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Most likely would rein in more little fish than big ones, who can better afford it.
Proposed: We should tax lobbying expenditures at a 100% rate. Meaning, for every dollar spent lobbying, you pay $1 federal tax. Open to suggestions on how this works at the state level as well.
Thoughts?
Most likely would rein in more little fish than big ones, who can better afford it.
the increase would be passed to us.
they would invent a practice akin to lobbying, but with a subtly different scheme of incorporation and funding not covered by lobbying laws, and try to pass lobbying off as some other activity. they could even call it "the history department"
For a few $M in lobbbying expenses, the payback can be in the $Bs and forever, so taxing lobbying a 100% wouldn't even slow it down.
what would the money raised by such a tax be for?
victory celebrations!
Good point. Maybe a tiered system. First $xxx tax free, then dollar for dollar after xxx, then 300% after xxxx, etc.
An offset to tax breaks for small businesses and companies hiring American workers would be a nice start.what would the money raised by such a tax be for?
thing is, incentives are useless if the prospects are sh!tty. if businesses don't expect demand to grow, it doesn't make sense to hire regardless of tax breaks.
"corporations are people my friend"
^^^ apparent non sequitur
The solution to that is simple. Make it a corporate tax. If the Koch duo wants to withdraw funds to their person to do so then thats fine by me. Makes it easier to tax as its not deductible.
The recent SCOTUS ruling would not impact because SCOTUS just said that because the press got freedom of speech then because 'persons' get equal protection then so do the others by virtue of not being able to delineate between them. The press does a horrible job of explaining it so people misunderstand what SCOTUS actually said.
SCOTUS does have a long history of delineating between the rights granted to people vs persons vs person. A corporate tax should pass muster unless they say it impinges their freedom of speech but all manner of transmissions are taxed so it would have a shot if nothing else.
Where, please? Are you talking about Citizen's United?
If so, a quote would be nice; if not, do please share your implicit theme...
Its the Supreme Court Decision from two winters ago.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html
There is Kennedy's opinion.
He specifically references
to justify his extension of first amendment rights to but by to extension point out he is not starting a new precedent and he continuesThe Court has recognized that the First Amendment applies to corporations, e.g., First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti , 435 U. S. 765
I happen to agree with his position. The problem is the press and the public attempt to distort this particular ruling into some new ground breaking application of corporate freedom. For example wikipedia fixates on the commentAll speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech. Under the antidistortion rationale, Congress could also ban political speech of media corporations. Although currently exempt from §441b, they ac ulate wealth with the help of their corporate form, may have aggregations of wealth, and may express views “hav[ing] little or no correlation to the public’s support” for those views. Differential treatment of media corporations and other corporations cannot be squared with the First Amendment , and there is no support for the view that the Amendment’s original meaning would permit suppressing media corporations’ political speech.
You understand the notion of context. The insinuation in every narrative it seems to be about how they equated citizens rights to corporate rights.If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech
Read the opinion, its short and to the point.
Wouldn't it be discriminatory? Shouldn't all "persons", at least in theory, have the same access to elected officials?
Thus the choice of the word person over the plural. You can discriminate between a person and persons but not between individual person or persons. Person is not the same thing as persons is not the same thing as people.
Already have.
A long previous discussion about Citizen's United can be found here.
I'm in basic agreement with you about personhood. The SC didn't rule on that.
That they did is mildly prevalent misconception.
the law overturned was frankly a POS, but if issue advertising was a firehose, now it's more like Niagara Falls
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