prole

Yes, but the amount of money they spend in support of a candidate or issue during an election cycle should be limited. The only thing gagging here is your insistence that money equals speech. Limits on the amount an individual or corporation can spend in an election is the issue. Should there be any? If not, why should there be limits on contributing to a candidate directly or disclosure as to who contributed the money?

More terrible news:

Here's a gem for the ACLU, Tvash:

Here's part of a pretty decent piece on the case. This part suggests that the Court went much further than simply hearing and deciding on the case of the Hillary movie and stepped far into the realms of judicial activism (aka "making the world as you want it to be"):

than your opposition to this decision is schizophrenic, as that is ultimately what courts have to do: rule on the exact situation in front of them, not make the world the way they think it oughta be. they should have been allowed to play their suck-ass movie Wasn't there a dissenting opinion?

As has already been stated, this decision has everything to do with the corporate personhood and "money is speech" assumptions that underpin it. One could argue the finer legalities of slavery till the cows come home as long as one is willing to accept the premise that a human being can be considered property. Once one accepts the faulty foundation, all the other pieces fall logically into place. Once the ACLU is bound to the "corporations are people/money is speech" millstone, its support of the decision is practically a no-brainer, they're philosophically locked in. I absolutely do agree with the piece in its call to campaign finance reforms and public funding of campaigns. That's not really the point and including it at the end of a piece in favor of the decision is patently absurd as in reality such reforms are even less likely post-Court decision than they were before it. The idea that "ceilings aren't important" in a milieu where one dollar equals one decibel is again absurd. I don't have a problem with a transparent, accountable, democratically elected body placing limits on the amount of money a corporation can spend to place ads in newspapers or television commercials. That goes for the ILWU or for Chevron or for granny's coffee klatsch. Equalize the playing field, limit the amount of money that such entities can spend (yes folks, it would actually be fairly easy to define them) to $10,000 or a $100,000 per election cycle. Identify and eliminate the potential loopholes. Whoa, it could be done! Just as the disclosure requirement can be done. Not enough to buy a commercial? Make campaigns less expensive for candidates, as the piece suggests. Do I "support banning the anti-Hilary ad put out by a non-profit group and those like it"? No, I don't support banning the ad or others like it. I'm for putting limits on the amount of money that a corporation can spend in support of a politician or an issue in an election cycle. The Court decision is the opposite of that because it, like the ACLU, is institutionally blind to the issue of what and what shouldn't constitute an individual with full legal rights.

Whoop-whoop! The little red PR damage-control wagon is on the scene! What a bunch of gymnastical smokescreening basecovering bullshit. Love the limp conclusion the best: "well, our support for this decision will just push the liberals to work harder for public campaign finance laws." What a joke. Well, at least the ACLU can depend on FW's checks now.

WHO DAT?!

Teabagger Party, Tea Party Party, Tea Party, Tea Bag Party, WTF? I'm sure internet chatrooms are aflame.

[video:youtube]

DON'T PUT YOUR LABELS ON ME, MAN! Seriously though, most of what passes for "working class" culture is just lowest common denominator, corporate horseshit rather than genuine expressions of lived reality made by and for proletarians themselves. Just consider the devolution of hip-hop in the hands of corporate media: coopted, repackaged, dumbed down bullshit like Young Jeezy. While "who dat" has real roots in Louisiana working class culture, it's still fucking annoying and just because I'm a leftist doesn't mean I have to embrace it.

Mmmm no, still not getting it...

WHO DAT!?

...has got to be the most annoying catchphrase of the last ten years. Nothing like a few thousand mongoloid hydrocephalacs yelling "who dat" and vomiting on each other. Idiocracy is here a couple hundred years early.

Good Lord, how did you manage to get access to the internet from the :: Feudal Totalitarian Nightmare Death State :: that universal health-care ushered in there?

"But look, it works when I doodle it on the graph paper".

Not much of a "trajectory" really. [video:youtube]

Portraying the meltdown as a decontextualized, ideology-free alphabet soup is a great way to absolve the "greed is good", "unfettered economic man", "economic freedom uber alles" religion that lies at the heart of this disaster.

DON'T TREAD ON ME!!!

EXACTLY!

Do you ever tire of bearing Jay_B's chamber pot?

Pit bulls: end the breed.