3 thoughts on “FHB says “yes” to Ben Cayetano’s mayoral campaign”

1. Jared I. Kuroiwa August 4, 2012 at 10:26 am

   Hello Ian,

   Not sure if you remember me, but we met a while back when I was at KGMB in the mid-2000s. Ryan Ozawa sent me a link to this story as he thought you’d be interested in a little project I’ve been doing for entertainment around the Campaign Spending Commission, Ethics and Office of Elections.

   Take a look and play around with it. If you’re looking for anything specific or have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

   https://brchawaii.com/influence/politician.php

   The data is pulled from their sites through code and it’s all placed into data tables. At the bottom of each page, there are links for you to download the raw data if you like to look at it that way.

   Ryan, Burt Lum and I have been trying to get more government data open so the community can have the opportunity to look at data like this through a new non-profit called Hawaii Open Data (http://hawaiiopendata.com/). Sorry for the pitch, but I figured you’d be interested in what we’re doing.

   Have fun,
   Jared

   Reply ↓
   1. sy August 4, 2012 at 10:25 pm

      Very interesting, Jared. Thanksfor your work to help follow the money. Now if PRP would reveal where the million came from… not from the poor carpenters …

      Reply ↓
2. skeptical once again August 6, 2012 at 12:18 pm

   One issue is, again, whether the big players who publicly support big projects in Hawaii actually believe in these projects in private. Another issue is that big players must also support the leading candidate — if they know what’s best for them. And in the case of Mufi Hannemann’s declining fortunes in his gubernatorial bid and now his US House race, the leading candidate might not remain the leading candidate. Big players must be nimble and be able to switch sides – if they know what’s good for them.

   Another issue is whether corporations should be granted freedom of speech rights to engage in politics.

   This is all based on the notion of “corporate personhood”.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

   Corporate personhood is the legal concept that a corporation may sue and be sued in court in the same way as natural persons or unincorporated associations of persons. This doctrine in turn forms the basis forlegal recognition that corporations, as groups of people, may hold and exercise certain rights under the common law and the U.S. Constitution. The doctrine does not hold that corporations are “people” in the literal sense, nor does it grant to corporations all of the rights of citizens. However, as interpreted by the the US Supreme Court, the doctrine provides corporations the right to secretly and with some limits – fund political campaigns. It is widely believed that politicians reward these contributions upon election. Furthermore, corporations, as such enjoy a kind of immortality and can not be jailed or killed, unlike “people” in the literal sense.

   The underlying motive of granting legal personhood to corporations seems to be pragmatic, and it has been applied in a limited way.

   The basis for allowing corporations to assert protection under the U.S. Constitution is that they are organizations of people, and that people should not be deprived of their constitutional rights when they act collectively.[5] In this view, treating corporations as “persons” is a convenient legal fiction that allows corporations to sue and to be sued, provides a single entity for easier taxation and regulation, simplifies complex transactions that would otherwise involve, in the case of large corporations, thousands of people, and that protects the individual rights of the shareholders as well as the right of association.
   Generally, corporations are not able to claim constitutional protections that would not otherwise be available to persons acting as a group. For example, the Supreme Court has not recognized a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination for a corporation, since that right can be exercised only on an individual basis. InUnited States v. Sourapas and Crest Beverage Company, “[a]ppellants [suggested] that the use of the word “taxpayer” several times in the regulations requires that the fifth-amendment self-incrimination warning be given to a corporation.” The Court did not agree.[6]

   Ironically, it is the 14th amendment, passed to insure the rights of freed slaves, that has been used to justify corporate personhood, even though the rights of African Americans were largely ignored for one hundred years after passage of the amendment.

