Anyone here besides me think the latest US Supreme Court decision was a mistake? Of course there are: despite all the fancy legal arguments given, it seems these things are always depressingly predictable along party lines, so everyone is already lining up on either side.

If you have no idea what I'm referring to, well then it's the decision to allow corporations (and similar organizations like labor unions) unlimited ability to spend money on political campaigns.

Apparently the Supreme Court, which created corporations as "persons" with a controversial decision about 100 years ago, has now decided that these "persons" have freedom of speech protected by the first amendment to the US Constitution, the same as a real person.

What next? Voting rights? Jury Duty? The ability to stand for election to public office?

Does no one see that giving more political rights to essentially immortal entities with gigantic financial power is a very unhealthy thing for all of us mere humans?

Sounds like total BS, I saw it on the news yesterday.
Here is a link to a video about the subject if anyone hasn't heard about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4lwGbTKFAI

Hi Mostlyharmless

I Definitely agree with you...

But i guess that the roots of such things stem from the very nature of Western Civilization itself...

PLEASE NOTE, I am *NOT* starting a Flame war here, NOR am I stating the Eastern are best than the Western NO NO NO... mothing of this here.

What I am stating is that, in the west, most ppl are given from its very early education a sense of the "self"... of the individual, and the individualism...

Without a solid backbone of ethical values, this esily leads to Greed, Selfishness, Corruption, an all those primary sins that result form the fact that the individual is granted the "Natural" right of allocating the availability of resources of the Community for himself.

So, He will pollute the environment for the sake of the stake Holders of his corporation, He will make partnerships with political parties, bounding their future leaders to a commitment that is not good for the people they are purported to protect, etc, etc, etc.

Where does all that leads us...?

To Corruption, Poverty, Scarcity, Revolt, Hatred, Chaos, Humilliation, War...

In the aftermath I only ask... is this Good... ?

Yet there is a Legal framework for all the conditions that leads to this state of things... strange isn't it...?


In the East ( Japan for instance, or China ) Traditionally the individual was raised and educated in the belief that besides of him, there was a Whole Community, and there were Leaders, commited to the welfare of the community...

No Individualism, yet some autonomy no selfishness, yet some self determination...

All this stems from our philosophical background in the Buddhism, ( Shintô Buddhism, in Japan ) and Confucianism, in China, and in some variations of Shintô...

Once again i stress :

I AM NOT SAYING THAT THE JAPANESE OR CHINESE WAY ARE BETTER THAN THE AMERICAN OR WESTERN, WE ALSO HAVE OUR OWN QUIRKS, I AM STATING THERE IS A DIFFERENCE, AND PONTING WHAT ARE THE CAUSES FOR IT... NOTHING ELSE.

BRGDS

Alex

What are you complaining about?

This is an essential step in the establishment of the Fascist States of Amerika.

After all, we've always funded our politicians by bribery; might as well institutionalize it.

Absolute nonsense.

It was the individualism of Americans that put the United States on top. It is the loss of that sense of individualism, the loss in the belief in that individualism, that is destroying America.

In every circumstance where the individualist Americans went up against any kind of collectivist nation, we the individualists won - and that most particularly includes how we hammered Japan.

We fall as we become increasingly collectivist.

Hi Jiml8

So you state that it is Good, to let the selfishness of Individualism build up into a political regime, feed into the natural resources of its own territory, and when it is not enough start depleting resouces that are shared by the World for the sake of its own continuation... ok... i get the point.

...one thing puzzles me though : How many such "individualistically governed subjects of International law" AKA Liberal, corporate driven, Nations can there be in one single Earth Planet...?

Yes... how many....?

Is the rest of the World expected to bow to American Nation's Corporate interests... ?|

Can someone here just *immagine* what would happen in case the people from PRC would decide that they also have the right to live "The American Dream"...?

... yeah, you know, the biggest ratio of automotive vehicles per inhabitant, the greatest ammount of water consumption, Energy consumption, Garbage production, CO2 an NOx release per Inhabitant...?


Of Course Americans will say... we have the USAF, the US NAVY, the SAC, and all these things to back up the Morality of our claims...

Ok... so everyone that builds up the same brand of arguments will have "equal rights" to deplete what does not rightfully belong to him... ( Water, Air, etc ) ?

Do you really believe this.... ??


BRGDS

Alex

Edit.

For the sake of world Peace, and Harmony, lets hope that the individualism, the greed, and the "absolute" and "inquestionable" righteousness of the claims of some, which are nowadays in the Top, like you said... are not followed by others...

Like People's Republic of China, India, The Empire of Japan, Brazil...

If that would happen... well... I leave that to your immagination...

Show me where I said that. Show me.

Oh, you can't? What does that make you, then?

Your comprehension of individualism is virtually nonexistent; that much is obvious. Your knowledge of American society is equally deficient; if it wasn't, you wouldn't put forth such manifestly stupid statements.

And I'm not interested in your strawman arguments; I won't play.

Do your homework. Learn your history. Once you have done so, AND once you can present a rational argument OR a rebuttal without first putting up a strawman so that you can attack the strawman - given that you don't understand the REAL argument, then we can talk.

Until that time, I have to say that your opinion looks totally worthless to me, and it is expressed in a fashion that causes me to conclude that even trying to educate you would be a total waste of my time.

