Re: What you can do.

Posted by Russell Gonnering on May 15, 2010; 6:18pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/What-you-can-do-tp5046283p5059691.html

Sarbajit-

This is the most eloquent defense I have seen for the reason we must strive to remain a nation governed by law and not by people.  While I enjoy some of the programming on PBS, I shudder to think of a time in which the press is controlled (funded) by the government and the PBS view the only information available.  Dissent would be virtually impossible.  While many would rejoice at the ability to shut up Glenn Beck, Woodward and Bernstein would never have existed, either.  

The viewpoint, recently given some traction by our politicians,  that we have "too much information available" and the unwashed are incapable of discerning what is true and what is not is the road to slavery.  While empowering the governing party to limit information  may look good now, after 2012 I would imagine dissent will again be extolled as the highest form of patriotism.

Too much information is not a problem for a democratic republic.  It means that cogent explanations of ideas, put forward in clear and convincing ways, are required of politicians.  Obfuscation is not the comfortable option it is when ideas are limited.

Russ#3

Russell Gonnering, MD, MMM, FACS, CPHQ

[hidden email]

www.emergenthealth.net

On May 15, 2010, at 12:55 PM, sarbajit roy wrote:

Oops a small clarification,

"2) In the instant judgement the majority partly upheld (confirmed) the decision of the lower court in appeal. The Supreme Court struck down the part where the lower court held that §441b was facially constitutional under McConnell.

On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 11:19 PM, sarbajit roy <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dear Robert

1) Disbanding corporates and handing power back to the people is commonly understood to be "communism".

2) In the instant judgement the majority simply upheld (confirmed) the decision of the lower court in appeal.

3) You are completely off the mark on the implications of the judgement. You should be grateful that you have a Court which is defending the ideals of your founding fathers. I have read the all versions of the judgements in isolation without being contaminated by what other people have written /commented . The majority said this

a) "Consequently, to hold for Citizens United on this argument, the Court would be required to revise the text of MCFL, sever BCRA's Wellstone Amendment, §441b(c)(6), and ignore the plain text of BCRA's Snowe-Jeffords Amendment, §441b(c)(2). If the Court decided to create a de minimis exception to MCFL or the Snowe-Jeffords Amendment, the result would be to allow for-profit corporate general treasury funds to be spent for independent expenditures that support candidates. There is no principled basis for doing this without rewriting Austin's holding that the Government can restrict corporate independent expenditures for political speech."

b) "We decline to adopt an interpretation that requires intricate case-by-case determinations to verify whether political speech is banned, especially if we are convinced that, in the end, this corporation has a constitutional right to speak on this subject."

c) "Yet, the FEC has created a regime that allows it to select what political speech is safe for public consumption by applying ambiguous tests. If parties want to avoid litigation and the possibility of civil and criminal penalties, they must either refrain from speaking or ask the FEC to issue an advisory opinion approving of the political speech in question. Government officials pore over each word of a text to see if, in their judgment, it accords with the 11 factor test they have promulgated. This is an unprecedented governmental intervention into the realm of speech."

d)  "Section 441b is a ban on corporate speech notwithstanding the fact that a PAC created by a corporation can still speak. See McConnell, 540 U. S., at 330-333 (opinion of KENNEDY, J.). A PAC is a separate association from the corporation. So the PAC exemption from §441b's expenditure ban, §441b(b)(2), does not allow corporations to speak. Even if a PAC could somehow allow a corporation to speak—and it does not—the option to form PACs does not alleviate the First Amendment problems with §441b. PACs are burdensome alternatives; they are expensive to administer and subject to extensive regulations."

e) "Section 441b's prohibition on corporate independent expenditures is thus a ban on speech. As a "restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign," that statute "necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached." Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 19 (1976) (per curiam). Were the Court to uphold these restrictions, the Government could repress speech by silencing certain voices at any of the various points in the speech process. See McConnell, supra, at 251 (opinion of SCALIA, J.) (Government could repress speech by "attacking all levels of the production and dissemination of ideas," for "effective public communication requires the speaker to make use of the services of others"). If §441b applied to individuals, no one would believe that it is merely a time, place, or manner restriction on speech. Its purpose and effect are to silence entities whose voices the Government deems to be suspect.
:

Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people. See Buckley, supra, at 14-15 ("In a republic where the people are sovereign, the ability of the citizenry to make informed choices among candidates for office is essential"). The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it. The First Amendment " `has its fullest and most urgent application' to speech uttered during a campaign for political office." Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Central Comm., 489 U. S. 214, 223 (1989) (quoting Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy, 401 U. S. 265, 272 (1971)); see Buckley, supra, at 14 ("Discussion of public issues and debate on the qualifications of candidates are integral to the operation of the system of government established by our Constitution").

For these reasons, political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it, whether by design or inadvertence.

f) "There is simply no support for the view that the First Amendment, as originally understood, would permit the suppression of political speech by media corporations. The Framers may not have anticipated modern business and media corporations. See McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, 514 U. S. 334, 360-361 (1995) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). Yet television networks and major newspapers owned by media corporations have become the most important means of mass communication in modern times. The First Amendment was certainly not understood to condone the suppression of political speech in society's most salient media. It was understood as a response to the repression of speech and the press that had existed in England and the heavy taxes on the press that were imposed in the colonies. See McConnell, 540 U. S., at 252-253 (opinion of SCALIA, J.); Grosjean, 297 U. S., at 245-248; Near, 283 U. S., at 713-714. The great debates between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists over our founding document were published and expressed in the most important means of mass communication of that era—newspapers owned by individuals. See McIntyre, 514 U. S., at 341-343; id., at 367 (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). At the founding, speech was open, comprehensive, and vital to society's definition of itself; there were no limits on the sources of speech and knowledge. See B. Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 5 (1967) ("Any number of people could join in such proliferating polemics, and rebuttals could come from all sides"); G. Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, p. 6 (1969) ("[I]t is not surprising that the intellectual sources of [the Americans'] Revolutionary thought were profuse and various"). The Framers may have been unaware of certain types of speakers or forms of communication, but that does not mean that those speakers and media are entitled to less First Amendment protection than those types of speakers and media that provided the means of communicating political ideas when the Bill of Rights was adopted."

g) "Some members of the public might consider Hillary to be insightful and instructive; some might find it to be neither high art nor a fair discussion on how to set the Nation's course; still others simply might suspend judgment on these points but decide to think more about issues and candidates. Those choices and assessments, however, are not for the Government to make. "The First Amendment underwrites the freedom to experiment and to create in the realm of thought and speech. Citizens must be free to use new forms, and new forums, for the expression of ideas. The civic discourse belongs to the people, and the Government may not prescribe the means used to conduct it." McConnell, supra, at 341 (opinion of KENNEDY, J.)."

Finally, the majority decision is a reasoned and sober legal exercise, whereas Justice Steven's dissent is a personalised rant against his brother judges.

Sarbajit

On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 10:16 AM, Robert J. Cordingley <[hidden email]> wrote:

Perhaps this helps:
http://movetoamend.org/learn-more
the source of the Justice Stevens quote.  BTW, in the face of declining investigative journalism in the US there has been some talk of government sponsored news media in much the same way PBS has some public funding but with a legal mandate to be independent.  You can look at the BBC News as another model.  Corporate Personhood may be a bigger problem [threat to our democracy].
Thanks
Robert

On 5/14/10 7:16 PM, Chris Feola wrote:

No problem, Robert-help me into the boat.

 

Who is press? Who isn’t? Who decides?

 

cjf

Christopher J. Feola
President, nextPression
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cjfeola

 

From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Robert J. Cordingley
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 5:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What you can do.

 

Actually Chris, I think you are also missing the boat by focusing on the technicalities of a legal argument most of us would have to pay someone to help us with.

So see this quote:

Justice Stevens, in dissent, was compelled to state the obvious:

. . . . corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their “personhood” often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.

