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Post by apres on Mar 26, 2012 3:49:08 GMT
I had to think about it before answering, because I don't like the way big corporations interfere in citizens' lives either, but I think free speech has to apply to everyone and everything equally. Political parties get their money from corporations anyways, and I believe in the US it's quite common for churches to tell their congregation how to vote, which is just as bad.
I like the occasional program, but TV overall is just meant to distract us and get us to buy things we don't need and can't afford (environmentally, I mean, but financially too). It's already toxic, so corporate political advertising is just like one more toxic element in the mix.
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Post by Kimby on Apr 5, 2012 2:53:08 GMT
Corporations are not people and do not should not have the same rights as human beings. If the owners of the corporation or its employees want to contribute their own money, then that could be construed as free speech. But when the corporations can contribute unlimited amounts of money, it can drown out the voices of the rest of us.
And churches will lose their tax free status if they advocate politically from the pulpit, so they must be pretty cagey about any forays into political territory.
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Post by nycgirl on Apr 5, 2012 3:32:52 GMT
Corporations are not people and do not should not have the same rights as human beings. You hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, corporations are essentially given the same rights as a person in this country, as wrong as that is.
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Post by Kimby on Apr 5, 2012 3:33:57 GMT
We can hope that that will change. Whether soon enough, remains to be seen.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2012 5:25:00 GMT
I already don't understand why churches have tax-free status in the U.S. and some other countries.
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Post by imec on Apr 5, 2012 12:23:06 GMT
Corporations are not people and do not should not have the same rights as human beings. You hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, corporations are essentially given the same rights as a person in this country, as wrong as that is. Can one of you please help me with this? Corporations are simply entities which represent the collective interests of their shareholders, employees and customers - all people. What rights should they be denied?
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Post by Kimby on Apr 5, 2012 13:42:40 GMT
Do they not get doubled rights if they can speak as individuals AND as corporations?
If all the shareholders, employees and customers gave up their individual rights and allowed the corporation to speak for them that might be different.
There is a limited amount of very expensive airtime for political "messages" on TV during the leadup to an election. Corporations can flood that medium with their message, making it difficult for all sides of an issue to be represented.
Is it desirable that only the message with the most money behind it gets heard? I think not.
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Post by Kimby on Apr 5, 2012 13:49:22 GMT
I already don't understand why churches have tax-free status in the U.S. and some other countries. The LONG explanation. churchesandtaxes.procon.org/#backgroundIt started with new convert Constantine, apparently.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 5, 2012 14:32:01 GMT
That's something I've never been able to understand either. I looked at your link, Kimby, and the only thing that had the tiniest grain of sense to it was the part about giving churches a tax break because they do charitable work.
But to extend that break to all churches on the unexamined assumption that they're filling a social services gap is stupid and unfair.
If you die and leave money, or if you make a gift of over X amount of dollars in the US, the recipients have to pay taxes on that money, regardless of the fact that it was already taxed when the giver had it. But churches can rake in any money anyone gives them & keep all of it.
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Post by Kimby on Apr 5, 2012 14:35:21 GMT
And the Bush administration even managed to corrupt the separation of church and state by giving tax money to church-run charities to perform those services.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 5, 2012 14:40:51 GMT
Much as it galls me to say this, I can sort of see the logic in that. Government often falls down in its commitment to social welfare & it's religious organizations that pick up the slack.
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Post by ninchursanga on Apr 5, 2012 14:54:46 GMT
Yesterday I watched a brief coverage on the Koch brothers and how they try to manipulate politics. Scary stuff. The conclusion of the documentary was that the Koch brothers are not even that interested anymore to manipulate the outcome of the presidential election but have discovered that they can gain much more influence on state levels and by lobbying in D.C. And the sums of money they give to conservative think tanks, conservative research institutes, lobbyists, etc. etc. - it's unreal. Not to mention that twice a year they invite all their billionaire, conservative buddies to lush resorts and try to convince them to donate money to the same conservative causes. imho, that is too much and there should be some kind of limit. Not because they're conservatives and I don't like them, if that happens on the democrat side I'd find it equally pervert.
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Post by Kimby on Apr 5, 2012 15:11:33 GMT
Here's George Carlin's take on the whole current situation. I stumbled on it while looking for church and state stuff, but his view is more all-encompassing. (He was WAY more than a comedian.)
