Glenn Greenwald Vs. Prof. Lessig On Citizens United (Cenk Moderates)

[BeholdZeus]

Greenwald's defense of Citizen's United is utterly incoherent. Free speech refers to persons, not to corporations - who should be presumed to possess personhood. For some reason Greenwald wrongly assumes that a corporation should be allowed to speak 'in the guise' of a person, which is flagrantly in error. As other comments below indicate, the greater the accumulation of wealth by a specific lobbbying group, the greater its ability to influence the democratic process. Repeal Citizens United!

[hatemorethanyou999]

Citizens United just made it official, this country is now and forevermore will be a plutocracy

[kc1964kc]

during Thomas' contentious confirmation hearings in 1991, he received a huge boost when an outside organization ran $100,000 worth of television commercials attacking those Senators who were threatening to vote against Thomas' confirmation. That organization? A newly formed group called Citizens United.

from truthout.org

[dvictorbrown]

If corporations are citizens, then let them spend time in jail for breeches of law.

[urbanverificationist]

I suppose the question would be, what is speech? The Frist Amedment ought to be interpreted (I'm not going to guess at original intent) as only protecting freedom of expression a.k.a. all statements verbal or written. We can, quite arbitrarily, declare that the First Amendment does not consider campaign contributions to be either verbal or witten speech just as we have decided that physical violence is not speech.

[whoo689]

To think that this decision is "radical" or a terrible idea, you have to believe one of 2 things (or both): a) that every person who runs for office is so susceptible to influence by some other group, not caring one iota about constitutents, that a little money from ANY interest (not just corporations but interest groups, unions, etc.) will sway his votes or 'bribe' him to voting their way, and b) that voters are too stupid to vote against the wishes of corporations that say "vote for this guy."

[whoo689]

@whoo689 Since when am I gonna vote for a candidate or support a bill just b/c a corporation does?? Who thinks like that? Even the GOP doesn't. Yes, they're very much the party of big business, but they don't get contributions as a 'bribe'. They court business, much like the Dems court unions, BECAUSE they agree with them. It's investment, not bribery. No one in their right mind assumes a $5,000 PAC donation (the legal limit) is gonna seriously buy that candidate for them. It's absurd.

[whoo689]

@whoo689 But too often people use this very simplistic approach to campaign finance and say, "Aha! Candidate A voted for this legislation, which is supported by Industry B, AND he got money from them. This proves that he voted just for them." But it's more likely that he courted them because he supports them all along and voted because he thought the policy was best for the country AND just has that political philosophy. So what if he took a bit of cash? Besides, we don't spend a lot overall

[whoo689]

@whoo689 Liberal efforts at campaign finance 'reform' are just desperate measures to combat the real problem, and that is voter apathy. Too many voters think gov't is broken and figure, "What's the point?" They vote at alarmingly low rates, esp. for midterm elections, and having only 2 major parties doesn't help either. But no one's willing to think outside the box or get motivated or work to motivate others for real change. No one has any backbone anymore. THAT'S the problem.

[whoo689]

@whoo689 Strict campaign finance reform regulations won't solve or help with that. They're just a bandaid on the problem. Besides, what this act does NOT do, unlike what some disinformant lefties claim, is allow unlimited corporate finance of elections. That's just not true. It allows them to use their money unlimited to CAMPAIGN and run ads, but the Tillman Act and other regulations are still well in place. So stop whining, Democrats. You're fearmongering like Republicans.

[whoo689]

@whoo689 No matter what, there will always be people who side with a more small-gov't or limited-gov't pro-business or free-market view of the world. You can't change that. No amount of campaign finance reform will prevent those people from being elected, unless you actually put in place a law that says "People with this worldview cannot run." But that would be tyrannical and unconstitutional. Not to mention even THAT would have loopholes.

[Sekerajmusic]

The audio quality in that video is nothing short of disastrous. Makes it nearly unwatchable.

