And I’ll start by pointing out that there are certain laws under consideration at any time that affect certain corporations. I think it is safe to say that the various investors in those corporations would want their side heard. In those cases, I can’t see much difference between a corporation getting involved in politics and a 527 doing so.

I also believe that edromar’s statement, “Rights belong to individuals, not ‘groups’ and I am quite happy to allow every single individual who works for a corporation to exercise every single right of every other individual” comes close to describing the system that exists today. Corporate donations into politics exist, but are extremely limited. As I stated earlier, when a certain company is tied to giving millions to a particular cause, that is a reference to board members, PACs, 527s and others related to the company, not the company’s contributions. Those contributions, then, are proof of individuals tied to that company exercising their rights.

I also admit that I was wrong in assuming edromar opposed Sinclair’s airing of “Stolen Honor” on equal time grounds. I agree with edromar that political speech is exactly the kind of speech that must be held to exacting standards of honesty. I don’t agree with edromar’s proposed penalties.

And, finally, IIRC, Constitutional Amendments get touched by Congress. Congress may appoint a Amendment committee (such as it did with the 21st Amendment), but it is Congress’s decision.

“And to clarify, edromar notes (accurately):

/* Finally, Max says sarcastically: �Fifth, the Congress, using its Constitutional authority, set up the FEC. You may have heard of it.� */

�[edromar] responds by noting where the FEC has been asleep at the wheel. It is interesting that his examples include Sinclair�s decision to air an anti-Kerry documentary, but he doesn�t say why it should be illegal to air.�

It should be a criminal offense subject to being disqualified for any office one is running for to knowingly and obviously lie about any material fact related to one�s opponent or the job being sought, or to refuse to disown and publically reject any relevant, material such untrue claim made that is publicized in or by the media. In Sinclair�s case, from what I was told, they were going to present as a documentary without correcting the lies being told by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that Kerry had said that all Vietnam veteran were guilty of what amount to war crimes. Since my wife teaches in College Speech courses, as an example of persuasive advocacy, Kerry�s testimony to the Committee I have watched it repeatedly and know that he never goes beyond saying that many Vietnan veterans have told him that they and some people they knew and served with had engaged in such war crimes and crimes against the Geneva Conventions. What Kerry said is obviously not that every veteran was guilty of such crimes. Nor were the claims that he reported as having been made in any way inconsistent with the facts now accepted as true by all objective historians. Not Kerry, but those who sent soldiers into situations that they were clearly unprepared to deal with are the cause of the loss of hnor by many young men just as the Abughraid crimes smack of misleadership of young people unprepared to have the power that corrupts and the absolute power that corrupted them absolutely.

I would have no objection if Sinclair had wanted to air a documentary about how some people are so desperate to rewrite history to make an honorable silk purse out of the sows ear we have all heard of from history that they will lie and cheat to try to mislead people. That would have been a news story worthy of presentation. But no news organization could present such lies as a documentary relating to Kerry.

Max said he will �…assume that [edromar]�s concerned Kerry won�t get equal time.�

Actually, I am merely concerned that obvious lies not be presented as news or documentaries of the truth. Obviously, if such were to be on, the subject should have an opportunity to answer them. But such lies go far beyond endangering the innocent candidate. They also endanger the whole electoral process in which people should be able to trust what is said by a candidate and in his behalf. That which feeds cynicism weakens democracy. So such lies are crimes against our country as well as against certain candidates. There is no place for lies in politics.

Max says that �documentaries weren�t considered when the law was written,� although I have no idea what laws he has in mind. Thus I have no way of knowing what laws he claims he �will agree with edromar on principle,� so I can not tell what he wants me to agree to. However, I know of no reason why I would �…agree… that airing of Fahrenheit 9/11 or footage from the various Kerry-supporting concerts should also be considered political ads, and equal time ought to be offered to Bush in those those cases.�

Both those factors are irrelevant. The Swift Boat Ads and Sinclair are inappropriate because they include lies that are fitting only in overtly touted works of fiction or documentaries or news shows that point out the lies. If Sinclair had advertisers who wanted to present those things as works of fiction (which they were), and it was a viable commercial activity for the corporation where the potential voters would not have been liable to be misled by not realizing that was all lies, then I would have no objection to their being aired. It would not be necessary to grant �equal time�.

