The ruling does not give corporations a special class of rights

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

There have been about a hundred threads about incorporating and incorporation that suffer under the erroneous view that corporations are now granted a special class of political activity.

To argue against the SCOTUS decision intelligently it is best to know what it actually says or does.

Say you win the power-ball lottery tomorrow. You have $10 million. You decide to hire a video company to cut a TV ad saying that Michelle Bachman is a fucking loon and everyone should vote for her opponent. You then pay to place your ad in Bachman's district.

You can do that now, post-ruling.

A corporation can also do that. A non-profit can do that. Ironically, Osama Bin Laden can probably do that--not that he would. (He's probably okay with Bachman.)

Being a corporation does not help you any in that scenario, legally.

Of course, in the real world corporations have a lot of money and you do not. You are probably not going to win the power-ball. And that's a practical real world political problem.

But there is not a special new legal category of corporate spending. Any person or group can do the same... if they have the $$$.

So there is no specific benefit to incorporation in terms of ability to do candidate advocacy.

(Tweety was confused about this also. He seemed surprised to find out that anyone with the $$$ can now run their own specific campaign ads, and that being incorporated has no special status.)