[chadmalik]

Great interview! This type of serious detailed discussion never happens on TV.

[darktoadthesticky]

The problem with corporations having political free speech, should be that only a small amount of that corporation have the power to speak for that corporation, yet they have the ability to use the money power of all the persons in that corporations.

[RecceMan90]

Same as Unions! Most UAW members despise their Leadership, yet the UAW continues the self destructive policies and has even been pushing harder since the Dems have complete control of the Federal Govt!

[darktoadthesticky]

@RecceMan90 The difference is the union members actually vote upon their leaders. Corporations leaders are picked by the board, not the owners. That makes all the difference.

[aaronsande]

Professor Lessig has it right. Not every individual in the corporation would agree with the political view the corporation would take...which is really just the money-grubbing view of the corporate execs. Therefore that entire corporation is not representing all of its employees political views.

The haves are dictating what the have-nots say, which is wrong.

[DblOSmith]

great point. a CEO could vote one wayand all his employees vote the opposite. ...but because he's the CEO, he spends millions on getting his particular candidate elected. Or perhaps his own millions because he makes 400 times what his worker makes. Thus making him more equal in the election process than everyone else.

[aaronsande]

Exactly! I'm glad what I wrote made enough sense! 500 characters isn't much to work with, but that's exactly it. A corporation isn't like any of the groups Greenwald mentioned at the start, where a unifying political philosophy applies.

Although sometimes some of my conservative coworkers like to remind me that my political philosophy doesn't do the company much good LOL

[DblOSmith]

Yeah, I try to avoid politics at work. For the most part they're progressive and it's like preaching to the choir, but I have one coworker that thinks Limbaugh is the 2nd coming and only watches fox news, and works 2 jobs to put her grandchildren in private school because the public schools are actively showing children gay porn and how to be gay.

... yeah.

[aaronsande]

I work on the "management hallway" (not sure what the official name is but you get the idea.

Everyone on my hallway save the President, VP, and 2 others are just as you've described. =/

Looney nutcases. I really don't understand the sort of person who can't hear lies when they are pleasing to the ear.

[DblOSmith]

Yeah, it's asinine. Good luck, man!

[Emport8]

good shit cenk..we should do more of those moderated roundtable interviews

[DblOSmith]

I don't think he should because as a moderator, he'll slowly turn into those moderators that have to pretend the asinine right is actually legitimate. There's no way you can pretend that an it's an equal election process when you're saying a company that has no voting rights is allowed to throw all it's money behind a single candidate. It's unjustifiable.

[Emport8]

1. how do YOU know what another person will be like in the future?

2. i agree with you.

i didn't even take a stance on the issue, i commented on the format. thanks for your interest though.

[DblOSmith]

1) Pattern recognition

2) I know you didn't take a stand, just making a point. There are a plethora of hosts as moderators and hosts as commentators of the right. Let's keep this host as a commentator for the left, I say because there aren't enough of them.

[dEdGrimley]

In our efforts to maintain freedom and Democracy, we're starting a rudimentary oligarchic fascist state. If corporations have this much sway over the government, and the government works for corporations, then people are bound to corporate, self-serving laws written by a small group of people for whom they will benefit, and damaging those whom laws were meant to protect in the first place.

[bballadante]

@dEdGrimley Corpocracy, plutocracy, oligarchy, pick your poison. The people have lost Washington a long, long time ago. This ruling doesn't change anything. It just makes it easier for corporations to rule us.

[Polar515]

@bballadante Well, i have to say i half-agree. I mean, i think that corporations do run this country, but it's the majority of Americans that are stupid. I mean we elected bush twice! Even though he probably stole 2000. It's the stupidity of the American people cause they're told "they have the power" which is BS. I think ever since 2000 we lost our voice in government. And America is not longer a democracy. It's a semi-fascist military industrial complex sort of country.

[DblOSmith]

Unfortunately I agree.

