Kerry calls for constitutional amendment to counteract Citizens United

you insensitive clod  😉

is that corporations are a  “thing”  Many of these corporations (certainly not all), feel no sense of responsibility to tell the truth, or be fair, nor is there any innate sense of empathy (geez, sounds like I’m describing republicans).

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p>Most human beings have the required capacities to not want to kill, or steal, or drive over a person with a Mack truck because they see a dollar lying in the road ahead.  Many corporations do not.  They are simply a conglomerate of computers, loaded with statistics, and budgets, growth models and competitors stats.  Overseen by yes indeed humans, who see nothing but the paper in front of them and $$$$ they are destined to receive. These corporations think only about how they will grow (into a big country killing, consumer pillaging, economy crashing monsters).  I would think, that after what we’ve been through over the last 10 years, watching these monsters grow unfettered, you would be scared.

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p>Did you ever watch the trailers to “Hillary the Movie”.
It was a sociopathic hit job. I can’t believe our United States Supreme Court felt that was worth a ruling for freedom of speech.  You would think they would have been more concerned about whether it was a valid piece of
media, or simply a compilation of lies and attacks (slander)on the character of a “person” in an attempt to steer an election.

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Quick quote from Stevens’ dissent in Citizens United:

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“Our jurisprudence over the past 216 years has rejected an absolutist interpretation” of the First Amendment . WRTL , 551 U. S., at 482 (opinion of Roberts , C. J.). The First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Apart perhaps from measures designed to protect the press, that text might seem to permit no distinctions of any kind. Yet in a variety of contexts, we have held that speech can be regulated differentially on account of the speaker’s identity, when identity is understood in categorical or institutional terms. The Government routinely places special restrictions on the speech rights of students, 41 prisoners, 42 members of the Armed Forces, 43 foreigners, 44 and its own employees. 45 When such restrictions are justified by a legitimate governmental interest, they do not necessarily raise constitutional problems. 46 In contrast to the blanket rule that the majority espouses, our cases recognize that the Government’s interests may be more or less compelling with respect to different classes of speakers, 47 cf. Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Comm’r of Revenue , 460 U. S. 575, 585 (1983) (“[D]ifferential treatment” is constitutionally suspect ” unless justified by some special characteristic” of the regulated class of speakers (emphasis added)), and that the constitutional rights of certain categories of speakers, in certain contexts, ” ‘are not automatically coextensive with the rights’ ” that are normally accorded to members of our society, Morse v. Frederick , 551 U. S. 393, 396-397, 404 (2007) (quoting Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser , 478 U. S. 675, 682 (1986) ).

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41  See, e.g., Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U. S. 675, 682 (1986) (“[T]he constitutional rights of students in public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings”).

42  See, e.g., Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union, Inc., 433 U. S. 119, 129 (1977) (“In a prison context, an inmate does not retain those First Amendment rights that are inconsistent with his status as a prisoner or with the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections system” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

43  See, e.g., Parker v. Levy, 417 U. S. 733, 758 (1974) (“While the members of the military are not excluded from the protection granted by the First Amendment , the different character of the military community and of the military mission requires a different application of those protections”).

44  See, e.g., 2 U. S. C. §441e(a)(1) (foreign nationals may not directly or indirectly make contributions or independent expenditures in connection with a U. S. election).

45  See, e.g., Civil Service Comm’n v. Letter Carriers, 413 U. S. 548 (1973) (upholding statute prohibiting Executive Branch employees from taking “any active part in political management or in political campaigns” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U. S. 75 (1947) (same); United States v. Wurzbach, 280 U. S. 396 (1930) (upholding statute prohibiting federal employees from making contributions to Members of Congress for “any political purpose whatever” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Ex parte Curtis, 106 U. S. 371 (1882) (upholding statute prohibiting certain federal employees from giving money to other employees for political purposes).

46  The majority states that the cases just cited are “inapposite” because they “stand only for the proposition that there are certain governmental functions that cannot operate without some restrictions on particular kinds of speech.” Ante, at 25. The majority’s creative suggestion that these cases stand only for that one proposition is quite implausible. In any event, the proposition lies at the heart of this case, as Congress and half the state legislatures have concluded, over many decades, that their core functions of administering elections and passing legislation cannot operate effectively without some narrow restrictions on corporate electioneering paid for by general treasury funds.

47  Outside of the law, of course, it is a commonplace that the identity and incentives of the speaker might be relevant to an assessment of his speech. See Aristotle, Poetics 43-44 (M. Heath transl. 1996) (“In evaluating any utterance or action, one must take into account not just the moral qualities of what is actually done or said, but also the identity of the agent or speaker, the addressee, the occasion, the means, and the motive”). The insight that the identity of speakers is a proper subject of regulatory concern, it bears noting, motivates the disclaimer and disclosure provisions that the Court today upholds.

…how “corporate personhood” is an issue.  The 1st amendment says “Congress shall make no law…abridging freedom of speech”.  It does not say “Congress shall make no law abridging A PERSON’S freedom of speech.”

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p>Amendments, by definition, cannot occur in a vacuum.  The context, in this instance, is an amendment to the US constitution, which begins with the words, WE THE PEOPLE.  That phrase is foundational to the entire document. That’s why ‘corporate personhood’ is a dangerous thing: it starts to include something other than ‘We The People‘…  

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p>It does NOT say, “We The People… and assorted other corporeal forms which might someday, for reasons of juridical efficacy, be understood to be sorta-kinda-almost-just-like-a person…