I think one thing you say above is a key point:

in theory, anybody can form a corporation and operate it to take advantage of the extra "rights" to be gained thereby,

I don't believe a corporation should have "extra" rights. I think should they have all the rights of the people that make them up, and that's where it ends. I agree completely that there is a massive problem with how we treat corporate entities--whenever someone can, say, commit a felony resulting in the deaths, and some limited liability entity walks away with a token fine as a result, there is something seriously wrong... but your proposed solution doesn't correct that! We need to overhaul the courts, not restrict free speech.

How would restricting the political activities of that entity-in-law have in any way affected the Constitutional rights of the people operating it?

How does, say, the New York Times corporation operate in an environment where corporate entities do not have free speech and freedom of the press? You can argue that the individual reporters are simply exercising their own rights, but that fails once you dig into it--the corporation's money is being spent to give those reporters a voice. The editorial page is more than just the editor's personal opinion, it's the de facto position of the newspaper. "Vote for Giant Douche! He's better than Turd Sandwich!" is being broadcast to millions of people, and it's a corporation that's doing it.

How, possibly, can you deny this right and still be faithful to the spirit of the first amendment?

Haven't you heard? The slippery slope is a fallacy, and anyone who makes the argument can be dismissed out of hand. Basically, we're fucked.

I am vehemently opposed to the PATRIOT act, but I personally cannot understand the notion that people, when acting together, lose their constitutional rights, and that's exactly what an opposite ruling in Citizens United would have implied.

.

No, people need to be jailed for this.

Some (though not all) banks (for example, Bank of America) still offer cards that only work with a PIN in the ATM, and do NOT work as debit or credit cards. Your abusive post above merely proves that you're not only an asshole, you're also an ignorant one.

This is really only true when you're talking about manufacturer subsidized loans ("0% financing through GMAC with approved credit!"), which usually are not available in conjunction with manufacturer rebates--which almost EVERY car on the market has (even Toyota these days). In some cases, the rebates are absurdly large (pickup trucks) so you can see massive swings in the price of the car if you forego the manufacturer financing. Overall, dealerships typically MAKE money on finance deals (kickbacks from the banks/credit unions for writing the loans).

That said, walking into the dealership with a cashier's check DOES tend to short circuit the negotiating process... not because the dealership is somehow losing money on a loan, but rather because the finance manager is no more immune to having cash waved under his nose than anyone else is.

You are thinking of the wrong us v miller... The second amendment case was 1939, the 1976 case was indeed a fourth amendment case.

The chart I posted was either from 2011 or 2012 (the wikipedia editor appears unsure of this... filename says one thing, title says another), and there's another $1.1T in "mandatory" and "discretionary" spending that could mean, frankly, anything. I find your $900B number to be completely believable.

I realized when I posted that I had sub-optimal figures, but I believed (still do) that they were good enough for the discussion. In any case, I think the following is something we can all agree on: "At least half our budget is "entitlement" spending. At least 20% of our budget is military spending." My personal opinion is that we spend too much on BOTH of these things, and don't collect enough revenue to really support either, so something has to change. I DON'T believe, however, that this is something we can all agree on. :)

As bad as pork barrel spending is, I don't think that's the case here. The figure mentioned was specially "welfare" spending, and I don't really see the congresscritters lining up to bring home the tax money by building, say, a homeless shelter in their district. :) If I had to make a guess, my money would be on things like programs that cost several times to administer than what they actually pass on to people as help. Conservative or liberal, I think everyone can get behind fixing problems like that (except, of course, for the fact that we haven't, so maybe it's indeed pork that's the issue).

I'd like to think there's a way out of this mess without hurting the people with the most to lose, but the more thought I put into it the more I realize just how far up Shit Creek we've gotten since dropping the oars over the side. Seems the only way the system can be fixed at this point is to tear it completely apart and start over from scratch... which is going to hurt.

In this, we agree completely. My personal fear is that ten years from now we will wake up and realize that we're living in Greece. My personal terror is that I'm wrong about the time frame and it's even closer than that. The poorest people are absolutely who will bear the brunt of it, though I think that pretty much everyone with a net worth below a million bucks or so is pretty much fucked.

You're also right about the solution, though there is no one with the political will to implement it. The worst part is that every day we delay in fixing the problem, things get even worse, and the correction at the end will be even more painful... which means that our "leaders" will even be less inclined to try to solve the problem. It's a vicious cycle, and it all comes back to the fact that we're fucked. Short of, say, the russians and the chinese nuking each other and creating conditions similar to those that were present in the late 40s, there is really no scenario in which the US economy can grow our way out of the mess. :(

Apologies for steering offtopic, then. Still, when we exclude the behemoths, "welfare" is still something like $700M a year, which is still larger than the entire DOD budget.

