British Expatriate Network

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/opinio...ef=opinion

From the NY Times article;

As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.

So, what does everyone think about this? To me, it seems as if we are becoming the United Corporations of America, that this is one more blow to the little guy, if there could be another one.

At one time, all it took in the USA to have a house and a car and a reasonable standard of living was to have a job. Any job. You could be an auto worker, a car salesman, baggage handler, a butcher, have a small business mowing lawns - really it didn't matter.

Today you really have to work at having all these things. More and more is being taken from the citizens and being given to the elite and the corporations. Since I've been in the USA I've always wondered when exactly the revolution will come. Sadly I don't think it will because people, despite knowing that the whole mortgage bubble was a game, how their jobs have been snitched off to China, how they've been screwed over and over, still think it's their fault when their job goes and they're unable to find another one. The official unemployment rate is 10% but when the uncounted, people in part time work, or those who don't qualify for unemployment are actually counted it's closer to 20%.

It's like a crumbling of the British Empire repeat. But without the imminent threat of occupation from the Kaiser/Hitler.

The American people seem to be oblivious to the take over of their government by big business and with the labour unions reduce to an insignificant minority there apears to be no opposition.

The two poltical parties are more interested in their own survival rather than passing legislation combating this takeover of the worlds leading democracy.

A corporation should never have the same rights as a person - it simply is illogical and makes no sense. How that one has got past the Supreme Court (at least twice in the past 100 or so years) is definitely beyond me.

The senior management of the corporation have rights of course, under the Constitution and should always be permitted to give LIMITED amounts to the candidate of their choice - although in an ideal world, we'd see that disappear too.

The Supreme Court's arguments for this past debacle take the cake. Clearly, the conservative half of those judges did what their puppet masters asked them and the minority were left holding the bag.

We somewhat expect our Supreme Court to be fair and interpret the Constitution for the good of the citizens of the United States but this current Court can never claim that now. Any credibility they retained after the 2000 election disaster seems to have melted away - even with new personnel on the Court.

I doubt this state of affairs will survive more than a couple of years - I thought we were bombarded enough with stupid, often inaccurate political ads so an unlimited war chest to buy TV time is eventually going to annoy enough people, with any luck.

Hopefully some new laws or a Constitutional Amendment will be introduced to once again elevate the rights of the citizen far above those of any corporation, the way the Founding Fathers thought they had set it up two centuries ago.

Effective January 1, 2007 the following rules for political contributions under the Canada Elections Act come into force.


Who Can Make Political Contributions
•You must be a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident of Canada to make a political contribution to a registered political entity.

•Corporations, trade unions, associations and groups may not make political contributions.

•An employer can give an employee a paid leave of absence during an election period to allow the employee to be a nomination contestant or a candidate without the leave being considered a political contribution.

Good to know our neighbours to the north have that in place. It really is a no-brainer.

My union dings me a few bucks a month to pay for advertising I don't need or want to watch. When I signed up for it a few years ago, it was under the proviso it was temporary and for one particular issue that I felt needed the publicity.

Unfortunately, they never stopped it and now it is permanent so they won't fool me again. If all trade unions and corporations were prevented from throwing this money into politics, I for one would be very happy.

You are spot on
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Im disapointed in this ruling i had hoped we would move forward in this matter , if corps . unions . lawyers . drug companies etc were prevented from handing out large sums of greenbacks , free trips, discounted loans etc from candidates the problem of *special interest groups* would be solved overnight .


no politician of either party would support these lobbyist as they would no longer be holding to them and there wasnt a *reward * in it hopefully they would concentrate more on serving there constituents and supporting what the general joe blow in the street wanted .

there again if there were no perks DITTO NO PERKS ..... most of the sorry ass wangers who are in congress /senate now would,nt stand for reelection and find a * real job *, leaving us to elect those who really want to serve the public in the way the constitution intended
we( the citizen ) would win all round ..

Aha!

Common ground then.

So where do we (the plebs) go from here (albeit together?)

we have a lot in common really its just the devil is in the details

I believe the common parlance is, Hell in a hand basket!

Are you watching the State of the Union speech tonight?

Here in California the unemployment rate is 12.5%. It's tough

Did you see Oregon just passed measures to ding corporations and wealthy (for here at least) people with higher taxes? Most of it is closing loopholes that have existed for 70 something years.

Other states could take a lesson there...

If corporation truly want to be treated like individuals, how about they pony up the same tax rate individuals pay. Mine was something like 25% last few years - how many companies pay that sort of amount of their revenue?

Hadn't seen that Pilgrim. Here in Kaliforni the terminator is floating the idea we send illegal immigrants back to stay in Mexican jails.
BTW, is the offshore accounts for companies still in exsistence. I think that being revoked would help. You have offices here, you have workers here, surely you should pay taxes here!

I think it is to do with where the company is headquartered.

The Oregon change says "declare how much you MADE in Oregon, then pay the tax to the state on that amount - and to hell with where you're headquartered and file to pay the least amount of taxes (you loophole-loving, corporate welfare seekers)" - or words to that effect!

Has no effect on 90% of businesses (too small to be hit with it).

I assume you saw a movie made about two or three years ago called "The Corporation"

I wish they could be sent to prison for stealing but that doesn't happen either. A strange sort of person, this corporation.

I like the Oregon law you described. It's like when you buy a car, doesn't matter if you're buying it in a city that has lower sales tax than yours, you'll be paying the sales tax of the city in which you live.