This whole idea of a corporation being like a person reminds me of an experience I had in a humanities course in college.

We were reading some of the works of Plato. The descriptions of discussions between Socrates and one of his students used to drive me nuts. They would be discussing some subject and Socrates would say “isn’t a person like a horse”. In the context in which this came up, the student would agree. Then Socrates would say, “Well if you agree that a person is like a horse, then you must also agree to this other proposition.” The other proposition would always be some way in which a person does not in anyway resemble a horse. As Plato described it, the student would essentially respond, “Well, I guess you got me there. Because I agreed to the horse analogy before, I must agree to this ridiculous proposition.”

I wrote a paper mentioning what an idiotic way this was to reason about the world. I was rewarded with a D on that paper. This was the highest grade I ever got on a paper in that class, but I don’t think it was because the professor agreed with me. Maybe the D was because I got my sister, an English major, to help me with the paper. I wish she had told me that you don’t get good grades by criticizing the books that the professor has chosen for you to read.

Maybe the other lesson is that we need more technically trained Supreme Court justices, lawyers, and Congress members who understand a thing or two about logic. (and fewer non-technically trained humanities professors at a technical college like this professor and the art history professor that thought perpendicular and parallel were synonyms.)

I posted the original version of this as a comment on a thread on Tangelia Sinclair-Moore’s facebook page.

Just in case you have trouble making the connection between this post and anything that is happening in the world these days, I offer this explanation. This post is prompted by the brouhaha over the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overrule the restrictions on corporate spending on political advocacy. The arguments pro and con for this ruling seem to revolve around earlier precedent that a corporation is a person for purposes of applying the law.

Well, a corporation is not a person, it is a corporation. If it is like a person in some respect, then you can apply the law to it like a person because of the similarity in the instance under consideration. You don’t then abandon the notion of how it was like a person in that particular case and then go on to treat it like a person in other cases just because you used that analogy once in an unrelated matter. Such leaps of logic result in legal decisions that have little basis in reality and are very hard to defend as sensible.

Maybe the solution is to realize that the people in a corporation should be allowed to get together to spend money for political advocacy, but not as part of a corporation legally chartered by the state for some other purpose. Since a corporation is legally chartered by the state, the state should be able to define the rules about what people in the corporation can do in the name of the corporation. If people don’t like those rules, then they can form a group as something else, other than a corporation. What people in the corporation do when not acting in the name of the corporation comes under a different set of rules.

Of course how you separate a particular piece of advocacy from the original charter of the corporation can be very problematic.

My examples of news media corporations or magazine publishing corporations are immediately troublesome. Particularly for a magazine, its whole reason for being may be political advocacy. Freedom of the press is also protected by the First Amendment.

Non-media companies are allowed to advertise their products and tell you why you should buy them. T. Boone Pickens recently got into the business of wind energy and started airing commercials promoting wind energy. Is this political or corporate related?

Being a Supreme Court Justice is hard work. Where have I heard a statement like that before?

I have been disturbed by the knee-jerk reaction to the Supreme Court decision.  I even received a request from Organizing For America to sign a petition.

First, I will post my response, then I will post their request.

Mitch Stewart,

Let’s hold off on the stampede to react to the Supreme Court decision.

Restricting what corporations can do with political ads was always on very shaky constitutional grounds.

Remember that FOX news, MSNBC, and the New York Times are part of corporations. If you start meddling with restrictions on what corporations can say to the public, where will it end?

So you write an exemption for news media into the new rules. All corporations then establish a news subsidiary and we are right back where we started.

One of the key talents of President Obama is the ability to calmly step back from the stampede and make a considered decision. This is no time for him to become just a regular politician.

/Steve

Here is the email to which I was responding:

Steven — Yesterday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations can spend freely in federal elections. It’s a green light for a new stampede of special interest money in our politics, giving their lobbyists even more power in Washington. Now, every candidate who fights for change could face limitless attacks from corporate special interests like health insurance companies and Wall Street banks. While the GOP is celebrating a victory for its special interest allies, President Obama is working with leaders in Congress to craft a forceful response that protects the voices of ordinary citizens. Please add your name right away to help show that the American people support strong, urgent action to prevent a corporate takeover of our democracy. Congress: I support bold action to ensure fair elections. The Supreme Court decision overturned a 20-year precedent saying that corporations could not pay for campaign ads from their general treasuries. And it struck down a law saying corporations couldn’t buy “issue ads” — which only thinly veil support for or opposition to specific candidates — in the closing days of campaigns. The result? Corporations can unleash multi-million-dollar ad barrages against candidates who try to curb special interest power, or devote millions to propping up elected officials who back their schemes. With no limits on their spending, big oil, Wall Street banks, and health insurance companies will try to drown out the voices of everyday Americans — and Republicans seem ecstatic. While opponents of change in Congress are praising this victory for special interests, President Obama has tasked his administration and Congress with identifying a fix to preserve our democracy — and we need to show that the American people stand with him. Add your name today: http://my.barackobama.com/FairElections Thanks, Mitch Mitch Stewart Director Organizing for America

Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee — 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

My response to OFA was rejected, but I did manage to post it to this disappointing message from President Obama.

Follow this link to see where I responded.

Follow this link to the article on the Economix Blog of the NYT.  The blog claims to have the purpose of Explaining the Science of Everyday Life.

There are lots of reasons why I like this article.  It explains the dichotomy between what the American voter wants and what the voter is willing to do to get it.

In the NYT article you also get a discussion of this graph:

The picture of me on the motorcycle is only of peripheral importance.

In truth, this can’t be a picture of me. See the sparks flying? I only fall off my motorcycle when I am standing still.

By the way, thanks again to MardyS for putting the link to the article on his facebook page. That’s where I first saw it and decided to add it to my blog.

Following along the premise of the Worcester T & G, AP, and Reuters, I have been keeping track of the losses in my investment portfolio due to Scott Brown being elected Senator from Massachusetts.

By January 21, I had lost $16,685 (on paper).

I won’t know the extent of my losses today until my mutual funds evaluate their portfolios.

See Reuters Confabulates, Too and Mass. Senate race affects market for the precedent that I am following.

The number would have been worse had I not made a trade that prevented a $700 loss.

At $8,000 to $10,000 a day, in one year I project a loss of $2,000,000 in 200 trading days. Very alarming. 🙄  I am so glad there are weekends and holidays when the market is closed.

Well, the weekend is over and so is my Scott Brown losing streak.

On January 25, 2010 I made back $7,500 (on paper) of my losses (on paper). Making a new projection using Friday’s projection method, I should make $1,500,000 by a year from now if the next 200 trading days match this one. 😉

I won’t bother to update this post any further.

Follow this link to the column by Paul Krugman.

This is worth considering while we try to figure out what the right thing is.

If we pass it, and the public gets angry over it, and they turn the Democrats out in 2010 and 2012, will it just get rolled back?  Or will it be too entrenched, although hardly begun, by then?

Seeing this posted on MardenS’s facebook page is what convinced me to post it here.  He subsequently sent me a link to the article Leading Health Care Experts Tell House To Pass Senate Health Care Bill.

Of course  there is this alternative possibility brought up by these experts

Abandoning health care reform–the signature political issue of this administration–would send a message that Democrats are incapable of governing and lead to massive losses in the 2010 election, possibly even in 2012.

I listened to the  thank you conference  call held for Organizing For America volunteers.  There were to be several shifts of these calls.  There were hundreds of listeners on the call I listened to.

I jotted down some numbers as I listened.  There was one item that was somewhat of a measure of the effectiveness of the volunteer effort.

On January 9, a survey was done to ask the supporters of both candidates how many were absolutely certain they were going out to vote.  The result was 73% of Brown voters said they were sure they would vote, 59% of Coakley supporters were sure they would vote,

Several days later (I forget how many) 86.6% of Brown voters said they were sure they would vote and 83.5% of Coakley voters said they were sure they would vote. Imagine what the pundits would be saying if Brown beat Coakley by 16%.  That is the 11% supporter gap closure plus the 5% he actually won by.  I know you can’t really put those numbers together, but it is a measure of how bad it could have been.

So even though we did not win, we shrank a 14% gap in supporters likely to vote by about 11 points.

Volunteers from all over America made over 2.3 million calls into Massachusetts in support of Coakley.

The organizers of the conference call were still in a little bit of a dream world by saying this was not a referendum on Obama, but only a contest between Brown and Coakley.

We volunteers are going to be sending in evaluation reports of our experiences using the tools they provided and our other efforts.  I will be sure to try to wake them up from the dream world they still occupy.

Follow this link to the Reuters story Stocks slide as China curbs lending, IBM weighs posted on Yahoo.

The Dow and the Nasdaq had their largest daily percentage losses since late October and the S&P 500 had its biggest drop since late November, a day after reaching new multi-month highs on bets the Democrats would lose a key seat in Congress.

