Dumb question on the SCROTUS decision

[jgraz]

I've heard several liberal commentators making the following argument in support of the SCROTUS' Citizens United decision:

If the government can regulate GE's support of a candidate, what's to keep them from regulating Rachel Maddow's support of a candidate while she's on-air, hosting a television show for GE?

Now, nobody needs to convince me that the decision will have TERRIBLE results for this country, but how would you answer the above argument?

[panader0]

1. So how much can an individual donate

and how much can a corp donate? Doesn't the ruling make a corp the same as an individual?

[Catshrink]

4. If corporations are people, contributions should be limited to $2000.

yeah, like that will happen :rofl:

[jgraz]

7. This decision did not affect direct donations

Corporations still cannot donate directly to candidates. But now they can spend unlimited amounts of money to produce or buy media supporting or opposing a candidate.

The question is: how can you draw a line between that action and a corporation like GE putting out the Rachel Maddow show?

[AlinPA]

11. That's where nearly all the campaign money goes anyway. Now the corporations

will produce republican TV ads, radio ads, newspaper ads, door hangers, mailers. Look for every major company to hire such political ad makers and political pr people and staff them in a department called "Political Campaign Staff"

[jgraz]

13. Hey, we're in total agreement that this sucks horse balls.

What I'm trying to do is find a good answer to the liberal civil libertarians who support the decision. The fact that no one seems to have a decisive response is troubling.

[kudzu22]

16. Not only that, but

they can also produce ads on behalf of candidates they DON'T like, and make them deliberately offensive to voters.

[crispini]

22. Corporations are ALREADY using their influence on the media they control.

FOX is ALREADY putting out loads and loads of right-leaning media. MSNBC is a relative newcomer with their left-leaning slant. What you describe and what you fear is already happening today, even before this ruling.

[Tesha]

19. Corporations can still *NOT DONATE*. Individuals can donate $2300 for the primary...

...and $2300 for the general election.

In "independent expenditures", corporations and individuals may spend as
much of their money as they wish.

It's just that many corporations can afford much more spending than can
individuals.

Tesha

[sandnsea]

2. Rachel is a human being

The Constitution was written for human beings. A corporation isn't real. It's a financial entity to distribute investment income to investors, who are humans and could always support any candidate they want. They could also throw big fundraisers and run ads, just like George Soros has. That's completely different than a multi-billion dollar corporation kicking out $500 million for whatever they want.

[jgraz]

12. Yes, but all corporate actions are carried out by human beings.

Here's the scenario: a corporation hires a commentator, produces an infomercial and then pays to put it on every media outlet in the country. How is that substantially difference from what GE is doing with KO or Rachel?

What I'm trying to do is find a bright line that allows for opinion journalism (paid for by a corporation), but prohibits the scenario I just described.

[sandnsea]

18. A corporation is an it

not a he or she. It doesn't vote, can't run for office, can't go to prison, and can be completely dissolved on a whim. In fact, 2 rich people can get together and create a corporation for no other purpose than running massive campaign ads for a candidate, which they couldn't do as individuals. A human and a corporate entity are not the same.

Keith and Rachel report the news.

[jgraz]

20. I totally agree. But how do you answer the scenario I posed?

[sandnsea]

23. Why are you doing this? n/t

[jgraz]

24. Um... because this is an internet discussion board where people discuss issues?

Why are you here?

[sandnsea]

25. Your question has been answered, repeatedly

And yet you keep going on as if you don't understand the difference between an entity and an employee. I don't understand why.

You do understand that employees negotiate contracts and have labor rights and freedom of speech rights at work, right?

[jgraz]

26. Wow, where do you work?

Where I work, we do not have freedom of speech or labor rights. I can be fired at any time for any reason, and if my manager tells me to stop criticizing the company and I refuse, I can be fired for cause and denied unemployment benefits.

If a GE executive decides he doesn't like what Rachel is saying, he can fire her immediately. They may have to pay off her contract, but that won't put her back on the air. Look what happened to Norm MacDonald on Saturday Night Live. He was doing jokes about the OJ trial and an NBC exec was friends with OJ. Norm suddenly found himself out of a job. Hell, ABC did the same thing to Bill Maher.

So far, no one has answered the key question: how do you allow regulation of corporate "speech" while keeping shows like Countdown and Rachel Maddow safe? If we can't find a clear distinction, we won't have the civil libertarians on our side.

[sandnsea]

27. Not true

You have civil rights at work. Of course your legal civil rights are limited, but you can criticize your company if its doing something illegal, you have some whistleblower protection. You can also go to various govt agencies if they're violating labor laws and they can't fire you.

Regardless, you asked about Rachel and Keith. They have contracts and freedom of the press rights. Theoretically, they can say anything they want on the air and not be fired. Of course, they can do their best to find some other reason to force them out, or just not renew their contract. The contracts have clauses about inappropriate behavior as well, they fired Savage and Imus too, and rightly so. But that wasn't for reporting the news or criticizing the company, that was for making statements that were so offensive as to damage anyone associated with the show, and GE. That is a freedom of the press issue more than a pure free speech and democracy type issue.

And I suspect you know this, which is why I can't figure out what it is you're trying to accomplish here. Sometimes I think people are just bored or have the personality type that likes to agitate.

[jgraz]

28. Oh FFS, it has nothing to do with agitation

I've heard several people whom I respect, including Elliot Spitzer and Jonathan Turley, come out in support of this decision. I'm just repeating the argument that they've made.

I'd like them to be wrong, but I've yet to hear a clear, convincing argument that blows them out of the water.

[sandnsea]

30. They buy the corporation as person perhaps

You have to buy that first, for this ruling to make any sense, seems to me.

