Corporate Personhood

About ten days ago, I captured this URL from the Instapundit.  It is to the Truth On The Market blog.  It was a short blurb on Corporate Personhood, with a link to a Doug Mataconis post at Outside the Beltway.  This issue today revolves around the US Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.  SCOTUS ruled that corporations and unions Could conduct political campaigning.

Here is one proposed Constitutional Amendment designed to reverse Citizens United:

Section 1.  The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited liability companies, or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests under the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state.
Section 2.  Such corporate and other private entities established under law are subject to regulation by the people through the legislative process so long as such regulations are consistent with the powers of Congress and the States and do not limit the freedom of the press.
Section 3.  Such corporate and other private entities shall be prohibited from making contributions or expenditures in any election of any candidate for public office or the vote upon any ballot measure submitted to the people.
Section 4.  Congress and the States shall have the power to regulate and set limits on all election contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own spending, and to authorize the establishment of political committees to receive, spend, and publicly disclose the sources of those contributions and expenditures.

Lets start with Section 4, where Congress "…shall have the power to regulate and set limits on all election contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own spending…".  Frankly, that is not just meddlesome, but over broad.  By that section Congress could mandate only Number 2 pencils for campaign staff.

Section 3 prohibits corporations, but not non-profits, from making political contributions.  Does that seem fair?  Are non-profits inherently more honest than publicly traded companies, the one's found to have been involved in fraud aside?  I am doubtful.  Non-profits are organized and run by humans to achieve the aims of those humans.

Section 2 tries to undo the damage in Section 1, where the parent company of The New York Times and The Boston Globe is stripped of it's rights.  No protection from warrentless searches.  No protection from eminent domain.  The government can walk in at any time and examine all your records.  At any time it wants, the Government can take your property without having to give fair compensation.  Of course the government would never do such things, right up to the time they do.  History is clear about that.

If you didn't like Citizens United, this is NOT the way to change things.

Regards  —  Cliff