Portal Talk:Corporate Rights
Confused about opposition here
If this was a regular corporation, I could understand... but wasn't Citizens United a very politically minded, non-profit Political Action Committee? As such, wouldn't it be insensible to prevent them from using their funds to advocate for or against public opponents?
Again, if this was a corporation whose head just decided to use stockholder funds to pursue a political vendetta against a candidate or cause, I could understand the outrage... but this was a political group pursuing an agenda perfectly in line with its stated goals.
Take the flip side of this. If you don't allow such Political Action Committees to use their funds in the media like that for political purposes, even though they are obviously political groups, then you are potentially causing rights abuses:
1) You infringe on freedom of speech, and the ability of average Americans to have political impact. You prevent the impact of average Americans. Then, only the rich can have an effect in political elections, since you've just stopped the ability of average Americans to organize in groups (PACs) to have political impact in the media. You are saying they can use their money so long as it doesn't influence politics or government elections, and effectively silencing their right to speech.
2) By telling individuals what they can spend their money on, since individuals are behind the PACs, it is yet again stamping down the rights of the individuals. It's government control of the poor, to keep the rich in power. Who will it most be harming? Third parties and independents, who need mobilization to have a chance. It helps the primary parties and already-wealthy.
Therefore, where I disagree with the ruling is in treating both non-profit and for-profit groups the same. I see a distinct difference between letting a corporation use funds for political purposes (like, say, tobacco companies advertising in elections against anti-smoking candidates) and allowing a Political Action Committee that is non-profit to use funds for political advertising and which is simply organizing people for a common goal of opposing candidates in line with its ideology. In the case of PACs though, there's no confusion that the funds are to used for political purposes, unlike, say, Microsoft using them for campaign ads against opponents. At this point, I just don't see how one draws the line between Citizens United (a purely political group) creating media ads and Planned Parenthood, who ran a campaign ad in 2008 against McCain[1], has a long history of media advocacy, and is a corporation raking in billions of dollars off government subsidies alone[2]. --Jzyehoshua 05:29, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
