re: #745 Gus 802

Yeah. Thank good that was overturned through Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. I am really happy now that corporations can play an unprecedented role in politics now and that legal precedent was ignored by the SCOTUS for the first time in history.

Are you suggesting that things were any different prior to the ruling? The only real difference I see is that now, corporations will be directly linked to the ads they fund, whereas in the past their sponsorship was often obscured through a convoluted chain of PACs and SIGs. I’d much prefer to see a political ad “Paid for by Monsanto” than one from the “Americans for Fairness Coalition” or some other such aggregator. Restrictions on corporate funding, just like contribution limits for individuals, never accomplished anything like their intended ends; they simply caused the same amount of money to flow through different pathways.

Also, the notion that corporations are to be treated as individuals forms the basis for laws holding corporations responsible and liable for things like faulty products, polluted land and water, and manslaughter. Be careful what you demand - assigning special status to corporations and removing their identity as individuals throws an awful lot of babies out with the bathwater.