I Just Came from the Opening Session of Move to Amend's Portland Convergence - This is Important.

[dballance]

29. One of the Points People Fail to Realize is the Amendment is Just the Beginning

j-b-h, I think you're missing the point by arguing something that isn't really there. No one is saying that corporations, non-profits and unions will be completely prohibited from donating money to political campaigns. Or that they'll be prohibited from continuing to do the business for which their corporate charter was issued. What they're saying is that our courts have made corporations equal to living, breathing humans and that's wrong. Money as speech didn't become part of law until the 1970's. Corporations and the press didn't have the rights of people at the inception of our republic and they operated just fine. It wasn't until 75 to 100 years after the Constitution was ratified that courts began granting corporations the rights of human people.

The freedom of the press clause can easily be read as not an inalienable human right of individuals but as limit on the government's power to suppress information flow. The first 10 Amendments are referred to as the "Bill of Rights" but they're amendments to the Constitution and, therefore, part of the Constitution. Notice that the amendment language doesn't refer to a "Bill of Rights" because it's not really a separate legal document from the Constitution since the amendments have been ratified. No one has said, nor have the courts ruled, that everything in the Bill of Rights is about the freedoms of human individuals. So one can read the freedom of the press clause with the same eye one might read the commerce clause. No one will argue that corporations cannot bring actions against the government when they feel that legislation violates the commerce clause so why would the freedom of the press clause be different? The freedom of speech clause is different. Corporations cannot speak as humans do because they do not have mouths and they are not corporeal. So the courts substituted money for a mouth for them many, many years after the Constitution and its original ten amendments were ratified.

Courts have long included radio, TV and some web sites in the broad category of "the press." Would I say that DU is part of the press. No, not really. It doesn't seem to have any of the traditional trappings of the press. It's a discussion board where individuals come to post their free speech. So while it may not be covered by the freedom of the press clause then I'd bet it could be covered by freedom of speech because suppressing DU would be limited individuals' right to free speech.

Would the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and other organizations like them be included? I don't see why not. They're 501c3 corporations so they're artificial entities. But again, no one is saying they won't be able to donate money or participate in political activities. What we want to do is be able to set some limits on corporations about what they can do and spend. As it is currently, corporations have money as free speech and the big multi-nationals have a hell of a lot more money than the ACLU and Planned parenthood. Would you be opposed to legislation limiting how much corporations can give to campaigns which would include the non-profit corporations? Right now that can't be done because money is free speech. So the large corporations and Super-PACs are free to drop hundreds of millions of dollars in elections. The ACLU, Planned Parenthood and unions don't have that kind of resources and they're not the problem. Limiting campaign contributions by corporations to just the several millions range rather than the unlimited range will help level the playing field.