Thanks
Robert

On 5/14/10 3:35 PM, Chris Feola wrote:

Actually, Sarbajit is quite on point. If you read the decision you will see

that one reason the law was struck down was it tried to get around its

obvious violation of the 1st Amendment by carving out an exemption for

"media" since the press is, largely, corporate. Overturning this decision

therefore leaves two largely unpalatable choices:

1. The government decides what Fox News can broadcast and The New York Times

can print, since corporations do not have a 1st Amendment rights.

2. The government decides who and what are "media" and therefore get 1st

Amendment rights.

Both seem to be somewhat outside the spirit of "Congress shall make no

law..."

But don't take my word for it.  Here's noted 1st Amendment lawyer Floyd

Abrams, who won the Pentagon Papers case for The New York Times:

"And my reaction is sort of a John McEnroe: You cannot be serious! We're

talking about the First Amendment here, and we're being told that an

extremely vituperative expression of disdain for a candidate for president

is criminal in America?"

"I think that two things are at work," Mr. Abrams says. "One is that there

are an awful lot of journalists that do not recognize that they work for

corporations. . . .

"A second is an ideological one. I think that there is a way of viewing this

decision which . . . looks not at whether the First Amendment was vindicated

but whether what is simply referred to as, quote, democracy, unquote, was

vindicated. My view is, we live in a world in which the word 'democracy' is

debatable . . . It is not a word which should determine interpretation of a

constitution and a Bill of Rights, which is at its core a legal document as

well as an affirming statement of individual freedom," he says. "Justice

Potter Stewart . . . warned against giving up the protections of the First

Amendment in the name of its values. . . . The values matter, the values are

real, but we protect the values by protecting the First Amendment."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704094304575029791336276632.ht

ml

cjf, recovering journalist

Christopher J. Feola

President, nextPression

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cjfeola

-----Original Message-----

From: friam-bounces@... [mailto:friam-bounces@...] On Behalf

Of Merle Lefkoff

Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 1:39 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What you can do.

merle lefkoff wrote:

Sarbajit misses the boat completely.  The reason that the government 

"may not suppress that speech altogether" is because under U.S. law 

corporations have the same rights as people.  This is the problem, 

because corporations are NOT by any stretch of the imagination a 

person.  Using the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to gain the 

legal financial takeover of the electoral process is a disaster for 

democracy.  What needs to be changed, however, is not the recent Supreme 

Court decision, but the legal definition of "corporation."

sarbajit roy wrote:

Dear Group,

As a non-US member I also find this interesting.

As an ordinary citizen who has personally argued and won some cases 

before the Supreme Court of my country (India) on Free Speech issues 

(one coincidentally involving large corporations and television 

broadcasting), I was actually quite impressed with the reasoning in 

the majority ratio handed down by your Supreme Court (although to be 

frank, I am not up to speed on the case law of your country).in 

"*Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission*". The message I got 

from the judgement is that the Court is adamant on ensuring that 

citizens are fully informed no matter what the source of information 

is so long as the mandatory disclaimers are in place and the bias is 

spelled out up front. "*/The Government may regulate corporate 

political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but 

it may not suppress that speech altogether/*." Heck, now Osama-BL Inc. 

has the right to buy air-time and tell you what he thinks of the 

Georges Bush,

I also find that the petition you signed is based on a limited and 

incorrect understanding of the judgement,  and is designed on the 

premise that "*you can get at least one half of the American public to 

sign anything if you word the question properly*".

It would be instructive to those interested to read the actual 

majority opinion summarised here

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZO.html

Just in passing, if some people imagine that a "Constitutional 

democracy" is a good thing, read this for an alternative view from one 

of the greatest philosophers of our age .. its brilliant in parts.  

http://www.mathaba.net/gci/theory/gb1.htm

Sarbajit

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Robert J. Cordingley 

<[hidden email] [hidden email]> wrote:

    Given the opining in this list, US members might find this site of

    interest:

    http://movetoamend.org/

    Perhaps a chance to actually do something?

    Thanks

    Robert

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org