[swordjones]

politic bullshit - blah blah blah blah blah - america is doomed understand this. the goverment is corrupt to the core - the people are stupid racist and greedy.

[DblOSmith]

The fact of the matter is, whether it's companies or just rich people, they can throw more money into the electoral process than a poor person, that means that they're have a heavier hand than others. Some are "More equal" than others in the election process.

They've gone from giving some people 3/5th's of a vote, to equal, to giving people or corporations millions and millions more of the same free speech than you or I have. It's wrong. Publicly financed elections. One MAN one vote.

[restlesspride666]

@DblOSmith and woman lol.

[DblOSmith]

Uh, no! Inferior species! ;)  j/k Of coooooooourse!

[restlesspride666]

@DblOSmith xD hahahahaha! Good man, good man.

[workingTchr]

No matter how much money from whatever source is used to buy advertising time to promote one candidate or another, VOTERS still decide the outcome with their votes. If people are influenced by persistent and clever ads (as Madison avenue and Nazi propaganda have shown they are), the problem is with the people or the idea of democracy --not with those who put up the ads. We could do a LOT better by adopting a jury duty type of voting as opposed to popular voting/ I know that's heresy...

[DblOSmith]

@workingTchr How do voters decide? Media... of any kind. ...and hard to have impartial media when it's ideologically driven like Fox News or when Companies are throwing money with ads. The companies get 30 seconds of airtime every commercial break. I cannot. It's slated towards whoever already has the most money to buy the ads, they buy politicians who allow them to make more money and it just snowballs.

[workingTchr]

@DblOSmith Media just happens to be the most cost effective device. The sad fact of the matter is that human beings are not equally endowed intellectually. Smarter people can most of the time fool less-smart people. Now they use media to do that --as you say-- but the fundamental problem is inequality of intelligence.

[DblOSmith]

@workingTchr ...and the richest can afford to misinform the masses, swaying elections.

[workingTchr]

@DblOSmith ...and the masses are too dumb to see through it. It's sad. I agree with your understanding of what's happening --the richest do sway elections by misinforming the masses. But even if you could constitutionally limit the amount that could be spent, the richest would just hire the smartest to spend it in more clever ways. My point is, the problem is not as as simple as you make out.

[DblOSmith]

@workingTchr That's better than just blanketing all media with a myth of your politician, name, and picture instead of an actual platform.

[workingTchr]

@DblOSmith Thinking this through some more, thanks in part to our dialog, I've changed my mind!  We SHOULD put caps on campaign spending. I don't think that people are smart enough to discern a clever argument from a not-so-clever argument. What matters with most people I now believe is SHEER REPETITION. The more they hear it, the more they believe it. So, getting optimal election results from an election is not unlike to getting optimal crop yield by precise feeding of the plants!

[glukolover]

Now this is what I was talking about.

Having read the decision, it was clear it wasn't this over hyped 'corporations are taking over' result.

But rather it came down to government censorship that is against the constitution.

Don't believe the hype, read the court decision yourself and get you own opinion.

Interesting discussion. It was good, I'd like to see more.

[DblOSmith]

When companies can spend multitudes more than the average person to get whoever they want elected, how is it not "corporations taking over"? I can't spend millions to get my candidate elected.

[glukolover]

Because they could already do that before.

There was no end of back doors and Washington was already drowning in corporate money.

The difference now, is if your a smaller organization, including non profits, you can now support whomever you wish without the government censoring you.

That wasn't the case before.

And thus, what you can do as an individual, or a group with limited money is run grassroots adds, to appeal to others in your situation.

Strength in numbers.

[marsCubed]

Does the court not ban incitement to violence?

Expressing sentiments of race superiority may be moronic, but it is within bounds of free speech.

Nazis regularly state that others should be killed.

lock them up! pronto, and make others who would say so slither back under their rocks.

[TheDuckofLaw]

great stuff, TYT!

[LSGanon]

first!

[RottenRroses]

first answer to a comment!