Reply #16: I'm trying to understand the goal

[jberryhill]

The general impression of the CU decision seems to be "it allowed corporations to make unlimited donations to political campaigns".

The CU decision is bad, but if that is the level at which the badness is understood, then that is unfortunate.

It's the same deal as the "personhood" shibboleth in the abortion arena. Roe v. Wade is not premised on whether something is or is not a "person" at any particular time, and saying that fertilized eggs are "persons" at conception, doesn't change the reasoning or result of Roe v. Wade.

I'm trying to understand the voodoo logic by which someone thinks that reversing a LOT of First Amendment cases fought and won by New York Times Inc. (Pentagon papers) or the roster of pornographers like Hustler Inc. who have the incidental social benefit of establishing good case law, is somehow a good idea.

If corporations don't have First Amendment rights, then Nixon should have been able to stop the New York Times Inc. from publishing the Pentagon papers. Now, every time I mention that, someone will say, but that is "freedom of the press", since they apparently don't understand that what CU was doing was making a movie. Okay, fine, if you want to redefine "making a movie" as not falling within the First Amendment right of "freedom of the press", then I guess we can shut down Michael Moore's production company along with Robert Greenwald's.

It's the bumper-sticker depth of reasoning that eats at me, I guess. Elsewhere in this thread, another person states that this amendment wouldn't alter the CU decision, when that's what people were primarily upset about in the first place.

At bottom the CU decision did not remove caps on donations to campaigns. What it did do was to remove a 90 day-before-election restriction on contributions to non-campaign groups whose activities may be viewed as a contribution in kind toward assisting a campaign. It was a bad decision, but didn't do what the majority sentiment seems to think it did.