Offering a bribe is a free speech. Making a threat is free speech. So is blackmailing someone.

[kpete]

Three big lies wrapped up in the Citizens United decision
by: Paul Rosenberg
Sun Jan 31, 2010 at 13:30

There's nothing original about them. They've all been with us a good long while. But there are three big lies wrapped up in the Citizens United decision. Take them away, and there's nothing left. They are:

(1) Money is speech.
(2) Corporations are people.
(3) Lies (1) and (2) are not the inventions of conservative judicial activism.

......................

SCOTUS decision is really about: brute power, not speech.

BILL MOYERS: But if I understand the decision, it doesn't enable the chairman of Exxon Mobil, or the chairman of GE to write a check to Zephyr Teachout, who's running for Congress from Vermont. It says she can spend as much money as they want to, in the, right up to the election. Right? Advocating that you be elected or defeated?

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: Yeah. Or, what happens more likely is candidates getting threatened and encouraged. It's a much subtler form of corruption. Where your mind shifts to say, "Well, do I really want to take on that financial transaction tax if I know that Goldman Sachs is going to do an ad campaign?"

MONICA YOUN: And I think that the threat is going to be even more of an important weapon than direct, you know, "Vote for so and so who we like."

BILL MOYERS: How do you mean?

MONICA YOUN: I think there's going to be a threat of corporate funded attack ads against elected officials who dare to stand up to corporate interests. Corporations have basically been handed a weapon. And when you walk into a negotiation, and you know that one person is armed and is able to use a weapon against you, they don't have to take out that weapon. They don't have to even brandish it. You know that they have it. And every elected official who goes up against an agenda on regulatory reform, on climate change, on health care, will know that the corporation who, you know, he or she is opposing, can fund a, you know, a $100 million ad campaign to take him or her out.

...........

The underlying point here is simple: Offering a bribe is a free speech. Making a threat is free speech. So is blackmailing someone. But none of them is protected free speech, because they involve criminal activity-activity that itself serves to stifle free speech. Treating unlimited corporate funding as simply free speech and nothing more not only buys the underlying lie that money is speech, it ignores the fact that even just the potential of unlimited corporate funding is a de facto blurring of the lines, it is inherently an offering of a bribe and a making of a threat. It could even be blackmail. These are not mere possibilities that might occur. They are inherent in the very nature of the vastly unequal power being given to corporations.

more:
http://openleft.com/diary/17191/three-big-lies-wrapped-up-in-the-citizens-united-decision

[grahamhgreen]

1. Threats, bribes and blackmail are free speech, too, like shouting 'fire' in a movie theatre. Good

talking point.

None of these activities are protected under the 1st amendment.