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[Mongrel]

Would it cover things to simply have an amendment that read exactly what you wanted: That no corporation shall be granted rights on an equal level as an individual and then enumerate the differences?

[Brentai]

We can even start small and say no corporation can be granted rights that are not available to individuals.

The current ruling is that organizations can contribute as much money as they feel like and, unless I'm misinformed, individuals cannot.

Argue that this is wrong, and then make it very, very, VERY public who disagrees with you.  See what kind of chord that strikes.

It's a minor blessing that at the end of the day, every voter is in that latter group.

[Thad]

Only protecting the rights of living human beings sounds like a terrible idea. It sounds weird to say it, but dead people have rights too - and so do some things which aren't human at all. Kittens, for example. A sufficiently narrow reading of "only" protecting the rights of "living human beings" could effectively put a stop to, among other things, great huge chunks of wildlife conservation efforts at a government level.

I don't know of anything in the Constitution about wildlife conservation.

Section 2 sounds really, really odd to me. It sounds wrong on multiple levels. For example: what constitutes an institution? Who has the authority to grant an institution the privilege of existence? Since when is existing ever a privilege?

Since it's an abstract entity we're talking about.

The idea that an abstract entity exists at the pleasure of the citizenry, and should be done away with as soon as it ceases to serve the people's needs, is not a new one in American politics.

to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Honestly, the more I read this thing, the more it sounds like a terrible phrasing of a suspiciously radical concept to begin with. I would imagine that 'A corporation is not a person and does not possess any of the rights which are otherwise exclusive to people" would rock the boat enough.

Well, for starters, you have to define "otherwise exclusive to people".  The bit I quoted specifically alluded to rights granted in the Constitution.

I've never heard anybody claim that corporations should have a right to vote in elections, for example.

No, only that they should decide them.

What we actually want is for corporations to not have certain rights and abilities that would otherwise be the sole domain of individual people and governments - but (I assume) we want some of those things to remain. The ability to sue and be sued, for example.

I'm not sure that qualifies as constitutional either.  Which is precisely the point -- yes, corporations are covered by laws, and yes, they behave as proxies for groups of people.  But that doesn't mean they deserve the rights of individual people.

I think you're confused about the specifics of the proposal -- it refers only to rights, and only to those in the Constitution.  There's an entire body of US law that's separate from the Constitution itself.

Or the ability to have money and property. (Physical, not intellectual.)

Now see, I'm about as pro-individual and anti-corporate a guy as you'll find here when it comes to the subject of copyrights, patents, and trademarks, but saying corporations shouldn't be able to have them at ALL is, to say the least, problematic.  I WOULD argue that corporate ownership should be weakened and individual ownership strengthened, but if corporations can't own ideas, well, they're going to stop investing in them.

[Burrito Al Pastor]

Woah. Okay, let me see here.

First: I concede my point about kittens. I forgot that the federal government doesn't have any animal cruelty laws.

I'm sticking to my guns on "wildlife conservation", though. Congress has the power to legislate in order to "provide for... the general welfare of the United States", and I would hate to try and justify, say, the national parks system with that clause if it instead read "the general welfare of the living people of the United States".

While we're at it, does anybody have any issue with the federal government being prohibited from protecting the rights of dead people?

Honestly, the more I read this thing, the more it sounds like a terrible phrasing of a suspiciously radical concept to begin with. I would imagine that 'A corporation is not a person and does not possess any of the rights which are otherwise exclusive to people" would rock the boat enough.

Well, for starters, you have to define "otherwise exclusive to people".  The bit I quoted specifically alluded to rights granted in the Constitution.

Good point. There's actually a fairly large category of abstract legally-recognized institutions which you'd also have to consider - non-profit organizations and organized religions spring to mind. But it would also be inadequate to simply list the rights they do have, for much the same reason that it's inadequate to list the rights that people have. You'd probably have to block out generalized chunks of rights - absence of free speech is probably the most important one there.

What we actually want is for corporations to not have certain rights and abilities that would otherwise be the sole domain of individual people and governments - but (I assume) we want some of those things to remain. The ability to sue and be sued, for example.

I'm not sure that qualifies as constitutional either.  Which is precisely the point -- yes, corporations are covered by laws, and yes, they behave as proxies for groups of people.  But that doesn't mean they deserve the rights of individual people.

I think you're confused about the specifics of the proposal -- it refers only to rights, and only to those in the Constitution.  There's an entire body of US law that's separate from the Constitution itself.

Or the ability to have money and property. (Physical, not intellectual.)

