I don't care if you are Republican or Democrat this court is preparing to change laws which have been in effect for over 100 years and give virtually unlimited power to corporations many of which have foreigners on their boards. It would allow Chinese board members to buy Congress. This will become the worst decision since Dred Scott.
Any pretense of "originalism" espoused by Justice Scalia will now be seen as a ridiculous lie.
Chief Justice Roberts is revealing his true identity as an internationalist determined to cede the real authority in America to international corporations.
This decision, if it goes the way most observers expect, should outrage every American and force them to demand and amendment to finally end corporate personhood once and for all and end the pretense that any court decision ever actually set such a ridiculous and evil precedent.

I notice that some folks are determined to turn everything into a simplitic Republican vs. Democrat issue when, in this case, nothing could be further from the truth.
So, let's just suppose legislation is proposed to change our trade relationship with China, Chinese people on the board of directors of a corporation can then target all opponents of that legislation with virtually unlimited funds and run 24/7 ads against them or for them if they are on the side preferred by the corporation.
And you think that is equivalent to some contributions going into the Obama campaign under less a than perfect manner?
I'd have to conclude that your partisanship clouds your ability to understand important news.

"Why should the gov't dictate free speech?"

Allowing unlimted direct contributions to candidates from corporations denies who free speech???
The CEO? No, he can still say anything he wants.
The board of directors?? No, they can still say anything they want.
The share holders??? No, they too can say whatever they want??

So Murphy, who is denied free speech???

I've got another question for you, what if the share holders disagree with the views held by the board??? Shouldn't they have a say in what the corporation "says"???
Do you honestly believe a corporation should have the same rights as an American citizen???
Can a corporation fight in our wars??
Can it be put in jail if it breaks the law??
Does it die??? or does it live many lifetimes thus having the ability to accumulate massive amounts of money??? Can it own others of its own kind??? Can you???
Lastly, do you have any idea of what the flimly basis for corporate personhood is actually based on???

The Ebelytroll is here.

The Eberlytroll.

"For some reason I'm reminded how the Obama campaign allowed people to donate using prepaid credit cards that had no means of identity verification."

How much money was involved, is that legal, what was done about it??
Personally, I have never heard about it before but if it happened it should have been investigated.

"Campaigns should be publicly financed."

I'm 100% for that.

Joe doesn't the fact that they incorporated protect the individuals from being sued?? So, a corporation could make a movie and slander and be sued for it but not the owners of the corporation. So, if they had made the movie but not as a corporation and run it then it would seem to me that would be a different thing because if they slandered Hilary Clinton they would be personally liable for it.
As it is they could make the movie as a corporation and they can even show it but just not so close to an election. That seems fair to me.

I think if you asked most citizens they would support it, especially if you explained why it is important. However, I think if you tried to get it passed in Congress you would hit a brick wall even though most individual Congressmen and Senator's number one complaint is their need to constantly be raising campaign funds.

TAxman, what has changed since the last ruling by the Court in regards to this issue which should justify the overturning of precedent??
There haven't been any new laws passed but Justice Roberts wanted this case to be examined, even going to the extent of inviting arguments before the session even begins. He has advocated for corporate personhood and their right to influence Congress his entire career and now as a SC Justice his bias is pretty obvious.
And Scalia....originalism....puhle
eeeez. Jefferson would roll over in his grave.

"I doubt we'll see public campaign financing in next century, if ever."

The only way I think we ever will is when/if our nation collapses under the weight of corporate greed. From the ashes they might realize the mistake that giving corporations personhood really was.

"You can't then go on a split hairs and say only some corporations should have free speech - like the Washington Post - but not others - like GM."

Sure you can, notice that the first amendment specifically says:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Notice it mentions speech, or of the press....indicating that they are not one and the same. GM is not "the press" and thus does not exercise that right. GM if it existed, when the Bill of Rights was written, would have very limited rights as did all corporations at the time. Corporations were not considered persons until late in the nineteenth century and even then it was due to a mistake by a clerk reading a headnote on a legal opinion written by a justice who had actually died and therefore could not clarify his meaning.

People should remember the Boston Tea Party and who's tea was thrown in Boston Harbor and why.
The people did not like the monopoly given to The Great East India Tea Company by the crown and rebelled against it. That's why Scalia, especially, will look like a liar if he finds for the corporation in this case.

""Until 1767, the East India Company paid an ad valorem tax of about 25% on tea that it imported into Great Britain.[6] Parliament laid additional taxes on tea sold for consumption in Britain. These high taxes, combined with the fact that tea imported into Holland was not taxed by the Dutch government, meant that Britons and British Americans could buy smuggled Dutch tea at much cheaper prices.[7] The biggest market for illicit tea was Englandby the 1760s the East India Company was losing 400,000 per year to smugglers in Great Britain[8]but Dutch tea was also smuggled into British America in significant quantities."

It was about taxation but you could also argue that it was about the monopoly The Great East India TEa Company had because all tea imported into the colonies had to come from Great Britain and all tea coming into Great Britain was imported by The EAst India Tea Company.
The colonies were forced to pay back the East India Tea Company for the tea they threw in Boston Harbor.

