The St. Louis Labor Tribune brings us this guest opinion from Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration. We Must Limit The Power of Corporations illustrates how corporations and people are the same….or not.
What’s the difference between you and a giant corporation like Amazon? According to the Supreme Court, nothing!
Never mind that, unlike us, corporations have limits to their liability; they can’t be imprisoned, and they can’t be executed. However, as collections of legal agreements, corporations can live forever, and they can spend virtually unlimited money to influence elections. We, on the other hand, cannot!
So how did corporations get turned into people? How did corporations come to be granted the same free speech rights under the Constitution that you and I have? We can thank the Supreme Court.
The story goes back to the Supreme Court’s response to reforms enacted in the wake of Watergate. In Buckley v. Valeo (1976), the Court held that campaign contribution spending limits were unconstitutional, as they constituted “direct and substantial restraints on the quantity of political speech.”
In other words, the Supreme Court decided money is speech.