Now see, I'm about as pro-individual and anti-corporate a guy as you'll find here when it comes to the subject of copyrights, patents, and trademarks, but saying corporations shouldn't be able to have them at ALL is, to say the least, problematic.  I WOULD argue that corporate ownership should be weakened and individual ownership strengthened, but if corporations can't own ideas, well, they're going to stop investing in them.

Wait.

There's an entire body of US law that's separate from the Constitution itself.

The entire body of US law is permitted to exist by the Constitution, but the Constitution lays down parameters for what US law can legislate; thanks to the 10th amendment, US law that's separate from the Constitution is, by definition, unconstitutional. The constitution is at the top of the pyramid for all federal legislation.

I'm assuming that the ability of corporations to participate in legal cases falls within the purview of "general welfare". (I essentially read "provide for the general welfare" to mean "make things happen if they are A Good Thing.")

My suggestion that corporations should not be able to own IP was, I think based on the perhaps overly optimistic idea that, if corporations couldn't own IP, they'd just have to make sure that the individuals who owned that IP continued to be on their payroll and continued to be happy to grant that corporation the use of that IP. Creator's rights sort of fing.

To return to the original proposal: I think Section 1 and Section 2 are unnecessary at best and potentially damaging at worst. Section 3 has a good idea but the wording is much too specific; probably better to permit Congress to restrict the free speech of whatever broad category of institution we decide we're talking about. (I could see arguments for churches not being in that list, for example.) I have no particular issues with Section 4.

[TA]

Setting churches out as specially separate from other organizations in terms of speech restrictions is a violation of the Establishment clause.

[Burrito Al Pastor]

Not if you're doing it in a constitutional amendment. You can do anything you damn well please in a constitutional amendment. Like ban slavery!

[TA]

Not if the Constitutional amendment contradicts another part of the Constitution without repealing it.  Like how the 21st amendment had to specifically say "Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed." in it, not just say "Alcohol's legal now!".  A Constitutional amendment setting churches out special would need to repeal the Establishment Clause to be a valid amendment.

[Pacobird]

T BAP Animal Welfare Act

[Burrito Al Pastor]

What constitutes federal cruelty to animals?

There is no federal cruelty law—and technically, there cannot be. Animal cruelty is dealt with on the state level because the United States Constitution limits the areas in which Congress can pass federal laws applicable nationwide (Article 1, Section 8), and instructs that everything else is up to individual states to handle. However, there are some federal laws to regulate specific activities that affect animals. For example, the Animal Welfare Act regulates the sale, handling and transport of certain animals. Click here to learn more about the Animal Welfare Act.

The U.S. Congress’s broadest Constitutional power is over activities that impact or affect international and interstate commerce. Acts of animal cruelty typically occur in a fixed place, and probably cannot be interpreted to impact interstate commerce—not yet, anyway—so the federal government has no jurisdiction over them. The flip side of this is animal fighting ventures, which do sometimes involve movement between states. Therefore, because can it involve interstate commerce, there are federal laws addressing animal fighting and outlining penalties. One such law is 2007’s Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act.

http://www.aspca.org/fight-animal-cruelty/reporting-cruelty-faq.html#federalcruelty

I took that to mean that it isn't a federal offense to set a kitten on fire, as long as you don't do it across state lines.

[Pacobird]

I'm not sure how the ASPCA interprets the AWA as something other than a cruelty law but okay w/e.

[Thad]

So, okay.  Grassley and Baucus introduced a bloated jobs bill full of unrelated shit, people started bitching about it, and Reid introduced a barebones version in a matter of hours.  I've expressed previously that I think this is what they should have done with the healthcare bill instead of turning it into the clusterfuck it became, and he IS bitchslapping the guys responsible for that clusterfuck here.  So, good for him.

It's not going to get much done, but it'll probably pass, and it doesn't have any abortion bans in it.

MEANWHILE.  Dems to pass harder restrictions on corporate election financing, which would mainly require better disclosure -- a CEO would have to do the "I approve this message" bit on the end of a campaign ad, and corporations making campaign ads would be denied federal contracts.  It all sounds pretty good to me.  It'll get filibustered, but it's going to be a hard one for Fox News to spin.  Then again, Fox News's entire audience is made up, by definition, of people who subscribe to whatever political beliefs a corporation tells them to.

A thought that occurred to me: they're also proposing a ban on campaign donations from foreign corporations.  Now, that would be a great idea under sane conditions.  However, the entire reason for pushing a bill in the first place is that, according to current interpretation of law, corporations are people and money is speech.  I disagree, strongly, with both those premises, but they're the law now, barring a constitutional amendment or a new ruling by a new Supreme Court.

