Cyberpunk Review » Corporations are people, too (According to the US Supreme Court)

January 23, 2010

Corporations are people, too (According to the US Supreme Court)

Source: Cited where applicable.

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A ruling by the United States Supreme Court strikes down a law that has kept corporate dollars limited in politics. Now, the floodgates may have been opened for corporate influence… and corruption.

A historic moment in WTF? Depending on how you want to look at the ruling of the US Supreme Court on 21-Jan-2010, it could be either a major step twords the cyberpunk world you always wanted to (not) live in, or the beginning of the end of American democracy… maybe both. In a 5-4 split decision, the high court declared “unconstitutional” laws that kept corporations from using its own money to finance campaigns advertisements, stating that such laws were “a form of censorship.” Here are some of the details of the decision (Yahoo! News via Associated Press):

OVERTURNED

_A 63-year-old law, and two of its own decisions, that barred corporations and unions from spending money directly from their treasuries on ads that advocate electing or defeating candidates for president or Congress but are produced independently and not coordinated with the candidate’s campaign.

_The prohibition in the McCain-Feingold Act that since 2002 had barred issue-oriented ads paid for by corporations or unions 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election.

LEFT IN PLACE

_The century-old ban on donations by corporations from their treasuries directly to candidates.

_The ability of corporations, unions or individuals to set up political action committees that can contribute directly to candidates but can only accept voluntary contributions from employees, members and others and cannot use money directly from corporate or union treasuries.

_The McCain-Feingold provision that anyone spending money on political ads must disclose the names of contributors.

A PDF of the decision can be found here.

 

The gory details. The ruling came about due to a 2008 “documentary” called Hillary: The Move produced by a conservative “nonprofit” group called “Citizens United.” The group tried to use its own money, as opposed to money from its political committee, to have it distributed. But that ran against the Federal Election Commission’s rules. The group challenged the rules, and succeeded.

 

Fallout, and a double-edged sword? The ruling has already caused repercussions and speculations of America’s downfall. An international human rights group said that the ruling “threatens to further marginalize candidates without strong financial backing or extensive personal resources.” (Associated Press/San Francisco Chronicle SFGate). Slate calls the ruling misguided (money is speech, corporations are people), while Time Magazine’s David Von Drehle claims the ruling will give “more Americans (have) more access to more streams of political communication than ever before,” and that labor unions will be able to challenge corporate dollars with their own. USELESS FACT: Many labor unions have far less money than corporations. When money talks, whose voice do you think will be heard? Here’s a little clue from Signe Wilkinson:

As for fallout, Colorado’s Republicans are ready to file lawsuits to that state’s campaign limits removed. And in a case of that’s-gratitude-for-you, several CEOs have told Congress to stop begging for their corporate $$$.

 


 

From What is Cyberpunk?

Corporate control over society: Cyberpunk almost always has an ever powerful controlling entity that directs society. Most often this is represented as a corporation. Some times its simply an ever present singular government. A common theme for corporate control involves a futuristic dystopia, where the last traces of high civilization exist only in an enclosed and protected city, where civil liberties are removed under the guise of protecting humanity.

 

Comments

January 23, 2010

Rearden said:

so they can advertise for candidates seems pretty shady but in a world where people have ad blockers on there browsers and TiVo (or download) their TV shows maybe not as big a proplem as it would first seem

bencoder said:

The decision to magic corporations into legal people was made many years ago. Corporations are a product of government. Instead of discussing one aspect of that fact (that, as legal people, they can spend money on politicians), discuss and complain about the fact that corporations, as a legal entity separate from the individuals who make up that corporation, exist at all.

January 24, 2010

Dmitri said:

Very interesting indeed. In a society where Corporations are not legally defined, I imagine they’d act more as modern tribes than small dictatorships.

January 25, 2010

MadMax said:

In the emerging states of the new world order
corporations are better than people, and will outlive them…
corporations own the government - so you better watch it!-
give it up to the automatons…long live facism

Laythstag said:

I have noticed that articles are disappearing. I only see this:

January 23, 2010

Corporations are people, too (According to the US Supreme Court)
Updated January 24, 2010
This post has been filed under News as Cyberpunk by AkImbo.
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for this article and the sex bot article is already gone for me. Is there something going on that I don’t know about or is it just me?

January 26, 2010

0rw3ll said:

I have exactly the same problem here.

January 27, 2010

me said:

same here

MrPapillon said:

Houston, we have the same problem here.

January 28, 2010

Director of Predestination said:

Ditto

batfink68 said:

This site/host must have a virus eating into content because I can only read/find the headline.

January 29, 2010

Anonymous said:

Also odd these latest disappearing articles have been published by “AkImbo” where before new articles were all published by “Mr. Roboto”.

February 1, 2010

Skrýmir said:

Yeah someone should Contact Mr. Roboto or SFDM about this. The one about the Sex Robot disappeared altogether. I’ll try to get get ahold of one of them, if you guys can’t.

February 5, 2010

SolidFake said:

http://abstrusegoose.com/
buawahahahaahahaa :D

February 6, 2010

zeitzeuge said:

CENSORSHIP!!!!!

February 8, 2010

geekgrrl said:

I heard that a law clerk mislabeled The Supreme Court decision that, in fact, corporations do not have status of people, that is, the u.s. constitution does not extend the privacy law to corporations.

In fact, corporations are public.

February 11, 2010

Cyberpunk Review » Spammer gets boot for spamming. said (pingback):

[…] to clean up the review, but didn’t realize the tag-poisoning until I saw the source from the “Corporations-Are-People” piece. I was able to clean that story up, but deleted the sexbot story without checking the source. […]

[…] might have seen this coming. Seems like no sooner than the US Supreme Court gave corporations the right to flood our already fucked-up political system with mo… than one megacorp manages to get the plug pulled on a whistle blowing site. The site, Cryptome, was […]


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