[darth_avocado]

So when the corporations do something illegal why doesn’t this conduit go to jail or pay out of pocket for misconduct? Or is the said conduit only in play for all the convenient aspects of the job like firing people while taking millions in bonuses?

[aleksandrm]

That's why Citizens United is a sham. Corporations are NOT people. If they were, they would see more consequences. But no one ever does.

[jack_h]

That's not what CU held. The idea that corporations have legal personhood with some degree of rights is much, much older than Citizens United.

Citizens United was a non-profit corporation that created Hillary: The Movie which was critical of Hillary Clinton. They wanted to distribute it shortly before the 2008 primaries. The Federal Election Campaign Act prohibited corporations from using general funds for electioneering or speech that advocates for the election or defeat of a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of an election.

The Court held that the First Amendment prohibited the government from stopping an incorporated association from independently spending its own money for political advocacy of a candidate. To put it another way, if I can spend my money to advocate for or against a candidate, why can I not get together with some friends to pool our money and incorporate to do the same? If this had gone the other way would you be okay with a corporation being forbidden from releasing a video critical of Trump shortly before the 2024 election?

[xboxnolifes]

Nobody wants to be the first one who cant pool large sums of money to influence politics, but, yes, im okay with not being allowed to spend millions of dollars to influence our politics. Our society has too much wealth inequality for that to be a good idea.

[jaredklewis]

Can I spend money to influence voters?

Say that I hold the political that the US should provide more humanitarian aid to Gaza. If I raise a bunch of money for this cause, can I use that money to make movies about the poor conditions in Gaza? Can I buy a full page in the New York Times with information about the crisis in Gaza? Can I use the money to run ads advocating my position on Gaza? Can I use the money to buy ads that support candidates that share my position on this issue?

This is basically what super PACs do. Of course I don't want it so that you can deliver a bunch of gold bars to a senator in exchange for their vote on a bill, but was illegal before citizens united and remains illegal after.

For me, I don't see how you can reasonably enforce some rule against using "money to influence politics" without also having some central entity that gets to police everyone's political speech, and that scares me.

[johnnyanmac]

>For me, I don't see how you can reasonably enforce some rule against using "money to influence politics" without also having some central entity that gets to police everyone's political speech, and that scares me.

We already have those. It's exactly why AIPAC keeps slipping through all legal boundaries.

Regardless, the idea here on how Hawaii (and potentially other states) going around this is very simple: they can spend on elections, but that doesn't mean the state needs to give them all their incentives.

[infamouscow]

This would mean that all media companies in the US would be prevented from publishing anything that could be perceived as negative about any candidate running for elected office, regardless of factual basis and regardless of if it were satire.

A candidate would simply go to any circuit court judge and get an injunction against the media company. If the media company did not comply, the judge would find the officers in contempt. Marshals would then arrest and throw the companies officers in jail indefinitely until they complied.

That's what you're asking for. It's genuinely stupid. I say this as someone that would declare a national emergency on day 1 of being elected just to have the Air Force turn most media company HQs into smoldering craters.

[larksimian]

Yes, election coverage and endorsements and politically biased media did not exist before Citizens United. None of the dozens of democracies with political spending limits have political news coverage.

You really cracked this case wide open, Sherlock.

[vitally3643]

Slippery slope fallacies are not good foundations to make a reasoned argument on.

[xboxnolifes]

It doesn't have to, there are tons of restrictions that could be used to improve the status quo. Limiting how close to an election these things can be released. Limiting how much money an individual can contribute. Limiting how much money a single organization can spend. We have levers, we choose not to use them.

[danny_codes]

Except that's not how it was in 2004 before Citizens United. So.. yes, in your made up hypothetical it doesn't look good. But in reality, where we all live, it worked better than the current rules

[infamouscow]

Yes, had SCOTUS ruled differently in Citizens United, the scope of the ruling would have likely been narrowly focused.

