I can't see liking the idea.

I can see the justification for lifting the ban though, sicne the Supreme court isn't really supposed to be about decisions people like.

Sounds like they need to rush some legislation through congress to fix this in a way that will handle the problem constitutionally.

There reasoning was... valid, for why they did it.  However, it's shocking they actually did do it.

It's a horrible idea, but it's the supreme court actually doing it's job at the same time...

So Congress better get its buts in gear.  Though even then it might take an ammendment making this... ill timed to say the least.

You expect the fox to ban itself from the hen house? Yeah, that sounds likely. Maybe they will also pass legislation restricting lobbyists, and politicians ignoring campaign promises. Perhaps create a set of harsh punishments for any politician caught lying. These all seem equally likely.

Corporate personhood is one of the stupidest things ever "interpreted" into the constitution. It only exists because the president of a railway company switched jobs to become a court reporter and inserted his own opinion into the headnotes of a courtcase where a railroad company was complaining about the taxes it had to pay as a corporation. This was back in 188....6 I think. It was a ruse to begin with. It was a terrible terrible act of subversion of the courts by business interests that has forever changed how businesses are allowed to operate in the US.  And now the Supreme court is ruling that they shouldn't be infringing on the freedom of speech of these corporate "persons". It's a ridiculous and idiotic situation, and no legislation will be passed against it because the only people that have the power to do so are in the pockets of the people this ruling benefits. America is owned by business and this ruling is just making it easier and more obvious that business controls our government. And  nobody will care. This will make a news cycle and then disappear because we are all fat and happy and easily distracted.

The supreme court should know the full history behind corporate personhood, they can't possibly be ignorant of it, and why they continue to give it credence is beyond my comprehension. A precedent was set by nefarious means well over a century ago, and has been used advantageously ever since, building more and more precedents on the foundation of a scam. They are doing their job, but they are doing a piss poor job.

But we can still vote for the candidate we want right?

Yes, but realistically people want whatever is marketed to them. A candidate that is on every TV screen, and on every radio every ten minutes is going to beat the candidate that can only afford to give speeches at a town hall once a week, no matter how good that candidate is. We'd like to think we pick the candidate we want, and we do, but we pick them from a small pool that is decided by the people who have enough money to put them in the limelight.

Which is the same problem we faced before and after this decision.

Well, that's how McCain Feningold was made in the first place.

A) That's entirely irrelvent since they weren't revieiwing coporate personage, but whether or not the laws were consitutional, when considering corporate personage.  As such, though bad, it's the only decision that should of been made. (Though the timing was shit.)

B) All this counteracts is McCain Feingold... which in fact WAS made by these people to counter such things, so there is legislative will there.

Afterall once you get elected, there isn't much chance of you losing, by stopping other candidates from getting a lot of adds to counter your seniority sounds like a smart thing for these guys to do.

This supreme court ruling is taking us back to the age of.... 2002. (Not even since not all of it was rejected.)

I would just like to pull a quote from one of my favourite books, Freakonomics:

"Now picture two candidates, one intrinsically appealing and the other not so. The appealing candidate raises much more money and wins easily. But was it the money that one his votes, or was it his appeal that won the votes and the money?

That's a crucial question but a very hard one to answer. Voter appeal, after all, isn't easy to quantify. How can it be measured?

It can't, really - except in one special case. The key is to measure the candidate against... himself. That is, Candidate A today is likely to be similar to Candidate A in two or four years hence. The same could be said for Candidate B. If only Candidate A ran against Candidate B in two consecutive elections but in each case spent different amounts of money. Then, with the candidates' appeal more or less constant, we could measure the money's impact.

As it turns out, the same two candidates run against each other in consecutive elections all the time - indeed, in nearly a thousand U.S. congressional races since 1972. What do the numbers have to say about such cases?

Here's the surprise: the amount of money spent by candidates hardly matters at all. A winning candidate can cut his spending in half and lose only 1 percent of his vote. Meanwhile, a losing candidate who doubles his spending can shift the vote in his favour by only that same 1 percent. What really matters about a political candidate is not how much you spend; what matters is who you are."

On one hand I can see this as being fair and reasonable being that some politicians have spread lies about companies/industries for political gain; and I think that these companies have a right to be able to defend themselves. On the other hand, the politician who is best for a large wealthy corporation like Goldman Sachs is not necessarily the best politician for average individuals; and this gives those corporations amazing power to determine who is elected.