Posted on 12/31/2011 11:23:42 AM PST by WOBBLY BOB
Duluth made history last week when it became the first city in the state to pass a resolution in support of a constitutional amendment that would essentially overturn a U.S. Supreme Court decision, namely Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission.
The court ruled in 2010 that corporations are entitled to the same constitutional rights as individual U.S. citizens. A majority of justices also concluded that political spending was a form of free speech and that corporations should be able to spend an unlimited sum of money to influence voters, without disclosing financial details of their activities.
Although Duluth is the first Minnesota city to come out against the ruling, other city councils across the nation have taken a similar stand. The Los Angeles City Council did so Dec. 6. And New York City is slated to follow suit soon, according to Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit dedicated to public advocacy.
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
When we said “free speech”, we didn’t mean for you.
Now go pay your taxes - we need raises.
That "Congress shall make no law" thing is so completely beyond their little statist comprehension abilities. "But if we don't make a law, how are we supposed to shut people up that oppose our wonderfulness? It's an outrage!" they fume.
This has been a problem since Lincoln. There was no founding supreme court decision giving corporations civil rights, just the interpretation of the official court reporter, who then asked the Chief Justice, who agreed and said that was what all the other justices thought.
The Lincoln appointed a subordinate to flesh out the idea, which was needed because states had increasingly sought to exploit national corporations that did some business in their state, which was fouling up the works of Lincoln’s industrialization.
Since then it has grown into a monster, becoming the most important element of business law, and impacting almost every bit of business litigation.
In the last congressional election, one company on the East Coast decided to at least tongue in cheek, run the company for public office. Funny, except in current law, it might be sort of legal. As would corporations adopting children, and far more personal human rights.
So the bottom line is that yes, corporation do need rights, but that these rights need to be split from the constitutional rights of people, not eliminated.
This has a natural split in the difference between individual rights and group or collective rights. An example of the latter being religious rights. A person cannot declare his own religious rights based on his own religion, if it is in contravention of the law. But a group of people can most certainly do so.
Correct, but the math is hard crowd have no concept of this. When the corporation get in a car and drives down to vote, then they should have civil rights. The robot, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5YMEwX2-88
Incorrect. The Constitution provides no minimum number of people that must adhere to a religion before it acquires religious rights. It also doesn't give some government agency or the courts the right to decide whether a person's religious beliefs are in compliance with some officially-recognized religion.
And rightly so.
It is telling that we can personhood for corporations but not human beings who are in the pre-born stage of life.
However, in practice, it does it all the time.
Well that's a start.
But the real problem is personal corporatehood.
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