[jgraz]

32. Spitzer, especially, explicitly rejected that.

Hopefully he'll write an article explaining himself. For me, it's troubling to hear these people I respect come out for such a terrible (IMHO) decision.

[sandnsea]

37. Here's a possible explanation

I think it's crazy. But here it is. For myself, the media is the press and that freedom is completely different. There is just no way you lump their speech with Planned Parenthood, it is not the same. You can, however, end up with some problems with a for-profit GE and a non-profit Planned Parenthood, but in my mind that is easily corrected by law. One is for the public good, even if its religious, the other is to benefit the shareholders. A corporation didn't even have the right to go on into eternity, until this last century. They used to have to be dissolved on the death of the principle shareholders, or passed on to family. This personhood thing is way out of hand as to what it was even in the robber baron days.

Anyways, here's the reference to Spitzer's opinion.

The invalidated statute at issue here exempted media corporations -- such as Fox and MSNBC -- from these restrictions, since the Government obviously can't ban media figures from going on television and opining on elections (the way they do all other corporations). But as Eliot Spitzer noted when urging the Supreme Court to strike down this law (h/t David Sirota), what possible justification is there for allowing News Corp. and GE to say whatever the want about our elections while banning all other corporations (including non-profit advocacy groups) from doing so?

Quote:
As an elected official who often tangled with wealthy corporations, I recognize that there is a superficial appeal in the prospect of being able to silence their political voices. Of course that is precisely why the First Amendment protects them and why I find myself sympathetic to the First Amendment absolutists in this case. What distinguishes what Citizens United did and what Bill O'Reilly on Fox News -- Rachel Maddow on MSNBC -- does every day? Fox and MSNBC are corporations bombarding the airwaves with political rhetoric, from the right and left, that is as close to "electioneering communications" as anything I can imagine. The McCain-Feingold statute excluded "media companies" from its limitations, a distinction that makes no logical sense. The constitutionality of Citizens United's speech should have nothing to do with what else may or may not go on at the corporation it is part of.

http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/103539/the_citizens_united_decision/

[jgraz]

38. Thanks. I'll read this over when I get a chance.

[spanone]

3. so the law has been wrong for over 100 years...bullshit. rachel is a voter. GE will now get to vote

[jgraz]

8. Never said that. But many civil libertarians support this decision.

I'd like to find a way to explain how they're wrong.

And GE does not get to "vote". Let's try to keep focused on the actual ruling and not some weird dystopic vision of what we think the ruling is.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. Because Rachel Maddow is currently fair and balanced?

Um, commentators have always been allowed to be biased.

[jgraz]

9. Of course.

But how do you distinguish between Rachel Maddow and a pro-McCain commentator on a campaign infomercial produced by GE?

[BIGJKD]

6. Rachel Maddow is a member of the press!

Maddow is a member of the press, and the press is a specifically protected group in the Constitution.

[AlinPA]

10. Howdy & welcome!

[kudzu22]

17. But MSNBC is a corporation

What's the difference between a news corporation publishing an editorial endorsing a candidate and a regular corporation running an ad endorsing a candidate? What defines "the press"?

[jgraz]

21. This is the key question.

If someone can find a workable definition of "the press", we perhaps have some hope of digging out of this.

[hansberrym]

31. The dissent stumbled badly on that point, by attempting to limit "the press" to

some subset of the people, they came off as the bad guys.


From the Opinion of the Court:
6The dissent seeks to avoid this conclusion (and to turn a liability into an asset) by interpreting the Freedom of the Press Clause to refer to the institutional press (thus demonstrating, according to the dissent,that the Founders “did draw distinctions—explicit distinctions— between types of ‘speakers,’ or speech outlets or forms ”). Post, at 40 and n. 57. It is passing strange to interpret the phrase “the freedom ofspeech, or of the press” to mean, not everyone’s right to speak or pub-lish, but rather everyone’s right to speak or the institutional press’s right to publish. No one thought that is what it meant. Patriot Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary contains, under the word “press,” the follow-ing entry: “Liberty of the press, in civil policy, is the free right of publishing books, pamphlets, or papers without previous restraint; or the unre-strained right which every citizen enjoys of publishing his thoughts and opinions, subject only to punishment for publishing what is pernicious to morals or to the peace of the state.” 2 American Dictionary of theEnglish Language (1828) (reprinted 1970)


As I read it, the best arguement the dissent made was that the majority should not have overreached. The majority could simply have struck down regulations of not-for-profit corporations while leaving the restrictions on for profit corps in place.

[jgraz]

34. Thanks. That's exactly what I was worried about.

It will be very difficult to combat this ruling without coming up with some arbitrary definition of what "the press" is. I hope somebody smart can find a solution.

[DailyGrind51]

14. They already do! Ask the Dixie Chicks, Phil Donohue, and Bill Moyers.

There is nothing stopping a network or radio station from refusing to air any performer. Sinclair Broadcasting even stopped Ted Koppel from broadcasting the arrival of flag-draped coffins at Dover prior to the 2004 election.

[jgraz]

15. Personally, I'd like to find a way to prohibit that kind of bullshit

We own the airwaves, not the corporations. They should not be able to yank people off the air for political reasons.

[usregimechange]

29. SCROTUS? What's the "r" for?

[jgraz]

33. Supreme Court Republicans of the United States

But mostly, because it sounds like scrotum. :D

[leftstreet]

35. Well...

The problem with legal limits on speech is that the First Amend doesn't guarantee equal or balanced speech, it only guarantees the opportunity to speak.

Spitzer has spoken to that in the past, so has Turley I believe.

Spitzer had an interesting article back in September about this case:
http://www.slate.com/id/2227239/

[jgraz]

36. Thanks. I don't want to agree with Spitzer on this one, but I need to find a good reason.