Actually, the colonists were angry that the East India Tea Company had been given a tax cut enabling them to undercut local merchants and smugglers.

"Tea exported from Great Britain was usually subject to an export tax, but Parliament agreed to exempt the company from that duty. Lord North again refused to repeal the remaining Townshend duty on tea, still devoted to its symbolic value. But even so, the exemption from export duties would allow the East India Company to sell the tea at rock-bottom prices, undercutting smugglers. American consumers would have enjoyed a windfall: a happy influx of cheap, high-quality British tea."

"What prompted the Boston Tea Party? Was it outrage over the tea tax? Or was it Parliament's ham-handed effort to rescue the East India Company, establishing a pernicious monopoly at the expense of colonial merchants? For many years, historians emphasized the monopoly argument. In 1917 Arthur Schlesinger Sr. insisted that complaints about the tax on tea were "the flowering, not the roots, of the tree that had been carefully planted and nourished by the beneficiaries of the existing business order."

More recent historiography gives greater weight to ideas and ideology, accepting complaints about the tea tax more or less at face value. While not ignoring the role of commercial interests, historians like Benjamin Labaree emphasize the importance of antitax thinking. "Opposition to the East India Company's tea plan was based almost entirely on the issue of the tax," Labaree wrote in his landmark study of the tea party. While smugglers helped organize the antitea campaign, monopoly concerns were too remote to energize most Americans.

The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. Clearly, resentment of the tea duty was central to the tea party. Like Lord North, colonial leaders understood that any move to accept the dutied tea would imply a similar acceptance of the right to impose those duties.""

I just don't look at issues as simplistically as Eberly. Little of history is actually understandable from brief explanations that oversimplify. Few of the teabaggers have any clue what the Boston Tea Party was really about.

And it is sort of relevant when discussing whether or not the founding fathers would like the idea of corporations having the same rights as citizens.

"The rich don't put their capital in to risk or go oversees where they do have basic rights with the protection, people lose jobs, government "has" to step in to fix the problems it essentially created."

Oh, in China they have so many more rights than they do here. What a complete, utter, total idiot.

Somoco gets screwed by the corporations every single day, his answer, "thank you sir, may I have another?"

"Corporations will squash you, and it's a goddamned good thing, and you are just tooooo stoooopid to realize it."

I don't hate "corporations" I used to own a corporation. I just don't think that huge corporations should have the same rights as citizens. Incorporation should have benefits to the stock holders, protections, etc. but not the ability to buy Congress! Do you not think we should draw the line somewhere?????
BTW, is John McCain also toooooo Stooopid to realize it????

"They couldn't complain. Similarly situated, no equal protection."

Nonsense. The shareholders could sue for equal protection. That is perhaps the lamest defense of corporate personhood I've ever read.

"However, I would REQUIRE that all contributors be fully identified and that information be freely available."

Then you would be changing what a corporation even is. What would stop a group from starting a corporation for the express purpose of making dishonest films about a candidate. That candidate could sue, buy only the corporation not the stock holders. The corporation would be, of course, penniless after making its attack films and thus the candidate wronly slandered would have no one to sue and the people behind the corporation would be immune from a law suit. All McCain Feingold does is prevent the corporation from running the ad thirty days before an election, those who say that requirement is restricting their first amendment rights are so disengenuous as to be fucking liars.
They could run any ad they want, as long as they are willing to be personally liable for slander if it is a pack of lies. John Roberts and the right wing POS on the SC are preparing to unleash the most dishonest advertising to American politics that will enable very rich and powerful corporations to fool millions of people who believe what they see on TV.
There is simply no honest defense of what these corporate shill justices are preparing to do.

"Shareholders would not be the targets of taxation, the corporation would."

Excuse me but the shareholders own the corporation. What the corporation pays the shareholder pays.

"I don't think people recognize what it would mean in terms of a power grab."

But corporations did not have "rights" as people when the Constitution was written, when the Bill of Rights was written and not until a misinterpretation of an 1886 Supreme Court Case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad.
So, really arguments that contend that corporations would lose "rights" is concern about "rights" they actually don't even legitimately have nor were intended to have by the authors of the Constitution.
If the founding fathers intended for corporations to have the same rights as persons they would have clearly said so. It they intended taht then corporations would have exercised those rights previous to 1886 and they didn't. The argument for corporate personhood is weak and is really just an example of the law being twisted by very rich people to serve their own purposes instead of the citizens of the country.

"Whatever Danni. Corporations operate only through people. If you want to see police and IRS agents be able to raid corporate offices for no reason, no warrant, no probable cause no nothing with impunity - that's your country."

Oh, the poor corporations. We have something we call laws, we can pass them to provide all the "rights" a corporation needs to have a fair marketplace but we still do not recognize them in the Constitution and when you can find them mentioned in the Constitution then let me know. Til then they do not have legitimate rights and are only benefiting from a misread headnote of a former SC justice who it is likely never intended it to imply corporate personhood though wealthy interests convinced dishonest justices to pretend that it did.
Probably the most dishonorable thing done in the SC since Dred Scott.