In a decision that could have a dramatic effect on the upcoming elections, the Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 in favor of a group of conservative filmmakers in the “Hillary: The Movie” Case. The result of the decision could increase spending for corporations, unions, and nonprofits in the election. I previously discussed the case and the likelihood of this 5-4 ruling. I discussed the case on this segment of Countdown. Other commentators like Glenn Greenwald have also weighed in on the case with similar views, here.
The ruling went down the ideological line with Justice Anthony Kennedy giving the majority the fifth vote and then writing the opinion. He stressed that “[o]ur nation’s speech dynamic is changing, and informative voices should not have to circumvent onerous restrictions to exercise their First Amendment rights.” That is the sentiment that motivated another of civil libertarians and free amendment advocates to support the conservative litigants. This is a case that split the free speech community with the ACLU and free speech advocates like Floyd Abrams supporting the conservative filmmakers in this case.
While there is much speculation on the impact on the upcoming elections, it is notable that two provisions were upheld by the Court (with only Thomas dissenting). The Court upheld the disclosure requirement that requires corporations to file a report with the FEC on contributors of $1,000 or more (when the corporation spends more than $10,000 a year to produce such ads. It also upheld the disclaimer requirement that requires that the producers say who is responsible for the ad if it not authorized by a candidate or a political committee.
However, the Court overturned critical holdings in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (upholding restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates) and McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (upholding the central provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law). The result is seismic for opening up elections to corporate spending. It is also a case of Justice Kennedy finally achieving a majority after voting against these limitations in 1990. While Justice Sandra Day O’Connor later changed her position to uphold campaign financing, Kennedy has remained firm that such limits run counter to the first amendment. He believes that public policy can be achieved through transparency provisions: “The government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether.”
The opinions offer strikingly different views of the First Amendment with Stevens writing: “The basic premise underlying the court’s ruling is its iteration, and constant reiteration, of the proposition that the First Amendment bars regulatory distinctions based on a speaker’s identity, including its ‘identity’ as a corporation.” While that glittering generality has rhetorical appeal, it is not a correct statement of the law.”
Both the Kennedy and Stevens opinions are very compelling and fascinating. The Kennedy decision does raise some questions over the sweep on his first amendment views and why any limits on campaign finances are constitutional. It also reintroduces the question of why corporations are treated as persons for the purposes of the first amendment. That latter question could now be the focus of a fight over a constitutional amendment. My opposition to a constitutional amendment is that I believe that there are more important political reforms to the system that need to be made. I do not believe that it is the money that has caused our political system to become so dysfunctional. It is also important to note that these restrictions were imposed on unions and non-for-profit corporations. The result of the restrictions, in my view, were disturbing line drawing as to what the government considered electioneering and what the government considered legitimate documentary work as with the distinction between Hillary the Movie and Fahrenheit 911.
There is a push now for a constitutional amendment, which I would not favor. It may be time for a paradigm change in how we think about this problem. We have a political failure in our system that is sucking the life out of the Republic. The monopoly of the two parties on power produces endless loops of corruption and conflict. The problem in my view is structural not financial. We need to break the domination of incumbents and the two parties. This can be done with fundamental changes in our primary system, eliminating the electoral college, creating new opportunities for third parties, and other reforms.
The FEC ruled that the film was prohibited as a “prohibited electioneering communication.” The lower court decisions proceeded to curtail the distribution of the film by restricting the conservative group in broadcasting and promoting the movie during the presidential primaries. In July, a three-judge panel granted the FEC’s motion for summary judgment.
Specifically, the desire of the group to put the movie in TV-on-demand access on cable TV was shelved due to the FEC’s decision.
Citizen United is challenging the federal “electioneering communications” disclosure requirements in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act — a prohibition on corporations and nonprofits from airing broadcast ads, which refer to a federal candidate 30 days before a primary election. Citizens United is using the Court’s decision in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC, which exempted issue advocacy from the electioneering communications prohibition.
Watching the trailers below, it is hard to distinguish this movie from a campaign ad. However, the rulings below should trouble free speech advocates. The court found that the 90-minute campaign ad “susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her.” That may be so, but such a conclusion could also be reached in a perfectly legitimate documentary or parody. Consider Michael Moore’s anti-Bush documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
The actual restrictions and their impact on the film are a bit more technical. The McCain-Feingold legislation requires that “any broadcast, cable or satellite communications” during the period before an election clearly state the name of the group paying for the ad is one such provision.
