You or I don't have any more right to know who a private party supports than you or I have the right to demand someone disclose their religion, their desires, or what sexual positions they used last night.

So, you believe there should be a list of gay individuals or people who have had abortions as well? The freedom to be gay or have abortions certainly isn't free of repercussions from private individuals disagreeing with you, either.

Fact is, we're *not* free of government censorship, government repercussions, or government consquences for free speech - Citizens United had to get the attention of the *Supreme Court* to protect their free speech and ask Julian Assange or the FDA Nine how free their speech has been from government intrusion. Until we hit that point, we can't even begin to have the start of a discussion on disclosure, from a practical standpoint.

We have freedom of anonymous speech, zonk. If that is your real name.

I suppose if you always though corporations were right, no matter what they did, and thought they made the sun shine and man walk upright - as Dan appears to, you might be unconcerned with corporate power and rabidly opposed to goverment power.

It ignores completely reality in lieu of theory.

Again. Why do you bear no responsibility for people that die below your cost/benefit line while other people bear ultimate responsibility for those that die below theirs?

A corporation without personhood has little legal protection against a legislature that wishes to do it ill.

But donating money to a candidate is *not* speaking out in public. It's private speech to aid a person. If I give $50 to Mitt Romney, I'm privately aiding him, not making a public speech. Just as if I'm talking to Mitt Romney and tell him that his advisers are stupid, that shouldn't be required to be disclosed, either.

But donating money to a candidate is *not* speaking out in public. It's private speech to aid a person. If I give $50 to Mitt Romney, I'm privately aiding him, not making a public speech. Just as if I'm talking to Mitt Romney and tell him that his advisers are stupid, that shouldn't be required to be disclosed, either.

But donating money to a candidate is *not* speaking out in public. It's private speech to aid a person.

"[T]he percentage of families who earn over $250,000 a year happens to be almost exactly the same as the percentage of homosexuals in the population. How would our ever-courageous journalists react if an American president tried to increase his odds of re-election by demonizing homosexuals and calling for draconian legislation against them?"

But, to answer your question, 1478, 1334, 1343, 1386, 1207, 1227, 1105, 1109, 1111, 1031, are as much as I can read of you without gagging on the sandwich I'm eating.

I absolutely invite everyone to read those posts, and let me know if Dan is fairly characterizing them. Because he's absolutely counting on the fact that he can throw out a string of post numbers, and readers will think he actually answered the question I asked of him.

Because what you choose to contract with another private party and however, be it supporting their political campaign

But donating money to a candidate is *not* speaking out in public. It's private speech to aid a person. If I give $50 to Mitt Romney, I'm privately aiding him, not making a public speech. Just as if I'm talking to Mitt Romney and tell him that his advisers are stupid, that shouldn't be required to be disclosed, either.

It's not hard to fill in what you would say in any situation.

It's for the purpose of accurately calculating taxable income, not to aid government in suppressing free speech (note that only the IRS can see that particular 709 form, it's not actually publicly disclosed).

Why would a company want to leave itself open to such a mess?

No more in this example then I'm bribing the pizzeria to give me a pizza with a $10 bill.

Because a "company" is an arbitrary construct, rather than a thinking entity capable of having desires? A company isn't able to "want" anything - the people who own and/or operate that company do its wanting for it.

Of course, what makes bribery in government a real problem? Well, a large, progressive government, with unlimited power to grant super-lucrative favors, of course!

WASHINGTON – Organized labor spends about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, a finding that shines a light on an aspect of labor's political activity that has often been overlooked.

Previous estimates have focused on labor unions' filings with federal election officials, which chronicle contributions made directly to federal candidates and union spending in support of candidates for Congress and the White House.

But unions spend far more money on a wider range of political activities, including supporting state and local candidates and deploying what has long been seen as the unions' most potent political weapon: persuading members to vote as unions want them to.

The new figures come from a little-known set of annual reports to the Labor Department in which local unions, their national parents and labor federations have been required to detail their spending on politics and lobbying since 2005.

...

The usual measure of unions' clout encompasses chiefly what they spend supporting federal candidates through their political-action committees, which are funded with voluntary contributions, and lobbying Washington, which is a cost borne by the unions' own coffers.

These kinds of spending, which unions report to the Federal Election Commission and to Congress, totaled $1.1 billion from 2005 through 2011, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The unions' reports to the Labor Department capture an additional $3.3 billion that unions spent over the same period on political activity.

The costs reported to the Labor Department range from polling fees, to money spent persuading union members to vote a certain way, to bratwursts to feed Wisconsin workers protesting at the state capitol last year. Much of this kind of spending comes not from members' contributions to a PAC but directly from unions' dues-funded coffers. There is no requirement that unions report all of this kind of spending to the Federal Election Commission, or FEC.

No, as it's a free exchange between two free parties.

The costs reported to the Labor Department range from polling fees, to money spent persuading union members to vote a certain way, to bratwursts to feed Wisconsin workers protesting at the state capitol last year. Much of this kind of spending comes not from members' contributions to a PAC but directly from unions' dues-funded coffers. There is no requirement that unions report all of this kind of spending to the Federal Election Commission, or FEC.

But I may refer to you as Andy the Murderer - I've had someone I care about die in a car crash that would have been prevented by the law you say is silly. Why do you think killing people is silly? Are you simply a sociopath?

or if people are still pretending that the liberal circle jerk on BBTF is just a figment of Ron Jeremy's imagination.

Actually, the most damaging forms of corruption involve privatization, in which valuable property held in the public trust is turned over to private interests at a disadvantageous price, in return for personal considerations conveyed to the official in charge.