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Post by imec on Apr 5, 2012 15:39:34 GMT
Do they not get doubled rights if they can speak as individuals AND as corporations? If all the shareholders, employees and customers gave up their individual rights and allowed the corporation to speak for them that might be different. There is a limited amount of very expensive airtime for political "messages" on TV during the leadup to an election. Corporations can flood that medium with their message, making it difficult for all sides of an issue to be represented. Is it desirable that only the message with the most money behind it gets heard? I think not. DOUBLE??? Actually FAR more than that. Unless you propose limiting both freedom of speech and association, they can be heard as many times as they like. I could for example be an Exxon shareholder, an evangelical christian, a member of Greenpeace, a member of both a pro life AND pro choice organization, a supporter of the arts, a member of the NRA, a member of a political party, an occupier.... Do I have to choose only one of these? Or choose none and just maintain my individual voice? Can I only hold shares in one company? Sorry, you've lost me completely. I AM glad we seem to agree on the special treatment for churches nonsense. Among many other wrongs, this is just out and out discrimination. I'm quite sure if I were to establish the church of the Tooth Fairy or any other such imaginary character I would be denied tax exempt status.
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Post by mickthecactus on Apr 5, 2012 15:46:45 GMT
Do they not get doubled rights if they can speak as individuals AND as corporations? If all the shareholders, employees and customers gave up their individual rights and allowed the corporation to speak for them that might be different. There is a limited amount of very expensive airtime for political "messages" on TV during the leadup to an election. Corporations can flood that medium with their message, making it difficult for all sides of an issue to be represented. Is it desirable that only the message with the most money behind it gets heard? I think not. www.venganza.org/DOUBLE??? Actually FAR more than that. Unless you propose limiting both freedom of speech and association, they can be heard as many times as they like. I could for example be an Exxon shareholder, an evangelical christian, a member of Greenpeace, a member of both a pro life AND pro choice organization, a supporter of the arts, a member of the NRA, a member of a political party, an occupier.... Do I have to choose only one of these? Or choose none and just maintain my individual voice? Can I only hold shares in one company? Sorry, you've lost me completely. I AM glad we seem to agree on the special treatment for churches nonsense. Among many other wrongs, this is just out and out discrimination. I'm quite sure if I were to establish the church of the Tooth Fairy or any other such imaginary character I would be denied tax exempt status. There is of course The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.. www.venganza.org/
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Post by Kimby on Apr 5, 2012 16:18:53 GMT
imec, if you ask the people who live in states where the outcome of an election is not a foregone conclusion and are therefore subjected to mind-numbing quantities of political mudslinging advertisements intended to swing the election one way or another , they would probably be happy to give up some of their multiple rights of speech and association for a little peace and quiet. ;-)
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Post by imec on Apr 5, 2012 16:51:14 GMT
Hahahahahah! Yes, in this country too, there are days when that would seem like a fair trade!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2012 17:09:51 GMT
Freedom of speech in private is one thing. Spreading hate, racism and general evil in public is a crime in many countries. Naturally, the interpretation of this in countries like Germany or France where certain ideas are a crime is a bit different from certain other countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia where other ideas are a crime.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2016 12:09:07 GMT
I was looking to see if a certain topic existed in this section of the board and came across this quite interesting thread which is still pertinent.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 24, 2016 16:09:13 GMT
Great minds, etc. ~
I wanted to revive this indeed pertinent thread this morning and, lo & behold, you had the same idea almost three weeks ago! Apologies for not seeing it then, but it was the day I flew off to the US for a visit.
At any rate, I'm torn between re-reading the entire thread now or going ahead and taking the test cold.
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Post by htmb on Apr 24, 2016 16:26:37 GMT
I reread the thread back when Kerouac revived it, and took the test. I came out a centrist, though I'm more to the left than the test measured. I'm for women to have the right to make decisions about their bodies. I'm also against the death penalty. I prefer to see the truly rotten human beings of the world rot in prison for the rest of their lives, but I'd deny them all but the most basic of rights once they begin their life sentence. I'm also very willing to believe mistakes can be made, and hate the thought of an innocent person being wrongly put to death.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2016 19:09:07 GMT
Oh, I'm so liberal it hurts. John Paul Stevens and I are agreed 100% (isn't it funny that I've never, ever heard of him?).
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Post by lagatta on Apr 24, 2016 20:25:56 GMT
"Liberal" on everything, though actually I'm a socialist , and no, I don't mean I'm Stalin. As per the child rape, I agree with everyone on the utter horror of that (and in Canada, we were very angry that Karla Homolka, Paul Bernado's partner in horrific assaults and murders on pubescent girls they had kidnapped, got off with "manslaughter" in a plea bargain due to extremely sloppy police work), but I don't want to give the State life and death power over anyone, except in cases when it is a matter of defending people from an immanent threat (police shooting a mass shooter or terrorist). And I wouldn't worry about the child rapist. He (usually) would get his just desserts in prison. A majority of late abortions are therapeutic. As I recall, the gun question was about handguns. I think hunters and people in rural areas should be allowed to own hunting rifles (not assault weapons). Though even in this case, sadly this often means more suicides and murders of "friends and family" (often when people are intoxicated with one or more substances).