Every time SCOTUS makes a ruling, there are thousands of extremely talented activist lawyers that immediate begin working on legal strategies to further expand a ruling in ways they believe are favorable to their political ends. You have to understand, there are lawyers who focus on specific justices and study the idiosyncrasies of their rulings/philosophy so they can reverse-engineer legal outcomes as they desire.

In United States v. Jones, Ginsburg and Thomas ruled that attaching a GPS tracker to a car and monitoring it was a Fourth Amendment search. Thomas believes physically attaching the device is a property trespass and constitutes a search. Ginsburg believed prolonged GPS surveillance violates a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Even though Ginsburg and Thomas are polar opposites, if you understand how they rule, you can still get the outcome you want with the right case.

[LearnYouALisp]

Aka all the benefits, none of the negs

why if YOU profit off a single copyright violation, it could be $250,000 and up to five years, but if you do it against millions of artists, and have a corporation (and money), it's just a few thousand per and you walk and keep doing business (never mind pretending the rest of it is 'fair use', when no human work is being done to produce the Fourier-combined ploduct and nothing new is added).

[raincom]

If a business is a two person shop, it is very easy to prove the culpability of a CEO. However, in a large corporation, it is very hard to prove the culpability of a CEO, as too many people are involved. That's why you see small business owners are easier to prosecute than CEOs of larger corporations.

[xboxnolifes]

Thats the excuse given, but it makes no sense. All you do is state "CEOs are culpable for the actions of the campany". Bam, problem solved.

[bluefirebrand]

I genuinely used to think that the reason CEOs and other executives made as much money as they did was because they were accepting the risk of steering a large company that might screw them

Boy was I wrong. They have zero risk and pure upside of being an executive. Oh it's a hard job, it's stressful?

So is mine and I get paid peanuts in comparison!

[raincom]

That requires a change in criminal law, with an exception of RICO. However, the DOJ will not use RICO against the elite class, as ex-prosecutors end up working for the same elite through law firms.

[eru]

That's a bit silly. Tough prosecutors and regulators get top jobs all the time. Being tough is actually a good way to raise your profile.

[raincom]

RICO statues are slapped against a specific set of people: Mafia. Without RICO, you can't just percolate up the culpability to the CEO without a solid proof. The issue here: laws, courts, how courts look at evidence. With RICO, the bar is lower.

In any large organization, there is a legal department, there is a chief legal office/General counsel. These guys train CEO enough how to pass down messages. When I was a salesman, my training team and my managers never told us to lie. However, the pressure tactics they use force sales people to lie. That's how things work.

Even if some assistant attorney/prosecutor wants to use RICO, he/she will be overruled in the same department.

[eru]

You are right about RICO.

Sorry, I was generalising a bit without making that explicit:

> However, the [authorities] will not [use some laws] against the elite class, as ex-prosecutors end up working for the same elite through law firms.

I meant that in practice the revolving door seems to reward tough stances more than it seems to punish them.

[nobodyandproud]

Size isn’t an excuse.

If there’s no real accountability then it’s a very real and negative problem.

[blitzar]

it is very hard to prove the culpability of a CEO for anything bad

it is very easy to prove to the CEO earned the credit for all things good

[raincom]

The issue is who should one prove the culpability to? As long as the board of directors agree that CEO earned the credit for all things good, he/she will get a fat bonus. For culpability, it is the jury/judge, where things are quite strict; otherwise, it is very easy to convict.

[ryandrake]

Yup, when the company succeeds or does something good, it's the CEO's excellent leadership. When the company fails or does something bad, the culpability gets spread vaguely over the entire company.

[Anonyneko]

In the post-Soviet world it's a fairly normal practice to have a "CEO on paper" who's only there to go to jail if things go wrong, and have a completely different person or people make all of the business decisions and handle deals and big customers. E.g. in one of my former workplaces this formal "CEO" was the bookkeeping guy who handled our salary payments and whatnot.

This practice is old enough that it was parodied in "The Golden Calf" in 1931...