Targeting Target

Don’t you love it when people rise up in an honest and open way?

When Target gave money in July to a pro-business group in Minnesota, the company thought it was helping its bottom line by backing candidates in its home state who support lower taxes. Instead, the retailer has found itself in a fight with liberal and gay rights groups that has escalated into calls for a nationwide boycott and protests at the company’s headquarters and stores.

The problem: Target’s $100,000 helped pay for TV ads supporting the gubernatorial campaign of Republican state Rep. Tom Emmer, who thinks Minnesota’s corporate taxes should be lower. As it turns out, he also wants to ban same-sex marriage.

All of this is a direct result of January’s Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations to contribute unlimited money for political advertising. The court foolishly determined that in matters of free speech, there should be no distinction between individuals and corporations. Adding to the idiocy of that decision is the fact that corporations may do so anonymously. Target’s problems arose because Minnesota’s laws force political committee’s to disclose their list of contributors.

Let Target’s problems be a warning to other corporations attempting to influence political campaigns by way of money. While they may do so with their clientele never being aware, they risk the chance of a national boycott should they be found out.

Mess around with the people, the people mess around with you. It’s only fair.

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Comments

E.A. Blair says:

August 19, 2010 at 10:07 am

I’ve said this so many times that I’m tired of typing it. If the law on campaign contributions were to be changed so that only registered voters could contribute, at least only living, breathing people would be able to contribute. Anyone who is not a voter has no legitimate interest in who gets elected.
JohnnyFry says:

August 19, 2010 at 10:20 am

E.A., Probably a better idea than what we have now. The recent Supreme Court ruling was a travesty and we, as a Nation, will certainly live to regret it.

We need to get over the fallacy that corporations are the same as living breathing beings and should enjoy the same privileges.
Janet says:

August 19, 2010 at 12:29 pm

Yeah, pretty bad. I think it was the Right of Eminent Domain Law, that the Supreme Court passed, that changed the course of individual freedom as we know it. There are other links but this one just gets to the heart of it faster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_eminent_domain
libhomo says:

August 21, 2010 at 5:49 am

There are two critical facts that often get lost in this debate.

1) Campaign contributions are not speech.

2) Corporations have no rights under our constitution. Only people do.
E.A. Blair says:

August 21, 2010 at 9:19 am

@libhomo: There are two facts that seem to have escaped your notice.

1) Over the years, a number of court decisions have equated campaign spending with speech, starting with Buckley vs. Valeo in 1976, First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti in 1978 and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010.

2) Cases involving granting corporations rights go back to Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886 and 1886 (the latter case determined that corporations were persons under the Fourteenth Amendement) and reaffirmed by Citizens United.

No, those facts you mentioned have not been lost; they are not facts in the face of court decisions that have increasingly favored the rights of corporations over human beings. There’s a saying that’s popular on both sides of the lib/con fence: “Either you’re outraged or you’re not paying attention”. Which are you?
libhomo says:

August 21, 2010 at 11:09 am

1) I am aware of those rulings, which were fraudulent rulings by corrupt judges. Claims that campaign contributions are “speech” aren’t just fraudulent. They are Orwellian.

2) The railroad case you talk about is interesting. A crooked former railroad attorney slipped the claims of corporate personhood into the bill because of his position as a counsel for the court. Also, keep in mind that the Supreme Court in the late 19th Century was notoriously dishonest. Rulings claiming that antitrust laws apply to unions, but not corporations and the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson case.

The Supreme Court has a history of putting wealthy and corporate interests ahead of the rule of law, even when doing so requires monumental dishonesty. The cases you mention are extreme examples of this.
E.A. Blair says:

August 21, 2010 at 12:22 pm

Well, if you can unilaterally declare them fraudulent, then you must be the S.M.O.G.* Whatever you think of those rulings and the judges who made them, they have the force of law until or unless they are overturned. Your opinion does not change the fact that campaign money is being treated as speech, not does the honesty of the 1886 court invalidate the use of its decision as a precedent. Yours is the same argument used by tax evaders/protestors to justify their actions: that the Sixteenth Amendment is unconstitutional.

The first sentence in the last paragraph in your previous comment approaches the point of this posting. If you listened to the 2010 State of the Union address, you would remember that the President publicly criticized the Citizens United decision as bad law. The point is that law in practice is seldom consonant with law in theory, and since there is no legal way to keep Target from spending their money on campaigns, it’s up to people to make it both embarrassing and inconvenient to do so.

*S.M.O.G. = Secret Master Of Government

P.S.: Well, as long as you’re the S.M.O.G., how about putting through a boost in my Social Security payments?