Only a government with great, unlimited power, can do that.

So what do we have on the last couple of pages, a dozen liberals against Dan on this free speech issue, with a lone post from Kurt adding the "balance"? I wonder if Robinred is recording the breakdown of the factions here, or if people are still pretending that the liberal circle jerk on BBTF is just a figment of Ron Jeremy's imagination.

I have no issue with corporations that specialize in employment services (unions) having free speech.

So you support this law of yours, then? Unless you don't also think it's "silly", then I'm not sure you have a point here, other than that Andy can be ineloquent about making his points (as can we all).

A corporation without personhood has little legal protection against a legislature that wishes to do it ill.

It's like the Election Day 2008 thread, in which Andy tallied McCain vs. Obama votes and at the point it reached Obama 20, McCain 0, Andy used the vote of Mike Emeigh's wife's vote as evidence of the site's balance, despite it only making it 20-1, Mike Emeigh's wife never posting on BTF, and Mike himself not being any kind of significant participant in a political thread ever.

It's not that Andy has been "ineloquent" but that he has dodged the question, repeatedly.

Which is charming and all, in light of him reposting that Iraq question some 20 times until I answered it twice.

It's not that Andy has been "ineloquent" but that he has dodged the question, repeatedly.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) has requested that the Supreme Court overturn a ruling that allows state employees to keep their same-sex partners on their benefits, including health insurance.

Brewer filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on July 2, requesting that the high court overturn the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's September 2011 ruling in Diaz vs. Brewer. The pushback comes three months after the Ninth Circuit denied a request by Arizona state lawyers to re-hear the case with an 11-judge panel.

Last September, the Ninth Circuit's ruling prevented Arizona from implementing a law that would have barred state employees' same-sex partners from remaining on their health plans. The ruling affirmed a lower court's decision to place a preliminary injunction on the law.

The 3-0 ruling upheld a federal judge's injunction against a law that was signed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in 2009 and was scheduled to take effect [in 2011]. Brewer's predecessor, Janet Napolitano, had authorized health benefits for state employees' domestic partners in April 2008 before leaving to become President Obama's Homeland Security secretary.

Groups of people are people.

Did Andy also retract the statement that went along with this that people against Obamacare should be killed? If so, I missed it.

That's an error of common law then.

Groups of people are people.

Rep. Michele Bachmann says the Muslim Brotherhood, the international Islamist movement that recently came to power in Egypt, has made “deep penetration” within the U.S. government, and she wants an investigation of its influence within five federal agencies.

...

Bachmann, who serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, ratcheted up the rhetoric in an interview last month with radio host Sandy Rios.

“It appears that there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood,” Bachmann said. “It appears that there are individuals who are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood who have positions, very sensitive positions, in our Department of Justice, our Department of Homeland Security, potentially even in the National Intelligence Agency.”

Corporations are different than clubs and organizations. They have privileges that are denied to those other groups.

That's an error of common law then.

Groups of people are people.

If he doesn't retract the statement, then how can we assume he doesn't feel differently?

That's an error of common law then.

Groups of people are people.

Again, I've never said one word in support of automatically assumed limited liability.

Again, I've never said one word in support of automatically assumed limited liability.

So long as they're not on private property, not impeding traffic on any public thoroughfare, or being so loud that they're inflicting noise health effects on an unwilling third party, why not?

It's a dumb question that doesn't substantially speak to the point he was making. He acknowledged that lines have to be drawn at some point (e.g., his methane-filter example above), which is all Dan's question is supposed to make him admit.

I'm not keen on limited liability, either

no, Corporations are entities created for specific purposes (usually business activities)- the PRIMARY purpose is to insulate the owner/shareholder from personal liability.

at the basic legal level a group of people engaged in a common enterprise is a "partnership" or joint venture- each individual would be liable for the acts or debts of the whole- a variety of constructs were created to deal with that- one construct was the business corporation-

one person or a group of persons could form a "corporation"- and if they did it legally and registered it and followed all the rules, those individual person would no longer be liable for the acts of the corporation.

So you have corporations and partnerships and limited partnerships you have "professional corporations" (those are corporations where every shareholder has to be a member of the same profession- usually medical or legal), you have LLCs (similar to corporations, typically limited to a certain number of shareholders, who in some states must all be human beings...)

a corporation is not a random group of people with all the rights of those individuals, it is specific type of legal entity with specific rights and limitations imposed by the state statute that created it- in some ways it has less rights than its individual members- in some ways it has more.

I don't see how this matters. The agreed-upon fiction of the corporation is created by a variety of contractual agreements and related legal statutes. The people who enter into those contractual agreements retain their rights regardless. Whether the corporation called into existence by the relation of contractual agreements to legal codes has rights does not impact at all whether the people who signed the contracts have rights. They do regardless.

Corporations are entities created for specific purposes (usually business activities)- the PRIMARY purpose is to insulate the owner/shareholder from personal liability.

Then Andy has two choices:

Either take back his statement that Good Face should be shot on sight, or concede that Andy should be shot on sight along with Good Face.

And like lots of things, the justification for its continued existence has greatly evolved from the initial motivation for its creation.

Only a government with great, unlimited power, can do that. You're walking arm-in-arm with the bible-beaters in trying to further that goal.

Either take back his statement that Good Face should be shot on sight, or concede that Andy should be shot on sight along with Good Face.

Does not follow, Ray. The one thing Dan's example does is illuminate the necessity of finding lines to draw. IOW, his example directly refutes the kind of binary thinking that you're doing here (and that, bizarrely, Dan himself is engaging in).