Bernie to the rescue!

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

US Senator Bernie Sanders (I) Vermont introduces a constitutional amendment to strip corporations of right given personhood, and allow states to severely 'regulate' election spending.

Said Sanders: “There comes a time when an issue is so important that the only way to address it is by a constitutional amendment,” 

one of several sources.

Good idea? Bad? Campaign pledge signing time? That tactic worked with 'no new taxes'.

Bernie introducing the amendment to the senate

Comments

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

Limiting campaign spending is good.

The whole thing sounds great but I would love to read a well-reasoned argument against it because I feel like there could be some unintended consequences of such a measure.

However, as a constitutional amendment, it has no chance.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

As someone put so eloquently, "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one."

I think there's way too many abuses of corporate personhood so I hope that one way or another, an end is put to that nonsense.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I would pay to get such an execution on the table. Where do I sign? Can I offer a list of suggested first corporations?

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Normally, I'd say it's a dumb-as-fuck idea. Sanders' amendment does not, importantly, destroy corporate personhood (which is good, because personhood is how corporations can do things like enter contracts, be targeted by lawsuits, and pay taxes). Instead, it simply removes all of the constitutional rights from corporate persons, and emphasizes powers of regulation by the states and federal government.

The problem is that it wouldn't do fuckall. OK, so the corporation can no longer speak. Hey! Now GE has introduced a benefit for its employees to encourage them to get out there and make their voices heard. Any employee who donates $40 million or more to political campaigns will receive a full reimbursement of their donations, paid a month after the checks clear to the campaigns! Isn't that nice? Oh, and of course, that's personal speech, so it's just as unlimited as ever.

The real problem that people in this debate have is with the definition of money as speech. They just know they've already lost that point, so it becomes this debate over "corporate personhood" instead, despite the inevitable uselessness of such a tactic.

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

It is a stunt for sure.

I find this whole "corporations are being treated as people" backlash to be fundamentally frightening. Citizens United simply says that people who act in tandem (such as the owners of corporations) do not lose their rights [to free speech] while acting in tandem. It is not a horrible ruling.

Much more meaningful reform would be to allow corporate criminal liability to be passed on to the owners of corporations a la RICO.

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

I think the problem is not the idea that corporations have the right to free speech, but the idea that a donation of money to a political campaign is "speech" that must be protected under the 1st Amendment. That's not speech, it's an action.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

Would he consider a union to be a "corporation" for the purposes of this amendment? Or how about firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers that has total revenues of about 30 billion dollars? It's not a corporation - it's a partnership. And my local pharmacy employing three people is a corporation, should the proposed law apply to it too?

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

if you had read the amendment you would know the answer to that.

[kayjayuu.livejournal.com]

... are all the rational conservatives up this late at night? *boggles at the 1st level responses so far*

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

He should filibuster this ridiculous military detainment stuff too.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

And Colbert has revealed the purpose of his Super-PAC: to push through a referendum in South Carolina about whether corporations are people, or just people are people.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

he did?
cool beans.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

How often has trying to limit rights in the Bill of Rights worked out for us?

Thankfully, this amendment has absolutely no chance of getting any traction whatsoever. Which is good, because this is just a terrible idea across the board.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

What rights are limited by denial of corporate personhood?

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

In before Jeffy et al defend corporate personho..

Dang.

"Corporate personhood" is a strawman

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Statists are like the old lady who swallowed the fly. There's always got to be one more bigger thing we can swallow, more rights and freedoms to give up, that will finally rid us of that pesky fly. It's BS. It's not "corporate personhood" that is the problem; it is the "sovereign authority" of the State to violate property rights that is extended to corporate entities that "limits liability" for the damages to peoples property rights that these corporations cause. We don't need another damned raft of rights violations to fix these problems, Statists; we merely need to respect property rights that have been previously violated.

When speech is regulated people will resort to bullets.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

When you can tell your neighbor what he is allowed to think or how he is allowed to speak you've renounced any claim to civilization.

There is no human authority to grant collectives of people, in this case those collectives called "corporations," "super-rights." This much is true and supportable. Rights are not additive. Ten people do not have ten times as many rights as one. The problem is, the left wants to use the pretext of removing "super rights" from corporate entities to strip the legitimate owners of corporate enterprises of any property rights in them at all and achieve through a procedural back door, "public ownership," a flat contradiction in terms you understand, of the means of production.

You want to get rid of big, metastasized firms, get rid of the government support structure that enables them to profit at the expense of their smaller competition.

Agreed!

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

Damn good thing this isn't about speech.

Re: When speech is regulated people will resort to bullets.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

you forgot the lessons of the early 1900's

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That's great and all, but given how many of the sitting members of Congress are there on the basis of donations given by corporations, it's not got a yellow snowball's chance in Hell to pass.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

Precisely.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

No tax pledge, kill the corporation pledge....*shugs* both work to knock off incumbents and shake up the status quo

[whoasksfinds.livejournal.com]

because making things illegal makes them go away.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

No, but it damn well makes them illegal.