Outcries against the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, extending corporations' 1st Amendment rights, point to many advantages giving corporations the edge over natural persons: "Limited liability" protects company owners from personal responsibility for business debts; and corporations are virtually immortal -- a big advantage. Mostly, though, critics point out the obvious: that a corporation's resources -- Exxon Mobil earns $1,300 per second -- typically dwarf those of ordinary mortals.
But whatever one's stand on "free speech rights" for corporations, what seems inarguable is that once the Court -- notably in its 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision -- began conflating spending and speech corporations and the wealthiest among us have been the big winners. Their vast resources enable them to morph into ear-shattering bullhorns drowning out regular citizens.
And, from this thought, I'm compelled to ask the "tree falling in the forest" question: Do I still have free speech if no one even knows I'm speaking because a tiny minority of "corporate voices" can produce a cacophony so loud that it cancels out the sound of mine?
Put another way, without any recognition of a right to be heard, does our 1st Amendment lose its power to protect the interchange of ideas -- foundational to democracy -- and permit instead the transformation of public discourse into a one-way gusher from the most powerful?
Earlier Courts took this danger seriously. In 1969, for example, in a decision written by moderate justice Byron White, the Supreme Court noted in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC that: "It is the purpose of the 1st Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market..."
To me -- and, I believe, our Founders -- democracy depends, moreover, on citizens' right not just to be heard but a corollary, a right to hear diverse points of view necessary to make informed choices. In 1787 Thomas Jefferson wrote that "[T]he basis of our governments...[is] the opinion of the people..." and stressed therefore that we must "give them full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, & to contrive those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people..."
Jefferson believed so strongly in the importance of a citizenry informed by diverse views that he continued: "[I]f it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them."
Today, remaining true to Jefferson's insight, many Americans appropriately assail China and other totalitarian regimes for denying precisely such freedom of access to information.
If, in our Founders' vision, a Republic depended on the capacity of educated citizens for reasoned consideration over public matters, then surely "spending as speech" is a body blow to our Republic.
And there's more to weigh here, for just as corporations are not natural persons, neither are they, nor can they be, citizens.
By their legal structure, corporations have no loyalty to our country. Between 2009 and 2011, for example, thirty-five big U.S.-based multinational companies, including Wal-Mart Stores, International Paper Co., and Honeywell International Inc., added jobs much faster than others. But nearly three-fourths were overseas, noted the Wall Street Journal last spring. Additionally, "at least 60 percent" of U.S. corporate cash stockpiles are now held abroad.
Corporations' loyalty is not to the American worker or to the broader community but to shareholders, wherever they be.
So of course corporations cannot pledge allegiance to the United States of America. With the exception of the several hundred firms now incorporated as "Benefit Corporations," legally obligated to serve the community's wellbeing, corporations' charters commit them to the opposite: to narrow self-seeking.
Thus, while most Americans recoil at the idea of "corporate personhood" because of the obvious power corporations enjoy compared to living-breathing mortals, just as important may be their differing responsibilities. And, I don't mean only the obvious, that citizens but not corporations are obliged to vote and required to serve on a jury and respond to a military draft. I mean something broader: Our Founders envisioned a Republic of citizens committed to, and capable, of participating in self-government.
They emphasized that such self-government could only work as we humans, flawed as we are, cultivate certain Republican "virtues" -- especially the capacity to consider not merely one's own personal gain but to protect democracy itself.
They grasped that self-government could only survive as long as we citizens --in step with the Founders' wisdom in creating a federal structure of countervailing powers -- work to keep concentrated power in check. Jefferson put the danger colorfully: "If once they [citizens] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves."
Thus, what the Supreme Court betrays in its 2010 Citizens United's decision, and previous rulings affording corporations personhood rights, is our Founders' concept of citizenship, and thus democratic self-government itself.
Surely, given today's crises from poverty to climate chaos, we can't wait for a constitutional amendment to put corporations in their place. We must build toward that goal, I agree, but we must work for change we can effect now.
As citizens We have power to begin to check the political power of corporations -- holding elected officials accountable for requiring transparency regarding a corporation's political spending by passing the DISCLOSE Act and the Shareholder Protection Act. We can vote for those committed to creating a system of citizen and/or public-funded elections so that candidates can win public office without depending on corporate coffers.
For our rights as citizens to hear diverse views, we can also call for a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, in place from 1949 to 1987, that obliged those holding licenses to public airwaves to "operate in the public interest and to afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of issues of public importance."
In so doing, we will be reviving the very best in the never-finished journey of our Republic. Claiming our first responsibility as citizens seeking the common good, we can refuse to allow our voices to be drowned out by private entities seeking only the corporate good.
Follow Frances Moore Lappe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/fmlappe
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perfor m noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
The Supreme Court said corporations are individual (?) persons?
If a Corporation is made up of individual people does that mean all the persons making up the corporation should agree as to how the corporate money should be given to individuals running for office--president or congress or senate?
https://www.facebook.com/michael.grove.98/posts/482709681741741?notif_t=like
Corporations do NOT have the same accountability as people. If the actions of a corporation result in death, their penalty is a fine not imprisonment because those actual people making the corporate decisions that result in harm being done to REAL people by corporations make frackin sure they have plenty of legal cover for their arses.
Without equal responsibility or accountability, there is nothing "equal" about the equal right of corporations to do anything.
One solution, since the Stup*d Court made this decision, and if it insists on upholding it in future cases, is for Congress to make the highest ranking, highest paid people in a corporation personally criminally liable for criminal conduct of the corporation, including murder by gross indifference to the consquences of corporation actions.
Ca$h is a $uper $tereo $urround $ound $ystem that drows out the individual voices of "we, the people".
A corporation can no vote, it is not a citizen, it does not have the same rights as I do, and if money is speech then speech is never free.