Sarbajit,
The better your posts get, the more ambivalent I become about them. I am
grateful for (and a tad shamed by) the extensive work you have put into the
campaign financing decision. But I think giving corporations unlimited power
to pour money into politics is dangerously close to handing out megaphones to
theatre goers so they can cry "fire!" more effectively. When our current
oilspill begins contaminating the shorelines of Ireland and Brittany perhaps
you will join me in being distressed by the power that american corporations
have over the public mind and thereby over our government.
The case is a lot like the second amendment. If one accepts that the purpose
of the second amendment was to make sure that the government would never have
more armaments than its people (one perfectly reasonable interpretation, as i
understand the history of the constitutuional convention), then the only route
to a reasonably civil society is an amendment to the constitution.
But I think the constitutuional argument for a bazooka in every closet is a lot
stronger than the argument for corporations as people, since, corporations were
in the 18th century, creations of the government.
But, this is about as much time as I can put into it today. I just want to
leave a marker that say's HEY! Our government is hovering on the brink of
corporate fascism, here, and not withstanding your close analysis of the
decision, something has to be done.
nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
----- Original Message -----
From: sarbajit roy
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 5/15/2010 11:55:45 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What you can do.
Oops a small clarification,
"2) In the instant judgement the majority partly upheld (confirmed) the
decision of the lower court in appeal. The Supreme Court struck down the part
where the lower court held that §441b was facially constitutional under
McConnell.
On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 11:19 PM, sarbajit roy <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Robert
1) Disbanding corporates and handing power back to the people is commonly
understood to be "communism".
2) In the instant judgement the majority simply upheld (confirmed) the decision
of the lower court in appeal.
3) You are completely off the mark on the implications of the judgement. You
should be grateful that you have a Court which is defending the ideals of your
founding fathers. I have read the all versions of the judgements in isolation
without being contaminated by what other people have written /commented . The
majority said this
a) "Consequently, to hold for Citizens United on this argument, the Court would
be required to revise the text of MCFL, sever BCRA's Wellstone Amendment,
§441b(c)(6), and ignore the plain text of BCRA's Snowe-Jeffords Amendment,
§441b(c)(2). If the Court decided to create a de minimis exception to MCFL or
the Snowe-Jeffords Amendment, the result would be to allow for-profit corporate
general treasury funds to be spent for independent expenditures that support
candidates. There is no principled basis for doing this without rewriting
Austin's holding that the Government can restrict corporate independent
expenditures for political speech."
b) "We decline to adopt an interpretation that requires intricate case-by-case
determinations to verify whether political speech is banned, especially if we
are convinced that, in the end, this corporation has a constitutional right to
speak on this subject."
c) "Yet, the FEC has created a regime that allows it to select what political
speech is safe for public consumption by applying ambiguous tests. If parties
want to avoid litigation and the possibility of civil and criminal penalties,
they must either refrain from speaking or ask the FEC to issue an advisory
opinion approving of the political speech in question. Government officials
pore over each word of a text to see if, in their judgment, it accords with the
11 factor test they have promulgated. This is an unprecedented governmental
intervention into the realm of speech."
d) "Section 441b is a ban on corporate speech notwithstanding the fact that a
PAC created by a corporation can still speak. See McConnell, 540 U. S., at
330-333 (opinion of KENNEDY, J.). A PAC is a separate association from the
corporation. So the PAC exemption from §441b's expenditure ban, §441b(b)(2),
does not allow corporations to speak. Even if a PAC could somehow allow a
corporation to speakand it does notthe option to form PACs does not alleviate
the First Amendment problems with §441b. PACs are burdensome alternatives; they
are expensive to administer and subject to extensive regulations."
e) "Section 441b's prohibition on corporate independent expenditures is thus a
ban on speech. As a "restriction on the amount of money a person or group can
spend on political communication during a campaign," that statute "necessarily
reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues
discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience
reached." Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 19 (1976) (per curiam). Were the Court
to uphold these restrictions, the Government could repress speech by silencing
certain voices at any of the various points in the speech process. See
McConnell, supra, at 251 (opinion of SCALIA, J.) (Government could repress
speech by "attacking all levels of the production and dissemination of ideas,"
for "effective public communication requires the speaker to make use of the
services of others"). If §441b applied to individuals, no one would believe
that it is merely a time, place, or manner restriction on speech. Its purpose
and effect are to silence entities whose voices the Government deems to be
suspect.
