Proposed Law To Ban Corporations From Political Activity

[timzi]

Because allowing corporations to have political influence is against our best interests, the following should be passed into law:

"WE, THE PEOPLE, HEREBY BAN BUSINESSES FROM ALL FORMS OF POLITICAL ACTIVITY, INCLUDING LOBBYING, CONTRIBUTIONS AND ADVERTISING."

It not only doesn't have 1900 pages, it doesn't even have 19 words......

[Bitwit1234]

1. Did anyone see this

Some faith based business are lobbying congress to approve a health care plan. That's a switch. But then other than the Catholic Church, we do have a lot of faith organizations that put the interest of the poor and needy first.

[ixion]

2. I would support such a law whole-heartedly

and would go further to say that the only groups who can petition congress are groups of individual citizens.

[timzi]

3. There Is Already A Law On The Books?

Check this out....lifted from a Thom Hartmann article:

..... take Teddy Roosevelt's advice that, "We must drive the special interests out of politics. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being. There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains." Progressives pushed hard, and in 1907 a law was passed (still on the books) making it illegal for corporations to give money to politicians. It needs to be expanded.


http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0618-03.htm

[LiberalFighter]

4. It needs to be expanded to restrict how corporations can form PACs.

That is how corporations get around the restriction.

[liberal_at_heart]

20. great Teddy Roosevelt quote, I completely agree

I am all for driving special interests out of politics.

[cali]

5. And it's blatantly unconstitutional, champ.

[timzi]

6. The Law Is What The Government Says It Is, "Sport"

[cali]

12. uh, no, but never mind.

[StarfarerBill]

7. Good point.

First we abolish all laws giving for-profit corporations the status of personhood and thus the rights and privileges of a citizen, then we completely eliminate their participation/interference in politics.

[Tesha]

8. You say this like you know.

You don't.

I've listened to quite-knowledgeable constitutional scholars (law school
professors, actual litigators, the legal director of the ACLU, etc.) debate
this and it turns out that *NOBODY KNOWS FOR SURE* until it's litigated.

Tesha

[starroute]

9. This is why corporations have corporate charters

You can't just declare yourself a corporation -- you have to file and get approved. Corporations are afforded special rights by the government in return for theoretically serving some public need. The government can change the terms of the contract any time it wants or could even stop chartering corporations entirely.

This is not about free speech or equal rights. Corporations exist through the will of the people and the people have the ultimate say-so. Basically, they're our bitches, and we need to start enforcing that point.

[anonymous171]

15. YES YES YES. They have no rights. They are slaves to society.

[liberal_at_heart]

13. only because corporations have been awarded personhood

What is the main purpose of a corporation? To make profit. Why would we want an entity whose main purpose is to make profit to be involved in our political process? Why is healthcare a for profit industry? Their main objective is to make profit. How do they do that? By denying people healthcare. We need to get back to giving real "persons" constitutional rights not corporations that have been awarded "personhood".

[rd_kent]

16. How about tell him why instead of insulting him?

[anonymous171]

18. Corporations should have no rights. nt

[Raineyb]

27. All that has to be done is eliminate the "rights" to unnatural persons

Right now we're giving the corporations more rights than actual people and if we don't do something we won't have a democratic republic for much longer assuming we haven't lost it already.

Corporations were NEVER supposed to have the same rights as natural persons.

[onenote]

10. let's start with some definitions: what is a "business"

And then we can move to the Constitution, which this law blatantly would violate.

The constitution, not just laws, gives corporations the right to engage in speech.

By the way, if a newspaper is a "business" that does that mean it can't run an editorial supporting a candidate because that would be 'political activity'?

[undergroundpanther]

11. yeah!!!!

Separation of church, corporations and the state.

I would add if someone has ties to executive positions in corporations and demonstrates any favor to corporations they should not be allowed to be a member of congress etc.Because of their ties they blur corporate interests with state business by default.Also campaigns need to be 100% public funded.No more wasting of time and effort pandering for "gifts", donations or fund raising.Each candidate gets a set amount to run and it is the same for each candidate,and a set amount of free air time the same amount for each candidate.Than the rich will have no advantage of privilege or through whom they know.

Imagine a real working class congress,a president without their nose up some corporate pigs ass.

[SoCalDem]

14. SCOTUS already declared corporations to be "persons"

with the same rights as real people:(

That's what started us down this slippery slope:(

[NoPasaran]

17. So small businesses

So small businesses in a town would be banned from lobbying against giving WalMart tax incentives to move in?

Too bad I could only unrec this thread once.

[anonymous171]

19. Small businessmen and the people who support those small businesses could.

And anyways, why would a town give Walmart a tax incentive if Walmart was banned from buying off politicians? And besides, not all small businesses are corporations. There are also partnerships and sole proprietorships.

[liberal_at_heart]

21. exactly

The way it is now the small business special interests don't have a chance anyway because they don't have as much money to lobby Congress as the big corporations anyway. So, Walmart out lobbies the small business and gets the tax break to move into town anyway. It already doesn't work. They system is already broken. The small businesses already can't effectively lobby. They don't have the money to.

[NoPasaran]

22. I'm not the genius who drafted this "proposed law"

But it seems to me that banning businesses from political activity would include small businesses as well. (Maybe it would take more than nineteen words to spell that out?)

Why would a town give WalMart a tax incentive to move in? They could do it on the assumption that increased retail sales would drive up sales tax receipts at the expense of the neighboring small towns. That could be a very sane reason for making a deal on property taxes without politicians being "bought off".

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. Unfortunately, the people who would have to pass that law are on the payroll.

[Echo In Light]

29. "Doh!"

[truedelphi]

24. It has my vote.

Not that my vote has ever meant that much.

[timzi]

25. The Law Is A Living Body Of Work. It Can Always Be Changed & Improved Upon.

[pleah]

26. K&R

[Echo In Light]

28. Error: you can only recommend threads which were started in the past 24 hours