The First Amendment of the US Constitution says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I am concerned about “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech…”

If Congress is not allowed to pass laws abridging freedom of speech, is there an implication that Congress may pass laws protecting freedom of speech?

If someone monopolizes the channels of free speech so that other people have no chance to exercise their right of free speech, does the Congress have the authority to pass laws that protect the free speech of the people who are being blocked?  If someone uses their money to buy up the channels of communication, can the Congress pass a law that limits this monopoly?  Is that abridging free speech or protecting free speech?

Is the first amendment meant to protect the free speech of a limited number of people, or is it meant to  try to protect the free speech of as many of the people as possible?  When the amendment talks about “the people”, does that refer only to the powerful people, or does it refer to all of the people?

I guess I will have to do some research to see if  any lawyer has ever made this case to the Supreme Court?  Has any Supreme Court Justice ever identified this right of Congress in a written opinion? If any of my readers already know the answer,  are you willing to supply pointers to the answer.

The Daily Kos has a petition discussed in the post  Signature needed: Senate will vote on Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions opened the floodgates of unlimited campaign spending by the 1%, which threatens our democracy.

And the Court will keep ruling this way, as long as we subscribe to the absurd notion that money is “speech.”

However, Senator Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) has sponsored a constitutional amendment to give Congress the power to pass campaign contribution limits and spending limits. A vote is expected in the coming months.

I signed the petition, and added the comment:

We should have a constitutional amendment banning the use of invalid syllogisms as a justification for any ruling.

The link above shows that Google has the definition of syllogism as “a formal argument in logic that is formed by two statements and a conclusion which must be true if the two statements are true.”

Note that is is very important that the two initial statements must be true for the conclusion to be true. If either of the two initial statements are “money is speech” or “corporations are people”, then you know that the logic does not validate that conclusion that corporations are allowed to make unlimited political contributions.

Maybe I ought to be referring to WikiPedia‘s explanation of the actual meaning of begging the question.

Begging the question means “assuming the conclusion (of an argument)”, a type of circular reasoning. This is an informal fallacy where the conclusion that one is attempting to prove is included in the initial premises of an argument, often in an indirect way that conceals this fact.^[1]

Maybe the footnote 1 above is even a better definition of the problem.

Garner, B.A. (1995). Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage. Oxford Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage. Oxford University Press. p. 101. ISBN 9780195142365. LCCN 95003863. “begging the question does not mean “evading the issue” or “inviting the obvious questions,” as some mistakenly believe. The proper meaning of begging the question is “basing a conclusion on an assumption that is as much in need of proof or demonstration as the conclusion itself.” The formal name for this logical fallacy is petitio principii. Following are two classic examples: “Reasonable men are those who think and reason intelligently.” Patterson v. Nutter, 7 A. 273, 275 (Me. 1886). (This statement begs the question, “What does it mean to think and reason intelligently?”)/ “Life begins at conception! [Fn.: ‘Conception is defined as the beginning of life.’]” Davis v. Davis, unreported opinion (Cir. Tenn. Eq. 1989). (The “proof”—or the definition—is circular.)”

The Daily Kos has the post Elizabeth Warren Changes the Conversation.

The massive response to Elizabeth Warren’s new book, A Fighting Chance, gives Democrats a great opportunity to change the 2014 conversation.
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Democrats need to embrace Warren’s message in order to fire up the activists, online donors, and Democratic base voters they so desperately need to win in 2014. This is our moment to light a fire under Democrats and change the dynamic from us being in a defensive crouch, whining because our voters are unmotivated to turn out and vote, to going on offense and taking it to the Republicans and their billionaire big business buddies.

I was hoping that this book tour would raise this type of reaction. I truly think this is the intention of Elizabeth Warren in writing the book. It’s purpose is not to get herself elected to anything. However, if getting her elected as President in 2016 is what it will take, then I am all for it.

Naked Capitalism has the post Bill Black: NYT DealBook Praises Steve Jobs’ Serial Felonies.

The fact that Silicon Valley “deeply revere[s]” a serial felon who targeted workers (globally, see my prior columns on China) and shareholders (he secretly backdated stock options in an effort to make himself even wealthier) should be deeply disturbing, even to Deal Book.  (I joke: if DealBook had appeared as a character in The Wizard of Oz it would have simultaneously represented “no brain, no heart, no ethics, and no courage.”)  Jobs’ CEO counterparts knew about his serial crimes because they were conspiring with him to form the cartel suppressing workers’ wages and because his backdating scam was made public.

We should also stress that Microsoft was found to have violated the antitrust laws (the Bush administration deliberately gutted the remedy for those violations of the law) and that Robert Tillman’s (a prominent white-collar criminologist) empirical work has found that high tech firms were particularly likely to have engaged in accounting and securities fraud.  That requires a hard look at Silicon Valley’s culture.  While Ayn Rand, von Mises, and von Hayek all stressed the evil of elite fraud and the legitimate, and vital role of the government in acting to deter and punish such frauds, the culture of Silicon Valley is increasingly dominated by wealthy libertarians who are far more radical in their hostility to democratic government, their disdain for ethics, and their opposition to the government preventing fraud.  The “Kristallnacht” lunacy is a perfect example of the depraved culture that can emerge when you mix the worst strands of Silicon Valley’s and finance’s contempt for ethics into a single package.

This is one of the reasons why I could never be a fan of Steve Jobs, nor of Apple Computer. Bill Gates was no happy alternative. That is why, of the three computers I have, two of them have a variant of linux (Kubuntu) as their primary operating systems and the third has Kubuntu installed as a virtual machine. The two mobile devices that I have use an Android operating system.

The financial damage that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have done to the world is only half the story. The technological anti-competitive behavior of these two companies has probably set back the the state of the art in computers by decades.