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“If human beings can make direct campaign contributions… and if, in Citizens United’s interpretation… corporations and human beings are entitled to equal political speech rights, then corporations must also be able to contribute within (the federal) limits."
—That is logically true, U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia! It's just one or two more steps until we give up the whole pretense.
Corporations should be allowed to marry.
They can. I'm a corporation right now! Literally two days ago I got an EIN, and for tax purposes my SSN and EIN are interchangeable. Also I can be billed as a contractor instead of an employee. There's not really a pretense here, it's just the reality of tax code.
(And all that said? I'd rather that corporations contribute to politicians openly instead of semi-laundering it through board members! Now there will literally be a list of corporate interests that anyone can look at.)
@deepomega Unless they form PACs, which are protected by law from having to tell us where their money comes from.
@runsinbackground: Yes, and PACs suck regardless of whether it is a corporation kicking money in or just all the members of the board of the corporation. So let's address those, not try to dance around the issue of corporate contributions.
Maybe corporations should have to pay taxes at the personal income tax rate also, since they're people.
@scrooge: And so, kids, that's how back in 2016 we got a new tax structure: bottom bracket at 90% of everything up to $100K, top bracket 0.001% on everything over $100K.
@scrooge so when are you running for office? Because I want to vote for you right now.
Seriously, we ought to just cut out the political theater and proceed directly to outright corporate rule. It would be a lot more efficient.
No, that's actually not logically true, necessarily, because as the Court held nearly 40 years ago, expenditures are speech and contributions aren't, or aren't quite, speech.