So jiml8, do you agree with individual rights for corporations? Is that an extension of the individualism that you value, or is that a form of collectivism that you despise?

BTW, you sure sound pretty angry about something...

I do not need to :

Any Nation will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to continue ON TOP...


It is your opinion, and I respect it as such, does not mean that I do not have the right to have my own opinion, and have my own education.


BRGDS

Alex

PS. I did not Try to "educate you"... see, this is the difference between us...

As noted before some people express themselves in ways that does not foster constructive, lively discussion. Please keep this thread as friendly as possible. If you can't contain yourself, if you feel you need to attack fellow LQ members instead of discussing points of view please feel free to keep yourself from posting. And that goes especially for you, jiml8.

Hi @UnSpawn, @Forum, @jiml8

I am sorry if some of my arguments offended someone here... this was not my intention.

I felt that I did not have to introduce the FACTS ( known by everyone here, I believe ) that :

1# American Leaders driven by Corporate Interests waged a criminal War against the Nation of Iraq, based on Lies Forged to elude the public Opinion on the need an righteousness of such War.

I guess that this FACT would be enough to justify my point that

This stems from the "partnerships" built between oil industry and Military Industrial Complex and American Leaders. Once again I state this as an OPINION, and I ask someone to correct me If I am wrong here.

I guess that the knowledge of point #1, is not a strawman's argument that I created to attack someone, IMHO.

BRGDS

Alex

It is not expressly directed at you Alexvader: please note the last sentence of my moderation post #10.

Lots of people can't think through the consequences (even after seeing them) and thus agree with you. Obviously, I don't agree.

If any government anywhere were capable of unbiased enforcement of rules for political speech, there would have been no need to even add "free speech" to the constitution.

The more power you give the government to regulate political speech, the more they will abuse that power.

This correction of the Supreme Court's earlier horrible mistake, is not about whether the power it grants to corporations and unions is a good or bad thing (of course it is bad). It is about whether the power it takes away from the government was merely bad vs. so terrible it would ultimately destroy all of our rights (I think the latter).

That's the whole point. The biased enforcement has always been at the heart of why the issue cuts along political lines and has always been at the heart of why the law was so dangerous.

The law equally takes free speech from businesses and from unions. The law equally takes free speech from conservative and liberal messages. But the enforcement of the law only took free speech away from conservative messages, such as the ones in all the test cases that brought this law before the Supreme Court.

Why were the direct advertisers in the Massachusetts Senate race the candidates, the unions, the political parties and the PACs? After Coakley herself, the Service Employees union (advertising for Coakley) seemed to run the second largest number of ads. Why were they exempt from the law?

We have a right of free speech because people understood that the opposite is a power too terrible to give the government. Free speech lets people offend or even insult you. Free speech lets louder voices get more attention than more intelligent voices. Those aren't supposed to be good things. But they are better than the long term consequences of biased enforcement of government regulation of speech.

Again, biased enforcement of such laws is not just built into the civil service system (which magnified the bias of McCain-Feingold). Biased enforcement is an unavoidable result of giving the government that power.

I don't know that specific decision. But corporations as person-like entities existed in the laws of many countries long before the Supreme Court or the USA existed.

No. The right to free speech that exists individually does not cease to exist when exercised collectively. In theory, it is the stock holders speaking.

Obviously, that doesn't work in practice. A corporation actually "speaks" on behalf of its top management not on behalf of its stock holders. A union actually speaks on behalf of its leaders not on behalf of its members. A government actually speaks on behalf of itself, not its citizens.

It would be nicer if we could get rid of some of the laws that protect corporate management from answering to stock holders and protect union leaders from answering to members. But the people writing laws are fundamentally on the opposite side of that whole question, since they themselves use seniority rules and gerrymandering and everything else they can think of (including McCain-Feingold) to keep themselves from being answerable to their constituency.

Meanwhile, the right to political speech on behalf of the stockholders isn't quite as bad in the hands of corporate management as it is in the hands of the government itself.

Just not nearly as unhealthy as giving that power to the immortal one-party civil service structure that has been one of the four branches of government (maybe the strongest one) since Roosevelt.

The only thing missing from the Supreme Court decision was a mandate to create a national NASDAQ like market so that companies can be assured the buying and selling of politicians is occurring at fair market rates.


This is judicial activism at its worst. Scalia and company just issued a fiat creating an entirely new category of people. Not even the most liberal of courts has ever done that.

Hi Hangdog42

When this sort of buildup of Corporate Interests happens in a Nation as powerful as American Nation, there is virtually NO LIMIT to what is "expectable" to happen all over the world, Globalization allows for that, unless there is a Nation, powerful enough not to be Intimidated by America´s "Legitimate" interests wherever...

I was told by someone that schoolbooks in America, portray the geographic extent of Brazil as *WITHOUT* the Amazonian Forest...

it is claimed to be a property "Of Mankind".... not the Brazilian Nation...


Unlike the Oil Fields of Alaska, which are *CLEARLY* American, not *Mankind's property*...

When these things are allowed to happen... because of Contitutional Precepts in American Constitution what is any non-American allowed to expect...?

BRGDS

Alex

Now I ASK: Are there any North American Corporations Interested in Exploiting the resources of Amazonian Forest...?

Just a question... nothing more...