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Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

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Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#91

Post by geofft »

staticautomatic wrote: post #78
pg_bot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew someone would bring up Citizens United v FEC when I said worst. I know this will be an unpopular opinion on this forum, but I believe that case was decided correctly. I agree wholeheartedly with Justice Kennedy's opinion that "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech" Read the opinions and d…

Corporations don’t have speech interests. The majority’s opinion in Citizens United is premised upon the assertion that they do.

If a state passed a law that corporations may not put a kosher or halal marking on foods they sell, would you find that law constitutional?

(Certainly it's not interfering with the corporation's freedom of religion interests, is it? Corporations don't practice religion!)

The problem here is that there's no simple or intuitive description of the solution we want besides "The right to free speech does not extend to the right to spend unlimited amounts of money on electioneering." (And that should apply to individuals just the same as corporations.) I'd wholeheartedly agree with that, but it needs a constitutional amendment - there isn't another way out.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#92

Post by ummonk »

Accujack wrote: post #62
pg_bot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew someone would bring up Citizens United v FEC when I said worst. I know this will be an unpopular opinion on this forum, but I believe that case was decided correctly. I agree wholeheartedly with Justice Kennedy's opinion that "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech" Read the opinions and d…

Yes. People blame the court for doing the correct (if not right, because courts don't really do "right") thing. The problem is that there's no constitutional amendment making an exception to the first amendment to limit or forbid contributions to campaigns. It should never have been an ordinary law in the first place.

To be clear, the law does limit contributions to campaigns. What they don't limit is third party organizations spending money on their own ads. Which is as it should be.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#93

Post by ummonk »

wslack wrote: post #76
pg_bot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew someone would bring up Citizens United v FEC when I said worst. I know this will be an unpopular opinion on this forum, but I believe that case was decided correctly. I agree wholeheartedly with Justice Kennedy's opinion that "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech" Read the opinions and d…

Giving money is different than speaking. Do we have a right to anonymous speech amplified according to our means?

Yes, it's called "the press", and freedom of the press is explicitly protected by the government.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#94

Post by Lazare »

ineedasername wrote: post #73
ecf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s say it loud and clear for everyone to hear. MONEY. IS. NOT. SPEECH

I know, and I don't like the decision, but there is a correlation with money none the less. Exercising speech takes resources. I cannot speak to the audience of newspaper readers without either investing capital to create a newspaper or by paying for ad placement in an existing one. Money is not, in itself, speech, but in our society it is integral to exercising that right at any scale much beyond a few individuals.…

> I think the main problem with the decision was the assertion that entities like corporations, rather than simply individuals, have free speech.

The decision did not assert or assume this. It rested on the idea that individual have rights, and they do not lose those rights by acting collectively.

If I'm allowed to speak, then I'm allowed to buy and use a printing press so that my speech can be more easily distributed. If I can't afford a printing press, I can go in halves with you, so that we can both print off our pamphlets. If neither one of us can afford a printing press, we can take up a subscription among our friends to buy one.

Or to put it another way: The New York Times does not have a free speech right, but the humans who work at and own the New York Times do, and gagging the New York Times would infringe on the rights of those humans. Any law that implies the New York Times can be gagged (eg, because it's a corporation, and thus has no rights) is clearly wrong.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#95

Post by dlp211 »

jariel wrote: post #65

This is very good information, but the wrong narrative. This was not some 'fake deal' by a Chinese firm to get subsidies, it looks like they probably barely broke even on this one - if that - and no company wants to have big ugly stain failures like this. It looks like Foxconn just bit off more than they could chew, maybe saw an opportunity, but then realized they couldn't make use of the plant. They knew what the th…

The governor responsible isn't in office anymore.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#96

Post by sjm-lbm »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #81
staticautomatic wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations don’t have speech interests. The majority’s opinion in Citizens United is premised upon the assertion that they do.

Sure they do. Corporations are owned by people, and those people have speech interests. If corporations didn’t have the right to free speech then a group of people campaigning for a politics cause would suddenly lose their right to free speech if they formed a corporation to simplify the activities, such as the joint handling of money or purchasing of ads.

Corporations also get a lot of benefits that individuals or unstructured associations don't - mainly things like liability protection - so it's not like it would be unreasonable to have corresponding limitations on what they are allowed to do.

And that's before we get to the point that corporations, as a practical matter, are formed under state laws, so why is the federal government giving them rights?

(and that's before the other issues with Citizen's United as a case, regardless of the decision as people usually remember it, but I'm starting to go off a bit..)

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#98

Post by cratermoon »

kenned3 wrote: post #19

This is a great article around why "corporate welfare" rarely works out. Also, semes like a textbook example of "eminent domain" abuse? We call this "expropriation" in Canada and it is rarely abused like this. Taking peoples property to give it to a private corporation? I can understand the need to take property for public use (roads, infra) but the US needs to end eminent domain abuse. If Foxconn needed the property…

NY Times covered it well 8 years ago https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/us/how-local-taxpayers-ba...

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#99

Post by galimaufry »

jariel wrote: post #65

This is very good information, but the wrong narrative. This was not some 'fake deal' by a Chinese firm to get subsidies, it looks like they probably barely broke even on this one - if that - and no company wants to have big ugly stain failures like this. It looks like Foxconn just bit off more than they could chew, maybe saw an opportunity, but then realized they couldn't make use of the plant. They knew what the th…

Agreed that Foxconn doesn't sound malicious here. But it does seem like more than typical bumbling.

In particular, I can't see how this management structure is supposed to work - competing subdivisions is fine, and having divisions just do what the CEO says seems like it could work, but combining them is wild.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#100

Post by danhak »

sjm-lbm wrote: post #96
dodobirdlord wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they do. Corporations are owned by people, and those people have speech interests. If corporations didn’t have the right to free speech then a group of people campaigning for a politics cause would suddenly lose their right to free speech if they formed a corporation to simplify the activities, such as the joint handling of money or purchasing of ads.

Corporations also get a lot of benefits that individuals or unstructured associations don't - mainly things like liability protection - so it's not like it would be unreasonable to have corresponding limitations on what they are allowed to do. And that's before we get to the point that corporations, as a practical matter, are formed under state laws, so why is the federal government giving them rights? (and that's be…

> And that's before we get to the point that corporations, as a practical matter, are formed under state laws, so why is the federal government giving them rights?

That's an interesting point. Marriages are formed under state law as well, and it doesn't seem controversial to me that the federal government grants that relationship special privileges.

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