Yes I did �also bring up the Swift Boat Veterans ads, but overlook[ed] Moveon.org�s various ads.� However, I am not familiar with any move-on add that lied to the American people about anything. Bush did dodge the draft by going into the National Guard and he did go AWOL if he did not actually dessert. Eventually, he was released from his flight and other responsiblities for the good of the service since he was useless. That was probably because of a brain fried on Coke, but we have not yet fully deciphered the code.

Max concludes: �The system is broken, but I think it�s broken at a different level than what edromar identifies.�

I certainly did not claim that the system is broken on only one level. Nor can it be fixed in only one way. But we have to begin by getting clear about how many problems we face in our voting system.

Apparently I touched a nerve, so I appologize to Max for being so observant that his name seems to reflect his politics. On the other hand, I wish I could figure out if Max thinks I am using really feeling clever playing games with his name. For the record, I only use his two names because I figured nobody would take �Max Lybbert� as a real name. I did not know that Lybbert, by the way, isn�t all that uncommon either. They may almost all be decendants of Christian Frederik Bernhard Lybbert, although most Lybberts live near the US-Canadian border or Utah.

Max can�t see the difference between my characterization of non-profit organizations and corporations. So he pretends that �Apparently making money by selling a product, good, or service should disqualify a group of individuals from exercising their First Amendment rights.� I certainly never suggested that any individuals should be disqualified from exercising any right. Rights belong to individuals, not �groups� and I am quite happy to allow every single individual who works for a corporation to exercise every single right of every other individual. Where we differ is Max�s wish to give a fictitious individual, a corporation, an equal right with real individuals, the right to get involved in using corporate monies to try to influence our political and governing processes. Those monies, until they are distributed to the owners of various shares do not belong to any individual other than the fictitious individual, the corporation. Theoretically, I see no reason why individuals who work for corporations should not be able to voluntarily pool their personal monetary contributions into a 527 to express their mutual political opinions. There is a whole other principle involved when they want to use the funds of the fictional, non-citizen individual that people have created for profit making purposes to support political purposes.

Yes, some individuals do choose to create a form of corporation, not to make money or have any to be used for profit making, but to make mass media buys by bringing together many people�s contributions. Now, if their contributors were allowed to contribute funds to such groups beyond those allowed to all citizens to contribute to political activities, I would be the first to say that would be unfair. If they could take funds from individuals who did not want to contribute to their expressions� of their members� mutual voices, I would agree that that too would be unfair. But that is not the case. When I went to make a contribution to Move-on, they had a form by which I had to agree that my contribution would not lead me to be contributing more to the campaign than the $4000. Total I and my wife are allowed to contribute to all aspects of the current presidential campaign. So what is unfair to any other voters if I choose to contribute some of my $2000. limit through Move-on and less to Kerry and to the DNC? To say that �Groups that do nothing but collect donations from their members should have those rights,� is technically wrong. The people who contribute have the right to spend their campaign contributions on such groups. The groups are given the privilege of acting as the agent of the contributors as long as they strictly obey laws designed to the purposes for which they were created. They are given the form of corporations by law because they can be kept under proper legal restraints. Their directors have to use their funds for the purposes for which they are given.

