Corporations are Now Defined as Having Free Speech Rights?

Ahhhh you have seen the hypocrisy of "right" thinking.

As a shareholder in a large corporation you have a impenetrable ("veil piercing" is a joke for a large corporation... never happens) shield for you personal assets, you have an ALMOST impenetrable shield against criminal prosecution (you pretty much have to pull the trigger yourself), you get to decide how much to pay yourself (dividends) and how much stays in the company.... and if you keep it in your company then you can spend as much of it as you want on "political speech."

So.... thanks to Republican "thought processes" corporations now have ALL the possible benefits of citizenship.... and bear virtually NONE of the obligations.

They collect welfare/ subsidies, they can utilize are most protected type of speech (political), they pay taxes (their ONLY obligation), they sign contracts, they can sue and be sued.....they can do anything I can do except vote (and I bet Roberts and Alito are looking for a way to make that legal too) but Corps. live forever and it is ALMOST impossible to hold any REAL PERSON accountable for Corporate actions.

How many people were punished when Enron collapsed compared to the number of lives they destroyed.... how about Goldman Sachs, Bear Sterns, Countrywide...... etc.

Now these corporate giants get wield EVEN MORE political power.... and you have Conservatives to thank for that little blessing.

People are NOT PROSECUTED for corporate actions and to pretend otherwise is disengenuous to the point of falsehood. They are almost exclusively prosecuted for INDIVIDUALLY breaking SEC regs. and the like.

I will issue this guarantee.... no one at Massey Energy is going to spend a second in jail for killing all of those men..... and there is absolutely no doubt that if they were NOT BREAKING LAWS through their company.... those men would still be alive..... but Massey's profit might have been 1% lower last year. Lives for money.... that is what "right thinking" leads to.

Hey, you noticed.

Yeah, over a hundred years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that fictitious entities have basically the same rights as actual people, at least as far as the 14th amendment is concerned.

You still can't jail, execute or, say, torture a corporation, though. So there are some rights corporations simply can't exercise (a corporation can't get married and have kids, for instance - though, maybe as the definition of marriage is mangled, that'll become possible), and some responsibilities they just can't practically be held too.

It makes corporations into a legal shield for their owners. If a corporation commits a tort, it can be held liable, but only it's own assets, not the assets of it's shareholders or even employees or executives, can be forfeit. Thus, it's possible, though not easy, to strip a corporation of assets before it can stripped of them. If a corporation commits a crime, typically, the executives or other employees who actually carried out the crime are held responsible. So, if you granny owns 50 shares of DeathCo, she won't become a murderer when the CEO of DeathCo orders a hit - the assassin carrying out the murder-for-higher, and the executive will. Granny still gets a few cents more in dividends if the company benefits financially from the murder, though.

It is possible to fine corporations for their crimes and to imprison the officers or directors of the corporation. However, the fines are usually insignificant and it is very rare that the officers or directors are found guilty.

For example, when Lee Iacoca was in charge of the Vega car at Ford, he knew the gas tanks would explode and he knew that they could be fixed for $20 apiece. However, he chose not implement the fix because he didn't want to delay the project. Thousands of people were burned to death in those cars, but Ford was not fined and Iacoca was found innocent.

That would imply that they had no responsibility previous to that decision.

As a corporation, specific individuals within a company had responsibility for the actions and decisions of the corporation.

This decision will further obstruct justice.

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If it can be proved that he wilfully avoided complying with mandatory health & safety regulations, then he could be charged with manslaughter. It is the directors of a Company who are held liable in such circumstances.

It obvious that you don't listen to Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly or for that matter FOX. Corporations are the victims of greedy people that want to work and prosper, live inside and retire in dignity someday. The nerve of those people. How Un-American can they get. If you waiting for these people to take responsibility for their actions you are living in a dream world. A great example is Wall Street, they bankrupted the country and as a thanks we bailed them out.

the actual ruling was that the rights of Free Speech could not be denied a group any more than they could for their individual members....this does not specifically relate to civil or criminal law. Corporations are already subject to both civil and criminal law via a well-established process.