There is no question that Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, has a bit of an obsession and hatred for both Clintons. It is the creation of Citizens United President David N. Bossie, a long Clinton critic.
The case raised both very broad and very technical questions. The threshold question, however, is the role of the government in making this judgment call between films from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 to Hillary the Movie. Often literary works have a political purpose or message. Shakespeare’s work, particularly Richard III, has been described as a brilliant Tudor propaganda — Richard III was the last Yorkist king and vilifying the House of York was of great benefit to Shakespeare’s Tudor benefactors. Richard III was defeated by the first Tudor, Henry VII and the ancestor of Elizabeth I. In my Supreme Court seminar on the current case, my students and I discussed whether the FCC would require Shakespeare to add “Brought to you with the generous contributions of the Tudor Family.”
The vote in my Supreme Court class on the case was interesting. We split down the middle: Seven favored the ruling of the FCC while Seven would support Citizens United. However, the prediction of the likely outcome was heavily in favor of the Supreme Court affirming the lower three-judge panel against Citizens United.
Seth Waxman, who defended the law is predictably arguing stare decisis (Lat. “to stand by that which is decided”) and saying that a reversal of the earlier ruling after such a relatively short time would be “unseemly” and undermine the credibility of the Court.
Ted Olson argued that the law has created a “chilling effect” on first amendment rights and free speech. Many civil libertarians are sympathetic with those arguments — viewing the ruling as an affront to free speech. That includes Floyd Abrams a liberal defender of free speech who is representing Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader in one of the dozens of amicus filings.
Notably, when the Court last considered this law, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor voted to supply the fifth vote upholding the law in McConnell v. FEC in 2003. Her seat is now held by Justice Samuel Alito who predictably voted with the majority. Sotomayor voted as expected the same way as Souter to uphold the law.
Notably, Alito spoke out at the last hearing at a critical moment. In the March argument, the government argued that hypothetically the government could make it a crime to distribute books advocating the election or defeat of political candidates. The distinction that was drawn was whether it was paid for by corporate money rather than a political action committee. Alito exclaimed “[t]hat’s pretty incredible.”
I was sympathetic with Citizens United and the free speech groups. In the end, I have to favor more speech than less in such conflicts. While I would have written a concurrence and have difficulty with aspects of the majority opinion, I probably would have voted to support the majority in the result in this case. However, I do consider this to be one of the most difficult free speech cases to hit the court in decades. Many of my friends are on the other side and I understand that this is quite a blow. People of good faith can disagree on such issues. It really broke along a fine line. It depends on whether your gravitational point tended to fall along the free speech line or the good government line. It is a rare case where those lines ran perpendicular rather than parallel with each other.
For the trailers of the movie, see below:
You can read the opinion at this link.
For the full story, click here.
Oops…. Sorry for posting that whole section. I only meant to post a part of it. Sorry!
Mespo,
I think you are wrong. I’ll let Justice Stevens summarize for me:
##
1. Original Understandings
Let us start from the beginning. The Court invokes “ancient First Amendment principles,” ante , at 1 (internal quotation marks omitted), and original understandings, ante , at 37–38, to defend today’s ruling, yet it makes only a perfunctory attempt to ground its analysis in the principles or understandings of those who drafted and ratified the Amendment. Perhaps this is because there is not a scintilla of evidence to support the notion that anyone believed it would preclude regulatory distinctions based on the corporate form. To the extent that the Framers’ views are discernible and relevant to the disposition of this case, they would appear to cut strongly against the majority’s position.