Granted the source here is a Forbes op-ed so is almost certainly is going to slant toward the conservative side (indeed, one of the things it counts as "welfare spending" is the child tax credit. While this may be technically true, it's certainly not what most people bring to mind when the word "welfare" comes up and is more appropriate to a discussion on the subject of tax policy than welfare reform. It's quite probable there are other similar things buried in the numbers that are simply not expanded on in the article) but I think it's a good starting point for discussion. I found the below to be quite interesting:

The best estimate of the cost of the 185 federal means tested welfare programs for 2010 for the federal government alone is nearly $700 billion, up a third since 2008, according to the Heritage Foundation. Counting state spending, total welfare spending for 2010 reached nearly $900 billion, up nearly one-fourth since 2008 (24.3%)

Yet, by 2008, Robert Rector of Heritage reports that total welfare spending already amounted to $16,800 per person in poverty, 4 times as much as the Census Bureau estimated was necessary to bring all of the poor up to the poverty level, eliminating all poverty in America. That would be $50,400 per poor family of three. Indeed, Charles Murray wrote a whole book, In Our Hands, A Plan to Replace America’s Welfare State explaining that we already spend far more than enough to completely eliminate all poverty in America.

The second part (if true) is, frankly, jaw dropping and goes a long way (along with our oversized military spending) to explaining how we got into the mess we're in today. Literally five decades worth of congresses and presidents would have utterly failed in their duty to spend the nation's capital wisely (not to mention the people in genuine need who most likely will have suffered in such a scenario).

Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. Any landing you can walk away from and reuse the aircraft is a great one!

This is untrue. Per wikipedia the DOD is 19% ($670B) of the US budget, while "social security" is 22% ($768B) and "medicare and medicaid" are 23% ($802B). I will grant that this chart is not at all granular and the issue is surely more complicated than this, but 45% of the US budget on just two social programs are hardly "a drop in the bucket." Personally, I think we have to cut military spending, AND social spending, AND raise revenue (however the hell we manage to do that).

I'm also at a loss as to how some people think that massive expansions in spending on medical care somehow makes things more affordable, but I think I'm at the point where I've accepted that the vast majority of people in this nation (citizen and lawmaker, on both sides of the aisle) simply don't live in the real world.

Your position is laughable. You have the precursor chemicals to make weapons under your kitchen sink. It's basically impossible to have any kind of modern industrial base without them.

People like you are why I can't buy fucking cold medicine anymore.

You do make some excellent points--especially about people who ostensibly own the company not having any visibility into what the people who (allegedly) work for them are spending their money on. I'd argue, though, that this is a job for the shareholders to solve by demanding policies be set (and voting for same) and with oversight. The company is their property, if ti's being mismanaged, it's up to them to fix it. With regard to anonymity... I find this a hard question in general. While I see your point, I think anonymity can be a VERY important tool, especially when you're supporting something unpopular--especially something unpopular with authority. Either way this one falls, though, the rules should be the same for individuals and corporate entities. I don't think Citizens United says otherwise, but feel free to contradict me.

I agree that corporate entities should not have rights that people do not have, though I'm wondering what you're talking about here... if it's the "ACME, Inc hired goons to bust heads, and also poisoned ten thousand people. They will pay a ten thousand dollar fine, but admit to wrong doing," thing, then I agree this is an abomination, but it's NOT related to Citizens United. Can you offer some examples of what you're talking about?

As far as "economic, not political" I see this as a meaningless distinction. While I agree the obvious intent of the 1st amendment is political, it is NOT limited to political speech (else, banning something like pornography is a slam dunk. I think you and I would both agree, though, that this is NOT a result we would like to see, because it opens the door to further restrictions on things we do care about).

"Money is not speech." Well, maybe, but it sure makes a great amplifier so people can hear what you have to say. In my above example WRT the New York Times, money effectively IS speech. You have to BUY access to the medium. Before the internet, you literally COULD NOT get your message out to a broad audience without money. These days, it's easier (unless Facebook, Twitter, etc don't like what you have to say) but should the availability of those channels make it harder to access others? I'd argue no.

In the end, though, I come down to a simple difference between you and I that means that we will never reach common ground on this subject. Your position (forgive me if I am putting words in your mouth--feel free to correct me) is that the evils of corporate speech--and there ARE many evils that have, are, and WILL be done in the future--outweigh the good to the point that restrictions are a must. My position is that the good and potential good outweigh the evils (and also that the first amendment is on my side) and therefore restrictions are abhorrent.

I agree corporations are not people. That said, people MUST have the same rights when acting together as they do when they are acting separately, and that's where "corporate speech" comes in.

Example: You, I, and several thousand of our closest friends oppose the police state that has been building for the last twelve years. We decide we want to tell the world about our opposition and outrage by placing a full page ad in the New York Times. Of course, you, nor I, nor my neighbors Alice and Bob can afford to buy that kind of ad space, so we get together to do so--everybody chips in, say, ten bucks a piece. In order to keep everything straight (who's given their ten bucks, when did we pay the NYT and how much? Did we have any money left over? What are we going to do with it?) we have a corporate entity "The PATRIOT Act Fucking Sucks, Inc." to act in all of our names.

Would you suggest that our corporation should not enjoy all of the protections of the first amendment?