Comments on: Citizens United, competing free speech, and “associations of citizens”

By: gdp

gdp — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 03:12:46 +0000

I oppose the un-Constitutional restrictions on the Fundamental Human Rights of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Association contained in McCain-Feingold — and to that extent, I applaud the recent SCOTUS decision.

HOWEVER — I also oppose the ludicrous idea that an abstract mental concept such as the legal construct known as a “corporation” is in any reasonable or meaningful sense a “person,” and therefore capable of ever _having_ a Right such as Free Speech.

A “corporation” is an abstract mental concept, that does not and _cannot_ have any form of existence or being, except as an abstract label that exists only within the minds of individual Human Beings. To _ever_ speak of a “corporation” as a “person,” or to atribute to “it” the capability of having “rights” is to commit the logical fallacy of Reifying an Abstract Mental Conceptt.

As an abstract mental concept — a mere legal fiction — a “corporation” is not and _cannot_ be a moral agent,
nor a sapient being (a being that thinks), nor a sentient being (a being that feels), nor a being of _any_ type. As a non-being and a non-moral-agent, a “corporation” does not and _CANNOT_ have _ANY_ “rights.”

A “corporation” is _not_ a person. To grant a Human Right such as Freedom of Speech to a “corporation” is as utterly absurd as granting legal “personhood” or legal “rights” to a fictitious character in a novel, movie, or play — as absurd as granting an alleged independent “right of speech” to Hamlet, or Tom Sawyer, or or Luke Skywalker.

A “corporation” _cannot_ have the Fundamental, Unalienable, _Individual_ Human Right of Free Speech, because a “corporation” is _NOT_ a Human Individual. If the Law “says” otherwise, then the Law is an @$$.

By: Fat Man

Fat Man — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:24:50 +0000

Isn’t there some tension between Obama’s denunciations of Citizens United and his decision in 2008 to use private financing for his presidential campaign, thereby revoking his pact with Sen McCain to use only the public financing?

By: Michael Giberson

Michael Giberson — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:41:58 +0000

I’m reading Forrest McDonald’s biography of Samuel Insull, and just through the discussion of state regulation advocacy. The effort was, from Insull’s point a view, more or less an effort to rationalize relations between his company and state and local politicians (even while presented as a progressive effort to rationalize utility operations in the public interest).

Anyway, it strikes me that corporate political speech, of the sort heretofore circumscribed, is a substitute for DC-based lobbying or outright corruption. Since the price of corporate political speech has now fallen, shouldn’t we expect to see a substitution away from lobbying and corruption? (At least on the margin, relative to the appropriate counterfactual)