“There was an expectation in the market yesterday that if the Republican candidate was victorious in (the) Massachusetts (senatorial race), it would be a net positive for the market,” Wedbush Morgan’s James said.

So the Republican candidate did win and we have a huge sell-off.  If I thought there was any sense in these articles, I would still be trying to figure out what it is.

Perhaps one of my dear readers can get beyond the nonsense to find the sense.

I suppose I ought to include this doozy:

International Business Machines Corp (NYSE:IBM – News) fell 3.8 percent to $129.07. An analyst pointed out that the company’s earnings per share outlook for 2010 implies a slowdown in EPS growth compared to recent years.

“IBM reported a good number, but I don’t think it was good enough relative to expectations, and tech is in general selling off,” said James.

According to what I heard on Nightly Business Report last night IBM beat expectations, beat last year, and raised their forecast.  What horrible news 🙂

Follow this link to the Worcester T & G column by Clive  McFarlane. You may learn something about the type of readers that the T & G has, by reading their comments.

Not that it is a really great column, but it is the backdrop that I used to explain my thoughts on what went wrong.

I reprint this here because I have already received one request for an explanation from a friend outside of Massachusetts.  Now I’ll have a blog post to point to if I get anymore questions.

Below is a collection of my comments on the above article.

I agree with CRAIG P. I think Capuano would have made a better candidate.

Martha Coakley ran against Scott Brown instead of running for something.

Since the electorate cannot remember as far back as last March since when their 401K plans have risen 60%, they need a constant reminder of what the plan is.

The plan is to run a deficit until the economy recovers and then start running surpluses, as in the Clinton years, to pay back what we borrowed.

She did not need to refer to Scott Brown to explain this. However, it might have neutralized his mantra that our children will be paying for this deficit for generations.

She could have explained that the Christmas Bomber was spilling his guts to the FBI and that any threats of Waterboarding would be counterproductive.

She could have run with her positive plan for a better way to fight the war on al-Qaida rather than let the ‘She said there were no terrorists in Afghanistan’ meme hang in the air.

She could have explained how good the health care plan was before it got so compromised to appease some wayward Democrats because the margin in the Senate was so thin. This would have brought home the folly of electing Scott Brown without even mentioning his name.

She had absolutely no reason to go negative. She had every reason to tout the positive reasons why she was needed in the Senate.

I forgot to mention that she should have explained that if the federal government quickly cut spending, the economy would go into a tailspin.

She should have explained that the aid to states and cities that was in the original stimulus bill proposal and which Olympia Snowe (R. Maine) removed, in the name of bipartisanship, from the final stimulus package would have saved us from local layoffs and rising local taxes.

She could have explained why we didn’t need more thinking like Olympia Snowe’s, but we needed less of that sort of thing.

I had been emailing ideas like these to the Coakley campaign.  Each time I would get a pleasant reply thanking me for my input.  Too bad she didn’t use any of it.

Follow this link to the AP story in the Worcester T & G.  I imagine it was the T & G that chose the headline. The story was written on the trading day which closed before the polls in Massachusetts closed.

The Dow Jones Industrial average is down 165 points as I write this during the first trading session after the election.  I wonder if the T & G is sticking with their theory that the election affects the market.

Perhaps the market is worried that Scott Brown will accomplish the spending cuts he promised and the economy will dive into a tailspin because of it.

Of course all these explanations for why the market does what it does is pure confabulation.  By confabulation, I mean A psychological term denoting explaining of imaginary patterns in events by the invention of fictitious details.

According to Benoit Mandelbrot’s analysis, the patterns in stock market behavior are made up of fractals which are no patterns at all.

Follow this link to the New York Times column that discusses a sociological study to find out if and why academy is oriented toward the liberal side of the political spectrum.

The study is by Neil Gross and Ethan Fosse. One conclusion they reach is that certain jobs get typecast so that different people choose different careers based on this typecasting.

The column ends with a quote.

To Mr. Gross, accusations by conservatives of bias and student brainwashing are self-defeating. The irony is that the more conservatives complain about academia’s liberalism, he said, the more likely it’s going to remain a bastion of liberalism.

One might also note that conservatives might prefer the higher salaries in the business world to the salaries in academia.

One possible reason why The United States is losing its competitive advantage in industry is that some of the brightest students get lured into Finance and Law because of the higher salaries than even Engineering or Science let alone the Liberal Arts.