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Post by questa on May 21, 2016 5:30:17 GMT
I came out as totally liberal as well In Australia the main 2 parties are Liberal, the wrongly named conservative party, and Labor, the wrongly spelled workers party. The Libs are further left than most of the world's Conservatives but our current electioneering shows them slipping back to the 1950s, their natural environment. They propose to cut the company taxes to help the rich get richer, paid for with more household taxes
Labor is making promises that are patently impossible to carry out in this financial climate. They want to reduce household taxes and hit the rich to fund it. They are more humane with our ghastly asylum seeker/refugee problem
Then we have the minor parties...Greens and Independents. They wield great power as often their votes are required to allow Bills to go through. They tend to be more left than Labor.
We vote on July 1st. It is interesting to note that neither party wants to talk about refugees and Islamic problems, even though it is the first thing that people ask about when a candidate meets the people.
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Post by patricklondon on May 23, 2016 14:40:54 GMT
Totally "liberal" of course, but then in US terms I probably count as a raging Bolshevik. I checked the position on gun control in the UK. It's not that we aren't allowed to have guns per se: rather, we are allowed to have a gun provided we can prove to the local police that we have a good reason for one, or, if we want a handgun, we have to convince the Home Secretary. Since the Home Office guidelines to the local police say that the government doesn't consider personal protection a good enough reason to have a gun (except in very rare cases, where someone may be a known target), that means you can really only have a shotgun, a hunting rifle or a competition weapon. Even then the police have to satisfy themselves that you are sane, not a criminal, that the gun you want is right for the conditions under which you want to use it (the guidelines to the police go into a lot of detail about things like calibre and muzzle velocity according to the intended target), that you have any necessary permissions for that purpose (e.g., a landowner's consent for you to hunt or control vermin on their land, or a shooting club membership, as appropriate), and that you keep it in secure conditions (to be regularly inspected, just as your firearms certificate has to be regularly reviewed). And all that seems about right, in my view. And I think the "freedom of speech" argument isn't entirely relevant to the question of corporate promotion of candidates for election. First of all, a corporation is only a legal "person" for the purposes for which it is set up and (a point that often seems to be overlooked) for which it is granted the privilege of limited liability: the rights and freedoms of its shareholders as individual human beings are another matter and not delegated to the company. Second, freedom of speech is about not punishing people for their speech or opinions. Establishing a level playing field for the electoral process by imposing expenditure limits (which is the approach we take) does not punish people for their speech or opinions, it merely focusses, as it were, on the volume at which they shout them. A corporation's CEO could publish an article in the papers arguing for one side or the other (e.g., as many currently are in our referendum campaign) without any special restriction, but when they start spending squillions on advertising campaigns and tying that into their commercial activity, that's a different matter. There's a (slightly manufactured) fuss about Ryanair offering discounts, supposedly for people to fly back to the UK to vote to stay in the EU: I doubt if it will be treated as potential bribery as the Outers are supposedly alleging, but the advertising might be counted as expenditure in support of the Remain campaign, in my view (either way, Ryanair gets the publicity, which I suspect is the whole point). There's a grey area in UK law about "undue influence", i.e., what is the point at which religious - or any other organised - pressure becomes intimidatory; it's not often raised, but the recent hooha about the London borough in which I live featured one such allegation. My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam"
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Post by mossie on May 23, 2016 15:40:02 GMT
I had to go back to the start of this (very US centric) thread to rediscover that I am 4 to 2 a conservative.
However I have very little faith in any political party here, and am perhaps well to the right of Ghengis Khan on some issues, but left of Tony Benn on others.
The big corporations have way too much power and influence, but short of a real revolution, there seems no way this can change.
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Post by lagatta on May 24, 2016 12:21:51 GMT
Yes, a lot of the questions are off the radar for non-US residents, even Canadians.
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Post by rikita on Jun 14, 2016 13:31:40 GMT
just asked agnes whether she is liberal or conservative. her reply? "conservapeeve"
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 22, 2016 21:42:28 GMT
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Post by lagatta on Jun 22, 2016 22:46:36 GMT
Yes, I heard that on the radio news, and the spokesperson was John Lewis. I thought he was dead.
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