienable.
It seems to me that the framers (if we attribute to them or their
interpreters omniscience) might reasonably have expected that their
words about rights applied more to citizens and less to corporate
entities. It is also written that Congress shall make no law
restricting freedom of assembly, but there are no fundamental rights
awarded or conceived for such assemblies (hmmm, do emergent entities
have constitutional rights?), whether corporations or states; the
assembly itself does not have the status of citizen in a democracy. It
is reasonable for the government to require that corporate generated or
sanctioned messages over media to be the responsibility of a particular
citizen, since only citizens and not assemblies have that
constitutionally sanctioned freedom of expression.
Clearly some net neutrality stuff related to this too. Another time.
I'm Carl and I approved this message.
On 5/14/10 3:35 PM, Chris Feola wrote:
Actually, Sarbajit is quite on point. If you read the decision you will see
that one reason the law was struck down was it tried to get around its
obvious violation of the 1st Amendment by carving out an exemption for
"media" since the press is, largely, corporate. Overturning this decision
therefore leaves two largely unpalatable choices:
1. The government decides what Fox News can broadcast and The New York Times
can print, since corporations do not have a 1st Amendment rights.
2. The government decides who and what are "media" and therefore get 1st
Amendment rights.
Both seem to be somewhat outside the spirit of "Congress shall make no
law..."
But don't take my word for it. Here's noted 1st Amendment lawyer Floyd
Abrams, who won the Pentagon Papers case for The New York Times:
"And my reaction is sort of a John McEnroe: You cannot be serious! We're
talking about the First Amendment here, and we're being told that an
extremely vituperative expression of disdain for a candidate for president
is criminal in America?"
"I think that two things are at work," Mr. Abrams says. "One is that there
are an awful lot of journalists that do not recognize that they work for
corporations. . . .
"A second is an ideological one. I think that there is a way of viewing this
decision which . . . looks not at whether the First Amendment was vindicated
but whether what is simply referred to as, quote, democracy, unquote, was
vindicated. My view is, we live in a world in which the word 'democracy' is
debatable . . . It is not a word which should determine interpretation of a
constitution and a Bill of Rights, which is at its core a legal document as
well as an affirming statement of individual freedom," he says. "Justice
Potter Stewart . . . warned against giving up the protections of the First
Amendment in the name of its values. . . . The values matter, the values are
real, but we protect the values by protecting the First Amendment."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704094304575029791336276632.ht
ml
cjf, recovering journalist
Christopher J. Feola
President, nextPression
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cjfeola
-----Original Message-----
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 1:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What you can do.
merle lefkoff wrote:
Sarbajit misses the boat completely. The reason that the government
"may not suppress that speech altogether" is because under U.S. law
corporations have the same rights as people. This is the problem,
because corporations are NOT by any stretch of the imagination a
person. Using the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to gain the
legal financial takeover of the electoral process is a disaster for
democracy. What needs to be changed, however, is not the recent Supreme
Court decision, but the legal definition of "corporation."
sarbajit roy wrote:
Dear Group,
As a non-US member I also find this interesting.
As an ordinary citizen who has personally argued and won some cases
before the Supreme Court of my country (India) on Free Speech issues
(one coincidentally involving large corporations and television
broadcasting), I was actually quite impressed with the reasoning in
the majority ratio handed down by your Supreme Court (although to be
frank, I am not up to speed on the case law of your country).in
"*Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission*". The message I got
from the judgement is that the Court is adamant on ensuring that
citizens are fully informed no matter what the source of information
is so long as the mandatory disclaimers are in place and the bias is
spelled out up front. "*/The Government may regulate corporate
political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but
it may not suppress that speech altogether/*." Heck, now Osama-BL Inc.
has the right to buy air-time and tell you what he thinks of the
Georges Bush,
I also find that the petition you signed is based on a limited and
incorrect understanding of the judgement, and is designed on the
premise that "*you can get at least one half of the American public to
sign anything if you word the question properly*".
It would be instructive to those interested to read the actual
majority opinion summarised here
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZO.html
Just in passing, if some people imagine that a "Constitutional
democracy" is a good thing, read this for an alternative view from one
of the greatest philosophers of our age .. its brilliant in parts.
http://www.mathaba.net/gci/theory/gb1.htm
Sarbajit
On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Robert J. Cordingley
<rob...@cirrillian.com<mailto:rob...@cirrillian.com>> wrote:
Given the opining in this list, US members might find this site of
interest:
http://movetoamend.org/
Perhaps a chance to actually do something?
Thanks
Robert
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
