What wasn’t legal was for another kind of corporation to use its general-treasury funds for the same purpose. The laws banning that kind of spending were based on the idea that when a for-profit corporation injects itself into the electoral process¹, it creates the appearance of political corruption if not actual corruption. After all, if the corporate directors authorizing the donation didn’t expect to get some kind of benefit from the politician in return, then they were wasting their stockholders’ money.
The majority in Citizens United acknowledged that preventing the appearance of corruption was a legitimate concern (which is why restrictions on direct donations to political parties and candidates were allowed to stand), but was so committed to the “treat corporations as people” principle that they didn’t see the point of restricting contributions from corporations.
¹I.e., corporations could run ads saying “nuclear energy is great”, but not “vote for Smith, because he supports nuclear energy”.
Of course. But, that thing in return might not be corrupt. Let's say you are a gun manufacturer and you give money to politicians who support the NRA. Corrupt? No more so than a gun owner making contributions for similar reasons. Beneficial? You bet.
I wasn't able to quickly determine if Citizens United itself is a 527, but they are affiliated with one (http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtes2.php?ein=&cycle...).
Corporations have separate rights and responsibilities from the people that own them.
No, but you can sue it and rule against it. Ever seen a ruling with a name like "Smith vs. Acme Inc."?
> Because corporations aren't people.
No, and corporations also can't speak. So free speech for corporations is an oxymoron if you don't mean free speech by the people that make up a corporation.
Its about money spent on speech. Free speech that you can't spend money on, isn't free speech. If a news paper was told that it was welcome to print a specific story, except you can't spend money on ink for it, it'd still be censorship.
> spend its money on political candidates, with a clear expectation of a positive ROI. How can that possible be legal
It's not, that's corruption. What you're referring to is rent-seeking, and it's been around as long as politics itself. The best solution is to give politicians less power, simply because there's less rent to seek.
Not in a criminal court.
> No, and corporations also can't speak. So free speech for corporations is an oxymoron if you don't mean free speech by the people that make up a corporation.
The board of directors, actually, or, even more accurately, whoever holds a controlling share of the corporation.
Because a corporation isn't a person, and can't commit felonies. If it could, it'd be tried in criminal court.
> The board of directors, actually, or, even more accurately, whoever holds a controlling share of the corporation.
Yes, they have free speech, just as any minority shareholder as well and managers and all employees. The latter just don't have the same access to spend company resources on said speech.
And yet they should be granted all the rights of a person?
> Yes, they have free speech, just as any minority shareholder as well and managers and all employees. The latter just don't have the same access to spend company resources on said speech.
Any access to spend company resources. If you don't have a controlling interest, you can do just about jack and shit. I suppose you could embezzle or misuse funds though.
You're also wrong about the draft bit: while the mechanism is different, private companies have found themselves taken over by the Federal government during e.g. WWII ... or at least the credible threat was made (most recently I read such a case WRT to the Manhattan Project, that threat was required to light a fire under one company that supplied them).