So you can see where I'm going with this.  If corporations are people and campaign donations are speech, then a law that says foreign corporations aren't entitled to make campaign donations says that foreign people aren't entitled to free speech.  That probably sounds a little paranoid, and I hope I'm way off-base with it, but certainly there's a recent trend in claiming the Constitution doesn't apply to foreign nationals (as Colbert put it the other night, the Declaration of Independence says "All men are created equal*   * (American citizens only)").

Anyway.  That's the kind of shit I think about.

And I would much rather drink beer and play Dragon Age than think about that kind of shit.  Which is why I haven't popped in to the Healthcare thread in a month or so.

Let's hunt some Orc.

[Büge]

YYYYES!

[Thad]

First: I concede my point about kittens. I forgot that the federal government doesn't have any animal cruelty laws.

No, the CONSTITUTION doesn't have any animal cruelty laws.

I'm sticking to my guns on "wildlife conservation", though. Congress has the power to legislate in order to "provide for... the general welfare of the United States", and I would hate to try and justify, say, the national parks system with that clause if it instead read "the general welfare of the living people of the United States".

While we're at it, does anybody have any issue with the federal government being prohibited from protecting the rights of dead people?

[...]

Wait.

There's an entire body of US law that's separate from the Constitution itself.

The entire body of US law is permitted to exist by the Constitution, but the Constitution lays down parameters for what US law can legislate; thanks to the 10th amendment, US law that's separate from the Constitution is, by definition, unconstitutional. The constitution is at the top of the pyramid for all federal legislation.

I think we're simply dealing with problems of nomenclature here.  My "separate from" is the same as your "permitted to exist by".  Things like animal cruelty laws and corporate rights fall under that heading, whatever we want to call it.

Good point. There's actually a fairly large category of abstract legally-recognized institutions which you'd also have to consider - non-profit organizations and organized religions spring to mind. But it would also be inadequate to simply list the rights they do have, for much the same reason that it's inadequate to list the rights that people have. You'd probably have to block out generalized chunks of rights - absence of free speech is probably the most important one there.

I'm not sure I agree.  I think the rights of institutions SHOULD be defined narrowly.

To return to the original proposal: I think Section 1 and Section 2 are unnecessary at best and potentially damaging at worst. Section 3 has a good idea but the wording is much too specific; probably better to permit Congress to restrict the free speech of whatever broad category of institution we decide we're talking about. (I could see arguments for churches not being in that list, for example.) I have no particular issues with Section 4.

Let me start by re-quoting the thing so I can keep what we're talking about straight.

SECTION 1. The U.S. Constitution protects only the rights of living human beings.

SECTION 2. Corporations and other institutions granted the privilege to exist shall be subordinate to any and all laws enacted by citizens and their elected governments.

SECTION 3. Corporations and other for-profit institutions are prohibited from attempting to influence the outcome of elections, legislation or government policy through the use of aggregate resources or by rewarding or repaying employees or directors to exert such influence.

SECTION 4. Congress shall have power to implement this article by appropriate legislation.

Okay.  Take 1 and 2 out and it's toothless.  Firstly, the Supreme Court has already made the absurd argument that corporations DON'T influence legislation.  Secondly, without explicitly stating that corporations are not protected by the Constitution, you CAN'T say corporations are prohibited from attempting to influence the outcome of elections.  Because if a corporation has the same rights as a human being, it has the right to attempt to influence the outcome of elections.

Corporations should not be subject to constitutional protections.  Saying corporations have a right to own guns or not be forced to quarter troops is perfectly reasonable.  But that's entirely different from saying they're covered by the Second and Third Amendment.

There's nothing wrong with granting corporations some of the same rights granted to human beings in the Constitution.  That is different from saying they are PROTECTED by the Constitution.  Any privileges (and restrictions) on corporations should be covered by federal and state law.  They shouldn't require a constitutional amendment to change or remove.

So that covers section 1.  As for section 2, what this means is that if a corporation's rights, as granted by the federal government, come into conflict with an individual's rights, as granted by the Constitution, the individual wins, period.

I suppose where I can see that getting dicey is in the case that the corporate outlet is a news organization, and therefore explicitly covered by the freedom of the press in #1.  In that case, for example, if a news agency violated an individual's right to privacy (which is generally believed to be covered under #9), there could be a compelling journalistic reason to do so.  Or it could just be a hit piece.  That would be up to the courts to decide on a case-by-case basis.

[Catloaf]

While listening to NPR, I heard that one of the Supreme Court Justices argued that spending money was conduct rather than speech when concerning giving money to terrorist organizations.

This contradicts the decision on which this thread is based.  I really want to know who it was who said that.  Because it potentially was an act of blatant and unforgivable hypocrisy.  Although I suspect it was said by one of the 4 sane ones.