:
Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold
officials accountable to the people. See Buckley, supra, at 14-15 ("In a
republic where the people are sovereign, the ability of the citizenry to make
informed choices among candidates for office is essential"). The right of
citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach
consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary
means to protect it. The First Amendment " `has its fullest and most urgent
application' to speech uttered during a campaign for political office." Eu v.
San Francisco County Democratic Central Comm., 489 U. S. 214, 223 (1989)
(quoting Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy, 401 U. S. 265, 272 (1971)); see Buckley,
supra, at 14 ("Discussion of public issues and debate on the qualifications of
candidates are integral to the operation of the system of government
established by our Constitution").
For these reasons, political speech must prevail against laws that would
suppress it, whether by design or inadvertence.
f) "There is simply no support for the view that the First Amendment, as
originally understood, would permit the suppression of political speech by
media corporations. The Framers may not have anticipated modern business and
media corporations. See McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, 514 U. S. 334,
360-361 (1995) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). Yet television networks
and major newspapers owned by media corporations have become the most important
means of mass communication in modern times. The First Amendment was certainly
not understood to condone the suppression of political speech in society's most
salient media. It was understood as a response to the repression of speech and
the press that had existed in England and the heavy taxes on the press that
were imposed in the colonies. See McConnell, 540 U. S., at 252-253 (opinion of
SCALIA, J.); Grosjean, 297 U. S., at 245-248; Near, 283 U. S., at 713-714. The
great debates between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists over our
founding document were published and expressed in the most important means of
mass communication of that eranewspapers owned by individuals. See McIntyre,
514 U. S., at 341-343; id., at 367 (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). At the
founding, speech was open, comprehensive, and vital to society's definition of
itself; there were no limits on the sources of speech and knowledge. See B.
Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 5 (1967) ("Any number of
people could join in such proliferating polemics, and rebuttals could come from
all sides"); G. Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, p. 6 (1969)
("[I]t is not surprising that the intellectual sources of [the Americans']
Revolutionary thought were profuse and various"). The Framers may have been
unaware of certain types of speakers or forms of communication, but that does
not mean that those speakers and media are entitled to less First Amendment
protection than those types of speakers and media that provided the means of
communicating political ideas when the Bill of Rights was adopted."
g) "Some members of the public might consider Hillary to be insightful and
instructive; some might find it to be neither high art nor a fair discussion on
how to set the Nation's course; still others simply might suspend judgment on
these points but decide to think more about issues and candidates. Those
choices and assessments, however, are not for the Government to make. "The
First Amendment underwrites the freedom to experiment and to create in the
realm of thought and speech. Citizens must be free to use new forms, and new
forums, for the expression of ideas. The civic discourse belongs to the people,
and the Government may not prescribe the means used to conduct it." McConnell,
supra, at 341 (opinion of KENNEDY, J.)."
Finally, the majority decision is a reasoned and sober legal exercise, whereas
Justice Steven's dissent is a personalised rant against his brother judges.
Sarbajit
On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 10:16 AM, Robert J. Cordingley <[email protected]>
wrote:
Perhaps this helps:
http://movetoamend.org/learn-more
the source of the Justice Stevens quote. BTW, in the face of declining
investigative journalism in the US there has been some talk of government
sponsored news media in much the same way PBS has some public funding but with
a legal mandate to be independent. You can look at the BBC News as another
model. Corporate Personhood may be a bigger problem [threat to our democracy].
Thanks
Robert
On 5/14/10 7:16 PM, Chris Feola wrote:
No problem, Robert-help me into the boat.
Who is press? Who isnt? Who decides?
cjf
Christopher J. Feola
President, nextPression
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cjfeola
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Robert J. Cordingley
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 5:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What you can do.
Actually Chris, I think you are also missing the boat by focusing on the
technicalities of a legal argument most of us would have to pay someone to help
us with.
So see this quote:
Justice Stevens, in dissent, was compelled to state the obvious:
. . . . corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts,
no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human
beings, to be sure, and their personhood often serves as a useful legal
fiction. But they are not themselves members of We the People by whom and for
whom our Constitution was established.
Thanks
Robert
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: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] 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
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> 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
============================================================
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