This is not only because the Framers and their contemporaries conceived of speech more narrowly than we now think of it, see Bork, Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems, 47 Ind. L. J. 1, 22 (1971), but also because they held very different views about the nature of the First Amendment right and the role of corporations in society. Those few corporations that existed at the founding were authorized by grant of a special legislative charter. 53 Corporate sponsors would petition the legislature, and the legislature, if amenable, would issue a charter that specified the corporation’s powers and purposes and “authoritatively fixed the scope and content of corporate organization,” including “the internal structure of the corporation.” J. Hurst, The Legitimacy of the Business Corporation in the Law of the United States 1780–1970, pp. 15–16 (1970) (reprint 2004). Corporations were created, supervised, and conceptualized as quasi-public entities, “designed to serve a social function for the state.” Handlin & Handlin, Origin of the American Business Corporation, 5 J. Econ. Hist. 1, 22 (1945). It was “assumed that [they] were legally privileged organizations that had to be closely scrutinized by the legislature because their purposes had to be made consistent with public welfare.” R. Seavoy, Origins of the American Business Corporation, 1784–1855, p. 5 (1982).
The individualized charter mode of incorporation reflected the “cloud of disfavor under which corporations labored” in the early years of this Nation. 1 W. Fletcher, Cyclopedia of the Law of Corporations §2, p. 8 (rev. ed. 2006); see also Louis K. Liggett Co. v. Lee , 288 U. S. 517, 548–549 (1933) (Brandeis, J., dissenting) (discussing fears of the “evils” of business corporations); L. Friedman, A History of American Law 194 (2d ed. 1985) (“The word ‘soulless’ constantly recurs in debates over corporations… . Corporations, it was feared, could concentrate the worst urges of whole groups of men”). Thomas Jefferson famously fretted that corporations would subvert the Republic. 54 General incorporation statutes, and widespread acceptance of business corporations as socially useful actors, did not emerge until the 1800’s. See Hansmann & Kraakman, The End of History for Corporate Law, 89 Geo. L. J. 439, 440 (2001) (hereinafter Hansmann & Kraakman) (“[A]ll general business corporation statutes appear to date from well after 1800”).
The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment , it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind. 55 While individuals might join together to exercise their speech rights, business corporations, at least, were plainly not seen as facilitating such associational or expressive ends. Even “the notion that business corporations could invoke the First Amendment would probably have been quite a novelty,” given that “at the time, the legitimacy of every corporate activity was thought to rest entirely in a concession of the sovereign.” Shelledy, Autonomy, Debate, and Corporate Speech, 18 Hastings Const. L. Q. 541, 578 (1991); cf. Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward , 4 Wheat. 518, 636 (1819) (Marshall, C. J.) (“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it”); Eule, Promoting Speaker Diversity: Austin and Metro Broadcasting, 1990 S. Ct. Rev. 105, 129 (“The framers of the First Amendment could scarcely have anticipated its application to the corporation form. That, of course, ought not to be dispositive. What is compelling, however, is an understanding of who was supposed to be the beneficiary of the free speech guaranty—the individual”). In light of these background practices and understandings, it seems to me implausible that the Framers believed “the freedom of speech” would extend equally to all corporate speakers, much less that it would preclude legislatures from taking limited measures to guard against corporate capture of elections.
The Court observes that the Framers drew on diverse intellectual sources, communicated through newspapers, and aimed to provide greater freedom of speech than had existed in England. Ante , at 37. From these (accurate) observations, the Court concludes that “[t]he First Amendment was certainly not understood to condone the suppression of political speech in society’s most salient media.” Ibid. This conclusion is far from certain, given that many historians believe the Framers were focused on prior restraints on publication and did not understand the First Amendment to “prevent the subsequent punishment of such [publications] as may be deemed contrary to the public welfare.” Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson , 283 U. S. 697, 714 (1931) . Yet, even if the majority’s conclusion were correct, it would tell us only that the First Amendment was understood to protect political speech in certain media. It would tell us little about whether the Amendment was understood to protect general treasury electioneering expenditures by corporations, and to what extent .
As a matter of original expectations, then, it seems absurd to think that the First Amendment prohibits legislatures from taking into account the corporate identity of a sponsor of electoral advocacy. As a matter of original meaning, it likewise seems baseless—unless one evaluates the First Amendment ’s “principles,” ante, at 1, 48, or its “purpose,” ante , at 5 (opinion of Roberts, C. J .), at such a high level of generality that the historical understandings of the Amendment cease to be a meaningful constraint on the judicial task. This case sheds a revelatory light on the assumption of some that an impartial judge’s application of an originalist methodology is likely to yield more determinate answers, or to play a more decisive role in the decisional process, than his or her views about sound policy.
