I "get" that you don't "get" the idea underlying the First Amendment

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234. Fortunately, that is not the current (or future) state of the law.

I'm not saying that corporations and natural people should have the same first amendment rights. They shouldn't just as not all individuals have the same first amendment rights. Felons and minors both have restrictions on their first amendment rights that don't apply to other classes of speakers.

However, if corporations had no first amendment rights, the NAACP would have lost the Claiborne Hardware case and been subjected to damages for organizing an economic boycott for political purposes. The NY Times could have been fined and/or enjoined from publishing the Pentagon Papers. Any movie theater that is operated, for perfectly valid reasons, by a "corporation" would be unprotected if it presented a movie that contained non-obscene material that offended the sensibilities of local authorities. The examples are legion.

The problem with CU wasn't that it found that corporations are "persons" for the purposes of the first amendment. The problem was that the court refused to recognize the legitimate grounds for distinguishing the scope of the first amendment rights as applied to political speech by a corporation versus political speech by an individual.

And yes, the spending of money to faciliate speech is protected by the first amendment. Unless, of course, one is willing to accept the idea that the government cannot forbid you from writing and publishing a book, but can prohibit anyone from paying you for a copy or prohibit you from accepting any money for a copy.