Re:U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate o...
by joshuamorton on Saturday September 17, 2022 @05:49PM
(#32881937)
Is CU allowed to pay people a nominal fee to be on-paper employees, whose only responsibility is to, a few times a year, sign a release form that allows CU to make a bundle of political donations on their behalf, with the fee paid out to the individual.
Or on the personal level, I can't actually tell if it's illegal for me to pay you $3000 to sign a contract saying you will donate $2600 to a particular candidate. And if it's legal for me and you do to that, why shouldn't it be legal for a corporate entity to do that at scale?
And it's certainly legal for you to hire me to handle the minutia of donating money to a political candidate.
Here's a structure that I think would be fairly unobjectionable: Citizens United works collectively to raise funds for political causes. Once funds are raised, the money -- in its entirety, minus administrative and other overhead costs -- is distributed to all the employees of Citizens United itself. That money is taxed, as it should be. Then the employees are free to voluntarily choose to contribute that money -- up to individual contribution limits -- to whatever candidates they so choose.
The same should be the case if an ordinary corporation (one that doesn't exist for political purposes) wants to donate to political causes: they should be forced to distribute the sum total of that desired contribution as salary to employees, who could then choose to make (or not make) those contributions.
Obviously there are flaws to this plan, and it needs more scrutiny and fleshing out, but I think it is much more democracy-preserving and -- critically -- transparent than just allowing corporations to act as "people" and fund political campaigns directly, or via shadowy means.