Justice Scalia criticizes the foregoing discussion for failing to adduce statements from the founding era showing that corporations were understood to be excluded from the First Amendment ’s free speech guarantee. Ante , at 1–2, 9. Of course, Justice Scalia adduces no statements to suggest the contrary proposition, or even to suggest that the contrary proposition better reflects the kind of right that the drafters and ratifiers of the Free Speech Clause thought they were enshrining. Although Justice Scalia makes a perfectly sensible argument that an individual’s right to speak entails a right to speak with others for a common cause, cf. MCFL , 479 U. S. 238 , he does not explain why those two rights must be precisely identical, or why that principle applies to electioneering by corporations that serve no “common cause.” Ante , at 8. Nothing in his account dislodges my basic point that members of the founding generation held a cautious view of corporate power and a narrow view of corporate rights (not that they “despised” corporations, ante , at 2), and that they conceptualized speech in individualistic terms. If no prominent Framer bothered to articulate that corporate speech would have lesser status than individual speech, that may well be because the contrary proposition—if not also the very notion of “corporate speech”—was inconceivable. 56
Justice Scalia also emphasizes the unqualified nature of the First Amendment text. Ante , at 2, 8. Yet he would seemingly read out the Free Press Clause: How else could he claim that my purported views on newspapers must track my views on corporations generally? Ante , at 6. 57 Like virtually all modern lawyers, Justice Scalia presumably believes that the First Amendment restricts the Executive, even though its language refers to Congress alone. In any event, the text only leads us back to the questions who or what is guaranteed “the freedom of speech,” and, just as critically, what that freedom consists of and under what circumstances it may be limited. Justice Scalia appears to believe that because corporations are created and utilized by individuals, it follows (as night the day) that their electioneering must be equally protected by the First Amendment and equally immunized from expenditure limits. See ante , at 7–8. That conclusion certainly does not follow as a logical matter, and Justice Scalia fails to explain why the original public meaning leads it to follow as a matter of interpretation.
The truth is we cannot be certain how a law such as BCRA §203 meshes with the original meaning of the First Amendment . 58 I have given several reasons why I believe the Constitution would have been understood then, and ought to be understood now, to permit reasonable restrictions on corporate electioneering, and I will give many more reasons in the pages to come. The Court enlists the Framers in its defense without seriously grappling with their understandings of corporations or the free speech right, or with the republican principles that underlay those understandings.
In fairness, our campaign finance jurisprudence has never attended very closely to the views of the Framers, see Randall v. Sorrell , 548 U. S. 230, 280 (2006) ( Stevens , J., dissenting), whose political universe differed profoundly from that of today. We have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment , and many legal scholars have long since rejected the concession theory of the corporation. But “historical context is usually relevant,” ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted), and in light of the Court’s effort to cast itself as guardian of ancient values, it pays to remember that nothing in our constitutional history dictates today’s outcome. To the contrary, this history helps illuminate just how extraordinarily dissonant the decision is.
Stephen Pitt:
Prudent words — from you and the sage at Monticello.
Turley, your post is factually misinformed. I can’t believe that you actually read Stevens’ dissent, at least not all of it (granted it was pretty long). You are usually quite reliable, and I was hoping to get some good legal and scholarly insight on this… What a disappointment.
I hope you are right, mespo. In times like these, is it not prudent to buttress and prepare? Your grasp of the law is superior to mine, and you must know, I speak from the heart. Please know, though, I worry deeply that, for once, checks and balances might fail. Am I a fool to brace for such a result? I think not. I agree entirely with Jefferson, but remain ready. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. That means through disagreement, as well.
Over the last nine years, I’ve lost some faith in our brothers and sisters. It would do me no good at this point to put my trust in the autopilot. It’s my nature.
