More on Speech and Politics
Although I say the First Amendment is clear:
“Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.” That carves out no excuses for Congress. If paying to air political messages is speech -- and it is -- then even Martians and Klingons and should be permitted to fund independent political speech.
Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy disagrees with my first-amendment absolutism. Volokh notes that the first-amendment doesn't protect things like death threats, or using a sound truck to blast a political message in a residential neighborhood.
Additionally, corporations are still banned from making campaign donations, which are not considered a form of speech. Individuals are also limited to $2,400 per candidate. Volokh thinks these are reasonable limitations from a constitutional perspective because "the donation is separate from the political message. We can limit contributions, but still allow people to express support for candidates."
Bill O’Reilly also argues that the First Amendment may not apply because “a corporation isn’t a person.” But as CATO’s Ilya Shapiro writes:
Well, of course they aren’t — but that’s constitutionally irrelevant: It doesn’t mean that corporate entities also lack, say, Fourth Amendment rights. Would the “no rights for corporations” crowd be okay with the police storming their employers’ offices and carting off their (employer-owned) computers to chill criticism of some government policy?
Corporations have to have some constitutional rights or nobody would form them in the first place.
And how about foreign corporations? It’s not clear. In the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy specifically declined to address whether foreigners and foreign corporations have the right to political speech. ("We need not reach the question whether the Government has a compelling interest in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our Nation’s political process.")
According to Volokh, the legal precedent is that foreigners in the United States DO have the right to free speech, but foreigners abroad do not.
stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com
Martians and Bill O’Reilly
President Obama, John McCain, and, as I learned last night, Bill O’Reilly, are all worried that the Supreme Court’s January 21 Citizens United vs. FEC ruling that corporations have the right to political speech will open the door to dangerous influences. Rich foreign companies might manipulate our elections.
I say, so what. The First Amendment is clear: “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.” That carves out no excuses for Congress to make laws curbing freedom of speech. If paying to air political messages is speech -- and it is -- then even Martians and Klingons and should be permitted to fund independent political speech if they were so inclined.
Anyway, there already are corporations that express their views 24/7 -- media companies! Why should we prosecute other types of corporations for, essentially, trying to be the media for a day? At Fox we get to say what we want all day long. Why should we have different rights than any other corporation?
It does worry me that corporations may be spending big bucks to help this or that politician. But I'm even more worried about what Big Government can do to free enterprise if corporations aren't allowed to speak up.
Earlier this week, O’Reilly said: “The Founding Fathers had no idea that we were going to have 100-million-dollar presidential races.”
That’s true. But they also never thought the government would be doing things like giving tax breaks (or tax increases) to individual companies/industries, using eminent domain to favor connected corporations, and that government would control 37 percent of the economy (federal, state and local spending as percentage of GDP.)
O’Reilly is especially worried about foreign companies.
But O’Reilly’s and my boss, Rupert Murdoch, used to be a citizen of Australia. If he hadn’t become a US citizen, would that make News Corporation, which owns Fox News, a foreign corporation that should take O’Reilly and me off the air because we could be accused of trying to influence elections?
What exactly is a “foreign” corporation, anyway?
Toyota has about 30,000 US workers – almost half as many workers as it has in Japan. Shouldn’t it have a say?
On the flip side, Ford employs 100,000 foreigners abroad.
stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com |