Max asks �Why?� it is OK for some corporations set up for such purposes to pursue such purposes while those set up to make money for their owners have no right to spend the corporation�s monies on political purposes. It seems pretty obvious that not only would such expenditures not necessarily reflect the will of their owners, but would be using funds that are not yet owned by the owners of the corporations. If these were owners of a partnership and they all agreed to use monies owned by their partnership, those would really be their monies already– and as long as those were contributed within the fair limits given each individual, that would be fine. But here the idea is to use funds owned not by partners or shareholders to pursue purposes not voluntarily chosen by either on political purposes which are the rights only of citizens.

Unfortunately all of Max statements were completely understood relating to my claim that �There is no basis in the Constitution to give Congress the power, or states the power, to grant rights to corporations to get involved in people�s business such as �politics,�� as I stated in my earlier post. Considering this, I can�t understand the following two responses from Max or his inability to grasp my answers:

* [Max:] �I doubt that you�ll find any clause in the Constitution that expressly permits [Moveon.org] to have First Amendment free speech rights,�

Max pretends that the thrust of my reply was that: �[Max] ignores that it is merely an accumulator of personal contributions of individual citizens.� Rather the crux of my answer was that various articles in the Bill of Rights, such as the 1st, 9th and 10th as well as the list in I.8 give people a lot of rights that are the Constitutional basis for specific rights that are not �expressly� (specifically) stated. Freedom of Speech alone gives us the right to contribute our fair share of political support to any political matter in whatever form we choose unless some clear reason can be shown to limit that. If such organizations as Move-on and SwiftBoat Veterans for Truth (actually for Lies) were not held to all the standards of truth that any citizen should be held to, good reason could be given to prevent people from contributing to them, and any penalties for libel should be passed on proportionately to those who contributed to the commercials. That the SwiftBloat Veterans (now a bunch of fat old lying men) can get away with such overt lies and not be stopped is an outrage. All involved in those commercials whether as writers, actors or even as contributors should be picked clean. There is no place in politics for lies despite all those tild by candidates such as Bush and Cheney. At least the people can hold them responsible for their lies if the people have half the sense of a nit-wit.

Further, Max claims that he �…can�t fathom my first reply, because (again), edromar ignores the people who come together to form a corporation.�

Nonsense. People don�t �form� a corporation as they do a partnership. The state by law forms a corporation by chartering it, giving it a form and limits. The corporation is put by the state under the care of a board of trustees who set up its structure and appoint its officers who hire its employees and offer its stock for sale. I don�t ignore them, it is just that they have their rights granted by the Constitution. The corporation has its obligations and privileges set up by state law. It has its own money invested as shares in its body and its profits. It�s body can not be dismembered as long as it exists. What profits it can distribute are limited by state and federal law. There is nothing to give this new fictional entity any right or reason to interfere in people�s political activities.

Max says that my �only reply is that corporations are formed to make money,� AND ASKS �Why should this reduce their free speech rights?�

That does not �reduce� any free speech rights. Fictional persons were never given any free speech rights �by nature and/or nature�s god� according to our Declaration, nor were any such rights of non-persons and non-citizens ever protected by our Constitution. For example, the one place where persons and citizens to which the Constitution applies, the 14th Amendment, recognized only the citizenship rights of:

�Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States.�

But corporations are neither born nor naturalized�nor are they really persons. Duh?

The 14th makes clear that only such persons �born and naturalized� in the US are there said to be �citizens of the United States.� It is only of such real persons who are citizens of the US that the 14th Amendment goes on to say:

�No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of [such] citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.�

On the basis of my rejection of Constitutional rights of corporations, Max pretends that I claimed that they had no rights because they were formed to make money. They were, but they have no rights because they are not real persons and only real persons are citizens who have rights. Still, Max tries to confuse readers by pretending that the reasons corporations don�t have rights is that they are formed to make money, and that that has some relevance to people without money:

�Should homeless people have more free speech rights, since they clearly have less money?�

That is pure sophistry that only a terribly cynical cad could resort to�or someone so weak in the head that someone should tell him to stop making an ass of himself. For it is clearly not a matter of the corporations not having rightsn because they are formed to make money but because they are �formed� artificially but are not born or naturalized into citizenship.

