Of course, because I consider anything I give my money to a person, like my favorite vending machines and play-to-play pool tables.

Well, someone takes that money out of the vending machine and pool table. And spends it.
Don't get me wrong, I support higher taxes for the rich and wish to end many tax breaks for corporations, but what Romney said is correct. They hire people too.

Corporations are NOT people, they're legal contracts that people enter into. Fucking conservative double-speak. I swear.

It is utterly facile to argue that corporations should have the same political rights as people because they are ultimately owned by people.

If the corporation was raising money for the purpose of promoting the corp's political speech, that would be one thing. However, when they are taking the billions in profits from hand soap or coffee sales and using that money to effectively buy elections, it's impossible to honestly argue that the money they use represents the political will of the shareholders, particularly given the hyper-diluted nature of stock ownership these days in the form of mutual funds/index funds/pension funds,etc.

The BS notion of corporate personhood continues to fuck this nation, and we just keep asking for more.

Not that I agree with recent Supreme Court rulings, but how is a corporation buying elections different than a union doing so?

Soylent Green is people too!

... and yummy to boot!

frankieb: You can't buy shares of stock in a union.

Was that supposed to be an answer to the question?

"You can't buy shares of stock in a union."

Tell that to the mafia.

In my opinion, the question for free speech purposes ought to turn on the primary purpose of the association at issue. The primary purpose of a prototypical for-profit corporation is to create more money for shareholders. That's generally it. The primary purpose of a union is (or ought to be) an association of very similarly situated persons who are associating to protect their rights and working conditions. As such, they are much more easily cognizable as a cohesive political entity that should enjoy similar free speech rights to private citizens. Obviously there's a line a union could cross where that's no longer true, but you don't have the fundamental purpose problem that corporations have. Under my definitions, there's nothing stopping the individuals from otherwise pooling their INDIVIDUAL wealth for political purposes, but in every case (including unions) there needs to be perfect transparency about exactly who is paying for exactly what.

Damn those public teacher and nurses unions and their Hoffa-inspired Mafia goons!!!

Hey, I think Romney is terrible and don't consider corporations individuals, but I've also been a member of two unions and have found them to do nothing but protect incompetents. The altruistic ideals that lead to the formation of unions is long, long gone.

So, unions then are altruistic by nature and not in the buisness of perpetuating itself, and as such should be allowed to use dues to influence elections?

@ 14, in a word, yes.

Re: @5, what do unions have to do with anything?

Well, I think if people are pissed about corporations buying elections,and their influence on politics, then they should be just as pissed about unions doing the same thing. Most people are not part of a union, so they don't represent most of our interests. Nationally and especially locally.
And I've voted pro-unionization in the past too, and am very familiar with both the managements tactics as well as the unions.
It seemed as if all the people from corporate they brought in, in mandatory meetings, to tell us about the evils of unions were attractive educated women. But they did have their points too.
I'm not a Romney guy either. But I didn't have a problem with what he was saying.

@17: Really, "just as pissed"? Do you really think the influence of unions is anywhere near as strong as that of corporations? Even if it were, would the goals of corporations and unions be at all ethically comparable? You're throwing up a straw man.

Really.
Yes, especially locally. The unions are pretty damn strong in Portland, but what % of Portlanders are working union?
How much union money goes into local elections vs corporation money? I may be wrong, but it is comparable, isn't it?
Ethics? Are you suggesting unions are about ethics?
When was that?

btw, I think where Romney was going with this was an argument against higher taxes on corporations (maybe the rich too)and I am TOTALLY for taxing them more, or ending tax breaks, closing tax 'loopholes' and all that.

I also think that Savage using this short blip about Romney without full context is dirty politics.
They do that shit to Obama all the time and it pisses me off.

HE's such a gladhander, he belongs somewhere in the mid west in 1950. He's like a bad dream...

people who rally behind corps do themselves and the public a dis-service. corps are just shields for taxes and accountability; to avoid as much of both as possible and to externalize costs to the community or it's workforce. stock shareholders who are not in for the long game are the average citizen's enemy as they cripple good businesses to make a dollar off the upward and downward increments in chaos.