What about the right to peacefully assemble and petition the Govt for a redress of grievences...
I didnt see a head count limit on that...
And for the record...Unions had that right previous to citizens united....all the ruling did was to put other groups on equal footing as the unions.
If a corp or union cant have freespeech rights...HOW CAN THE TEA PARTY?
game set match...find a different cause..
Inalienable constitutional rights don’t come form government, they are Inalienable because their God given rights. I don’t think they apply to a nonperson.
The phrase you are looking for is "natural person," BUT if you try to say it (or anything else) in court, since it is an administrative court, it "presumes" you are speaking as an individual human being in your corporate capacity simply because you are in the court.
Catch 22? Yes. petty-ante legalism bullshit? Yes. Top secret decoder ring knowledge of everyone in the legal system to keep you "legally" enslaved by depriving you of your natural rights and common law jurisdiction?
Yes.
What on earth are “Inalienable constitutional rights”?
In fact, unions and corporations do not have rights: the individuals who make them up, the members and shareholders, have rights that are not abrogated or abridged by having associated to from a union or corporation.
The correct approach to campaign finance reform is to require that political speech and publication by unions and corporations take place at the behest of the constituent members whose right is being exercised, the members and shareholders, not their theoretical fiduciaries, the union bosses or the management. (I say theoretical, as in this, the Era of Bad Stewards, fiduciaries act on their own behalf more often than on those they supposedly serve.)
Unions should not be able to expend money in support of a candidate or political position without a majority vote of the membership. Commercial corporations should not be able to expend money in support of a candidate or political position without a majority vote of the shareholders (as usual weighted by
number of shares held). That and some not-very-onerous reporting requirement for the amount and beneficiary of such expenditures is all that should be done.
So Corporations should be taxed as single entities and subject to legal action and regulation as single entities — yet they should be required to poll their millions of shareholders before they can engage in political speech ?
It’s bad enough that corporations can’t actually vote in elections and are thus denied representation in Congress. Denying them the ability to support candidates with political speech and campaign funding seems particularly churlish.
I also strongly advocate that those donations be completely transparent. . . so that if the Mormons contribute to a defense of marriage campaign, gays know who to harass.
</sarcasm>
"People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or some contrivance to raise prices." - Adam Smith, Wealth of NationsWhat else is a union but a bunch of "people of the same trade" who meet together explicitly for the purpose of conspiring against the public and contriving to raise prices?
So corporations should be required to put political contributions up for a vote of the shareholders? Is the internal workings of a corporation really the bailiwick of the government?
Furthermore, putting up the respecting of rights to a vote negates the entire idea of rights, for what is a corporation but a group of individuals who band together with a common interest? If the people can vote that groups of individuals are banned from participation in the political process, then the idea of a right dissolves into a privilege granted by the government. Putting rights up to a vote gets perilously close to pure democracy, something our founders resoundingly rejected for good reason.