Stepehn Pitt:
The founders never promised or even considered equality of economic position as a tenet of the Republic. Certainly corporations were present in their time and their abuses were manifest. Why the Massachusetts Bay Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company, the British East India Company were instrumental to the founding and formation of the colonies and were viewed with disdain for their single-minded emphasis on making money. The founders had no illusions about concentrations of economic power either. In their wisdom they did not proscribe corporations nor explicitly deny them rights. Jefferson did write: “I hope we shall… crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” (Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816), but made no move to circumscribe the public’s right to form these capitalistic engines of commerce. We might do well to have some confidence in the ability of the people to limit these oligarchies as Jefferson reminded us in a letter to an equally famous pen pal:
“No nation however powerful, any more than an individual, can
be unjust with impunity. Sooner or later, public opinion, an
instrument merely moral in the beginning, will find occasion
physically to inflict its sentences on the unjust… The lesson is useful to the weak as well as the strong.” (Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1804).
I’m sure corporate CEO’s believe sincerely in their patriotic perspective. I do too, but as an individual, with rights guaranteed, such as they are for one person, I can’t come close to the quantitative power now afforded Corporate. I feel the corporation has divorced itself from the notion of equality the founders championed and used their power and reach to obliterate what once was a simple truth: that all are equal. How does one accommodate a corporate state when the individual cannot possibly equal the power and reach of an entity that has unlimited power? How can the People control information that is already largely corporate controlled? By surrendering our Internet? By caving to a force that doesn’t recognize the difference between one and a consolidated many?
I’m glad the court correctly saw through the “less is more” argument as it relates to free speech.
What will happen next?
1. Corporations, particularly large corporations, will use their power to elect sympathetic representation to further their own interests. In many cases this can actually mean more regulation, which selectively creates higher barriers to entry for smaller competitors, thus protecting large corporate interests. I also expect to see more favorable tax treatment to big business.
2. Foreign interests will have an easier time using government to advance interests that are clearly contrary to those of the United States, through their control of corporations that operate in the US.
I won’t like either of these likely outcomes. Rather than blame the speech itself, how about placing blame on the expansive role we allow government to have over our lives?
If government cannot mandate ethanol production and crop subsidies, would ADM still even exist? Would small farmers have been able to keep their business? If government cannot mandate $1B new drug approval costs through the FDA, would we see more new drug innovations and lower drug prices? If government could not legalize fractional reserve lending, would hundreds of banks be going under at taxpayer expense while consumers themselves remain debt slaves?
Limit government. Not speech.
Also recommend you watch the documentary Food Inc.
Professor, how do you justify giving an entity the full rights of humans? How can these 5, who claim they are “originalists,” justify reading entity in the Constitution?
It seems to me you write a loose First Amendment analysis, but you shouldn’t even be on that rung of the ladder.
***
Leo says the internet is the great equalizer. Corporations are attempting to stifle that outlet…then what? I also find some of your statements elitist and patriarchal.
**
Good one:
Tio Wally
It’s time politicians cut the charades and don NASCAR-style jackets with their corporate sponsors’ logos on them.
Perhaps someone on the negative side could explain to me the rationale for depriving corporations with unlimited stores of cash from participating in the political process as distinguished from depriving individuals with similar assets from participating in the political process. I hope the distinction is not that corporations do not have emotions detached from reason since we have too much of that already in this Country.
Like Sandra Day O’Connor, Justice Kennedy will bear deep, well-deserved guilt over another quintessentially stupid decision delivered this morning.
Just how much was he paid? Because no one in their right mind-legal or not-would have sold their nation out as he so willfully did. That’s obvious to anyone but the scholars still stuck in a system of two parties. There’s only one party now. That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you.
This is war, Jon.
Mr. Olbermann is way over the top on this one by comparing this Supreme Court’s judgment to the Dred Scott decision. I could only stomach a few minutes of his hyperbolic Special Comment.
The last I knew there were still 3 branches of government and the electorate; now is the time for the other 2 branches and the electorate to do their jobs for our Republic/democracy.
Remember, regardless of the amount of money spent on campaigns, the electorate still makes the final decision and if voters fail to vote, then no form of regulation will preserve our democracy.
Isaac:
I wasn’t sure if you were addressing your post to me (John) and my earlier comment (above, timestamped 8:49pm), or the professor (Jonathan) whose blog this is?
Duh:
You can find the case, and a good summary, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad. Rereading that, I goofed when I said the opinion itself stated they were not ruling on the question. It was Chief Justice Waite in his memo to the reporter, where he said “we avoided meeting the constitutional question in the decision”. Since the Court’s ruling applies only to what they actual rule on, it is highly significant when they avoid an issue and do not rule on it.
