Web Letters | The Nation

Consumer boycott

Another effective way to fight the decision to allow corporations full attack with money on our elections is for someone—anyone—to take on listing on a website every corporation that does so and a way to directly contact them and their CEOs, so we can tell them we are boycotting their products. Model: the recent campaign against Target—but total coverage of all similar instances. Consumer boycott hits them quickly where they feel it most.

(The Rev.) Robert Anderson

Anacortes, WA

Aug 6 2010 - 12:32pm

Legal reasoning

After having read some of the reasoning in this case, I find myself in somewhat reluctant agreement with most of it. I can find no flaw in some of the lines of attack, although it goes against my emotional feeling. No one could deny the rights to free speech of such corporations as Disney or General Electric, because they include, respectivel;y, ABC and NBC/MSNBC. Not even for Fox. If a company buys, say, a decrepit and bankrupt local newspaper, serving a tiny town, does that automatically give it free speech? Would anyone argue that because a corporation is not an individual, the Fifth Amendment's protection against uncompensated "taking of property" doesn't apply? How about the Fourth's protection against unreasonable search and seizure? How can corporations be entitled to some of the protections in the Bill of Rights but not others?

John D. Froelich

Upper Darby, PA

Aug 1 2010 - 1:12am