   In the 1886 case Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific, the Supreme Court directed the lawyers that they were of the opinion that the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause guarantees constitutional protections to corporations in addition to natural persons.[10]

   The primary purpose of the 14th Amendment was to protect freed slaves.[citation needed] One of the 1886 judges, Samuel F. Miller, had considered the purpose of the Amendment in 1872, only six years after the Amendment had become law, when the court was “called upon for the first time to give construction to these articles.” In the Slaughterhouse Cases (83 U.S. 36 (1872)), Miller delivered the majority opinion and discussed the Thirteenth Amendment and the Fifteenth Amendment as well as the Fourteenth as follows:

   The most cursory glance at these articles discloses a unity of purpose, when taken in connection with the history of the times, which cannot fail to have an important bearing on any question of doubt concerning their true meaning. Nor can such doubts, when any reasonably exist, be safely and rationally solved without a reference to that history, for in it is found the occasion and the necessity for recurring again to the great source of power in this country, the people of the States, for additional guarantees of human rights, additional powers to the Federal government; additional restraints upon those of the States. Fortunately, that history is fresh within the memory of us all, and its leading features, as they bear upon the matter before us, free from doubt. We repeat, then, in the light of this recapitulation of events, almost too recent to be called history, but which are familiar to us all, and on the most casual examination of the language of these amendments, no one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in them all, lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.

   John A. Bingham, the member of Congress who is known to have been chiefly responsible for the language of Section One when it was drafted by the Joint Committee in 1866, had, during the previous decade and as early as 1856-1859, employed not one but all three of the same clauses and concepts he later used in Section One. More important still, Bingham employed these guarantees specifically and in a context which suggested that free Negroes and mulattoes unquestionably were the persons to which he then referred.[citation needed]

   But whatever the reasons for their adoption, laws often benefit those other than the original intended beneficiary. Thus, whites, latinos, and women, as well as African-Americans, are clearly protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and groups organized specifically for business purposes, including corporations, may also benefit from its protections, just as any other group of persons. Although it is now well settled law that the 14th Amendment extends to corporations, the extent to which it should attach to corporations has continued to draw criticism from liberal legal theorists.

   One irony is that this granting of legal personhood to corporations is championed by conservatives, even though it runs counter to much of conservative thinking.

   Ralph Nader and others have argued that a strict originalist philosophy, such as that of Justice Antonin Scalia, should reject the doctrine of corporate personhood under the Fourteenth Amendment.[14] Indeed, Chief Justice William Rehnquist repeatedly criticized the Court’s invention of corporate constitutional “rights,” most famously in his dissenting opinion in the 1978 case First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti.[15]Nonetheless, these justices’ rulings have continued to affirm the assumption of corporate personhood, as the Waite court did, and Justice Rehnquist himself eventually endorsed overruling “Austin,” dissenting inMcConnell v. FEC.

   This brings us to Citizens United.

   The corporate personhood aspect of the campaign finance debate turns on Buckley v. Valeo (1976) andCitizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010): Buckley ruled that political spending is protected by the First Amendment right to free speech, while Citizens United ruled that corporate political spending is protected, holding that corporations have a First Amendment right to free speech. Opponents of these decisions have argued that if all corporate rights under the Constitution were abolished, it would clear the way for greater regulation of campaign spending and contributions. It should be noted, however, that neither decision relied on the concept of corporate personhood, and the Buckley decision in particular deals with the rights of individuals and political committees, not corporations.

   My own philosophy is that there should be tradeoffs.

   If a corporation is given greater rights or benefits, it should also be given greater costs and responsibilities.

   For example, commercial banks are insured through the FDIC. Because they agree to certain federal regulations, commercial banks will be bailed out if they are in trouble. Investment banks have no such obligations to following such regulations, and therefore theoretically will not be bailed out in a time of crisis. In fact, bailing out such unregulated entities will only encourage reckless behavior in the future, and lead to more crises and bailouts.

   So I feel that if corporations are going to be granted freedom of speech and the right to contribute to political campaigns on the grounds that they are legal persons, they should pay income tax.

   For example, Bill Gates pays income tax, and his personal worth is more than that of most corporations in the US.

   What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

   Reply ↓

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