RE John’s post: I think Isaac, Pitt and GSMAN need to RE-read it. John does NOT make the argument that corporations do have, or should have, the same rights as “actual human citizens.”
The discussions here are good. I would suggest that it is a shame that in the cause of defending the right of one film to be heard (that someone somewhere decided to silence) has resulted in the destruction of what remains of “democracy” in this country. THAT seems ridiculous in the extreme.
I do not know law but I hope that someone who does will find a way to counter this horrific development.
Jon: I’m not a lawyer. I am a patriot, willing to die outright for his country. I believe with all my heart that you are wrong. The old rules don’t apply when democracy has been compromised by totalitarianism.
Tell me, is isn’t so. I’ve read your logic path. It’s of another time. We have been overthrown by fascists.
Tell me, you understand.
We need emergency legislation now. Obama can’t help us: He’s just too placating and lost in his dream. Spine is what we need now. Courage. Raw courage. And that, he so sadly lacks. We need a revolutionary, not a mollifier.
This is war. How many times must it be repeated?
The president apparently wasn’t even abreast of the potential result of this ruling. Some chess player. We are running on patriotism now, plain and simple. He bails out banks. How about democracy? It’s not about money, stupid. It’s about democracy.
“Money doesn’t talk, it swears” (from a Bob Dylan song)
Over one hundred and fifty years ago the U. S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott Decision of 1856 held that slaves imported from Africa and their descendants had no rights that Federal Law need recognize. Rather, the Constitution protected the property rights of slave owners. Supreme Court Chief Roger Taney even argued that the words “All men are created” referred only to white men. Our forefather’s failure to recognize the full humanity of people with recognizable African ancestory led to a great Civil War.
Today [January 21, 2010], the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United V. Federal Election Commission that Corporations are now entitled to the Full Protection of the First Amendment that heretofore have been applied to human beings. What this means is that the wealthy stakeholders and their political cohorts can buy even more political influence and television advertising in an American political system awash with misinformation (half-truths, quarter-truths, and outright lies) supplied by corporate coffers. WIth this ruling, five members of the current Supreme Court have once again invoked a convenient legal fiction to violate their solemn oath of office to “ administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich…”. Instead of denying the personhood of human beings, this contemporary court is allowing individuals with entrenched wealth to be more equal than others. Neither our Declaration of Indepedence nor our Constitution was based upon the principle that “All Corporations are created equal with unalienable rights such as Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness.”
The reply to this foolish court ruling is simple. No one’s private property rights give that person the right to pollute the oceans, rivers and watersheds that all people must use. You certainly cannot dump the waste of your factory or outhouse into my wash basin and bathroom. Giving corporate interests such special advantages in our current society is like allowing a wealthy person the right to play a very loud loudspeaker whenever there is a public discussion in the park, in the TV room or even in the bedroom. There is no way to describe much of the political and advertising propaganda of corporate capitalism as anything but an infusion of economic, social, and political filth based on greed and sustained by ideological pride. Much of our corporate political efforts are thinly guised attempts to confuse the American people about energy, global warming, health and other important issues. There is nothing ‘conservative’ about the contemporary court majority’s politics or that of their ideological supporters. What they are conserving are bank accounts — bank accounts of those who have more than they ever earned or deserved at the expense of the public good.
Americans who believe that all men are indeed created equal must work to change this Court. Perhaps we need to change the Constituiton. In any case, the corporate greed of multinational corporations in our day can be just as evil as the corporate greed of slaveholders was in their day. If we cannot create a genuine democracy, we will find our special advantages and fortunes a gateway to disaster.
A Frenchman once said that “The law in its majesty forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges.” Today, it is time for human beings in these United States to once again to raise their voices and tear down the idols of wealth and their well-reasoned and even articulate defenses of what is mostly entrenched greed.
Lon Clay Hill, Jr.
Miramar, Florida.
The constitution gives free speech rights to individuals and not corporations, Democracy has ended as Democracy is based on individuals and not kings or queens or corporate oligarchy. To cast it in any other light is simply to proclaim that I want to be the side that seems to be winning. Will see.
Third Isaac.