Continuing his attempt to obfuscate and obscure simple facts, Max claims:

�More to the point, why should partnerships have free speech rights, but corporations not have any?�

But partnerships do not have free speech rights, the partners involved have free speech rights and the same privileges all other citizens have to use their own monies up to their fair share to support the publication or broadcast of their free speech. Likewise, the stockholders and employees of corporations have equally free speech and equal; privileges to use their what of their personal funds they choose up to their fair share to support the publication and broadcast of their personal political opinions. No person�s or citizens rights are to be abridged. But corporations have no free speech nor should any of their funds be used to publish or broadcast the �corporations� supposed political opinions. Corporations have no such opinion. But citizens can try to use the corporations� funds to publish and broadcast their opinions as if those were the corporations� political opinions. However, the corporations have no opinions of any kind and no rights or privileges to Express, Publish or Broadcast those non-existent opinions.

Max also quotes me as saying: �Those who contribute to [non-profits] set up to bring their voices and monies together for the purpose of expressing their opinions are more akin to the privately owned or partnership businesses.�

I meant by that, that they are using their own monies as are partners pr private owners of businesses who take their own money our of their own businesses to contribute withoin their fair share what they want to in politics. Even a corporate shareholder can sell their shares, or use their profits issued by a corporation to publish or broadcast their own political expressions to the extent fairly allowed by law. So there is no basis for confusion or Max�s obfuscation.

* [Max:] �Third, corporate law is mainly state law. Corporate charters are granted by the state based on state law. Delaware corporate law is more corporation-friendly (and more developed) than other states.�

Max pretends to be befuddled by my response that: �While that is true it is also irrelevant.�

Rather, Max insists that �My second reply is relevant because edromar was complaining about the Constitutional silence on corporate free speech. That silence isn�t amazing when you consider the role state law plays in the equation. Yes, federal laws (such as the Lanham Act and any SEC-related law) trump state laws. But, when federal law is silent, the Constitution clearly permits state law to fill the void.�

But that is only true in regard to citizens� rights. And it does not follow that because there are no federal rights to citizenship for non-persons such as corporations, there are such in the states. Just because laws are passed to regulate actions by entities, that does not mean that those entities are citizens. For example, our Constitution in I.8 gives Congress the power to set up state militias to resist insurgents. That does not give those insurgents rights. States can create whatever their citizens have given them the right to create without thiose being citizens with rights. They can create a state Capitol building. It is not a person or citizen with rights. Neither is a corporation set up under state law a person with rights to express its own political opinion (although its owners and employees have all the same political rights as do all other citizens�but they just shouldn�t use corporate funds to express their own political opinions).

I am pleased to see that Max, despite being unnecessarily cynical about �All campaign finance reform and lobbying reform laws� which he thinks �will be broken as long as they are written by the same people who benefit from broken campaign finance and lobbying laws.� He suggests that anyone who can �Figure out a Constitutional way to change the law without Congress�s involvement, and you�ll become my personal hero.�

1. States can create a Constitutional amendment so clear taht even Supreme Court Justices could not ignore it (despite the Justices rape of the 14th Amendment).

2.. People could make it a litmus test for every politician to agree to vote only for judges who agree to deny corporations any right to use their funds for any political or governmental purposes from political contributions to lobbying. Unfortuneately just because there is a way it does not follow that there will be a will or a new reality.

On the “making the business environment better for workers,” I would support changing Social Tax to a progressive structure, to reduce the burden on low-wage workers.

I don’t have any specific suggestions, aside from making education readily-available and spreading information the government already collects about wages for particular jobs. I don’t oppose unions, per se, although my contact with today’s unions has been uninspiring. Two of my brothers have worked union jobs, and both were upset about the union’s ability to complain about union members disciplined for theft, while not coming up with any real benefits to all the other members who paid dues.

