Comment by gopher_space
7 months ago
> It never is a person. The Citizens United ruling determined that the people in the corporation have the right to free (political) speech, regardless of the coalition they are part of.
Oh that's right, this was part of the whole "money equals speech" plan to get around donation limits. I had forgotten how convoluted the thinking gets if you take every link in the chain at face value.
I find that I'll need to break most political arguments down to the "Who, what, where, why, and how" level if I want to get a grip on what's happening around me and how I'll be impacted. With Citizens United I started by trying to determine what rights I didn't have before the ruling.
> money equals speech
Another great and misleading quote.
> With Citizens United I started by trying to determine what rights I didn't have before the ruling.
That's an easy answer. You didn't have the right to make a movie about a politician with your friends while also forming a corporation so that, when the camera man you hired breaks his leg and sues you, you don't personally go broke.
Before Citizens United, a single (wealthy) individual could have funded a movie like that to try and turn an election. After Citizens United, collective political speech got easier.
After Citizens United, the amount if money spent on political campaigns (outside of the campaign, wink wink) has skyrocketed, that's true. However, the source of that money isn't billionaires, they were already able to use their wealth to influence politics (think Fox News/Murdoch). All that new.money is coming from smaller donations from more people.