I think workers could benefit from several changes to the business environment, such as cutting down on various legal costs so that less money goes to lawyers (and more can go to workers) and seeing if “supply” of medical services and insurance can somehow be increased (build more hospitals, permit employers to pool together in buying insurance policies, come up with medical malpractice insurance reform similar to the kind of reform unemployment insurance or worker’s comp has gone through, etc.).

Second, I haven’t spent much time reading Ayn Rand, but I disagree with her on several issues. Abortion is one that I think won’t suprise anyone here. I don’t call myself “pro-life” since (1) proof that embryos aren’t “living” at various stages would (in theory) make abortion acceptable at those stage, and (2) pro-lifers generally don’t permit any exceptions to their policy. I accept abortion in cases where the mother’s life (or long-term health) is at risk, in cases of rape, or in cases where the child has virtually no chance of living after birth.

I’m registered Republican, and consider myself socially- and fiscally-conservative, and a free-market supporter. You can choose any labels you wish for my ideas and positions. In particular, I believe in Coase’s theorom (“When the parties can bargain successfully, the initial allocation of legal rights does not matter.“). I find the material at the end of that article most interesting (especially Update 2 that refers to ranchers who were known to deal with things informally because going to court was so expensive and time-consuming).

/* There are employers who pay living wages to all employees out of a sense of moral commitment to the greater community � but they are few and far between.
*/

I think this is a reference to, say, Henry Ford who (according to urban legends) paid his employees enough for them to be his customers. That may be true, but far more Model Ts were sold to non-employees than to Ford employees. I believe that Say’s Law explains this better than humanitarian management (or this article: “A visitor to the United States from the Soviet Union in the 80’s was shown an American supermarket — in stark contrast to the empty shelves in Soviet stores — and he remarked that it was well stocked but that people could not afford to buy the goods. Almost anyone can see the fallacy in his viewpoint: a store that couldn’t sell its goods would quickly go bankrupt.”)

And, by the way, I spent some time in Ceara Brazil. Ceara is part of the poorest region of the country (Northeast). I’ve seen exploitation first-hand.

Brazil pays a lot of lip service to ending exploitation. It’s most recent constitution (1988) includes over 300 rights, including the right to non-demeaning jobs that pay a living wage. The government can write anything it wants to in such a long wish list. I don’t think this wish can be realized without a working free market. In fact, I was once talking with a real estate developer there who said a construction worker’s buying power (and cost, relative to various raw materials used in construction) had doubled in the previous ten years because of free market economics.

I understand the idea of Libertarianism, and the scant but real difference between Libertarianism and Objectivism (which are you by the way? I suspect some form of Libertarian, as you don’t have the knee jerk reactions of most Objectivists I’ve met). So, I have a pretty good understanding of the “ideal,” I simply don’t believe that it works in real life.

There are employers who pay living wages to all employees out of a sense of moral commitment to the greater community — but they are few and far between. Exploitation of workers is much more common. That is the simple reality. Even if you look only in America exploitation is more common and getting worse – if you look in places like those that I mentioned (the ‘free trade’ zones in South America for example) it is more severe than you probably imagine — unless you know the languages or have a good interpreter and have taken the time to go there. (I have personally – though in a more limited manner than I should).

So I deny that it is even possible in a universal fashion to have a world where the actors come to fair agreements. The existence of severe power differentials between the actors, together with a willingness on the part of the more powerful actors to use that differential to their advantage preclude universally fair agreements. That of course is the idea behind unions — to lessen the differential by aggregation – and thus create at least a semi-level playing field.

You say that you would like to see workers put on equal footing with employers — how do you propose to do that in a workable manner? I would be interested in seeing the plan. Feel free to email me at [email protected] if it is too much to post here.

Oh, and safety standards have been rolled back considerably in the last 4 years. The issue of workplace safety is much less “dealt with” than it used to be.

Regards,

Reynolds C. Jones