People have a right to unlimited spending on their own political speech.

The Proposition is doing very well for a first debate, and as I said, I would like Pro to come around to my side and argue for it in the Supreme Court, but I must say that the definitions are still vague. In the third round, we still don't know if my opponent defends the rights of Corporations to give to Super PACs; a simple yes or no on this issue would have sufficed. Regarding precedent, I first noticed Pro doing this, and then I realized I've been doing it too, but have you noticed that each side introduces their cases with the Constitutional principles behind the decision, and then addresses the other side's cases with specific policy situations involved in those cases? Well, my point still stands -- neither case that Pro cites speaks of corporate personhood, and both cases that I cite deny corporations equal rights. It is worth noting that the Privileges and Immunities Clause inspired Bingham to write the 14th Amendment, and both cases that I cited deal deny equal protection to corporations. Paul and Munn were decided before any case that actually grants Corporations personhood. "The answer to this question depends on some rule of consensus... In the case of corporations, e.g., if a majority of the board of directors..." Well this is rather disingenious. First consensus, which implies that the whole organization agrees on a policy, and then we hear of majority rule, which is basically 50% plus .00001%. Furthermore, is a majority of the Board a majority of the corporation? Not even close! Thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of workers and individual stockholders are left out of the decision making process. This is democratic? Should such an undemocratic institution be able to speak with "one voice" on political issues? On the issue of mom and pop stores, mom and pop stores, by and large, can't afford to spend very much cash on politics, so it's a moot point. If there is any ban on all corporate spending, then small businesses could be exempted. " Even an activity as minor as writing a political blog requires monetary payment (insofar as the blogger wants to use his own domain name). Hence any limit that the government places on resources for speech places a limit on the speech itself. " This is an example of the "if one then all" falacy. One cheap method of spending money on speech is not the same thing as hiring hundreds of lobbyists, spending on PACs, Super PACs, etc. One is accessible to nearly all political actors, and one is accessible to nearly no political actors save a few powerful ones. "The evil connotation we tend to attach to money-in-politics does not suffice to fairly consider its real role in political engagement."Contention 1: (further analysis) No, it's not a "connotation", it's a political reality. Consider previous evidence (unaddressed by Pro) that 400 families contributed nearly HALF of all the money in the 2016 cycle (circa last year). Furthermore, according to a Princeton study, when only one fifth of the top 10% of income earners support a policy, it get's adopted 18% of the time. When four fifths of the top 10% support a policy, it get's adopted 45% of the time. Furthermore, the study found, "The probability of policy change is nearly the same (around 0.3) whether a tiny minority or a large majority of average citizens favor a proposed policy change (refer to the top panel of figure 1)." [1] So when we're talking about the bottom 90% of income earners, if 0% of them support a policy change, it'll get adopted 30% of the time, and if 100% of them support that policy, it'll be adopted 30% of the time. In other words we have a minimal if nonexistent causal impact on public policy. This study used data from 1,779 different policy issues that came up between 1980 and 2002. Even before Citizen's United, money in politics was fundamentally undermining our democracy. Another way of looking at this is that the top 200 politically active corporations spent 5.8 billion dollars a year on lobbying and political donations, over the last five years. They got 4.4 TRILLION dollars in support from the government.[2]. Contention 2: My second contention is also supported by the above analysis. If the bottom 90% of income earners have a "near zero" impact on public policy -- to quote the study, then it is clear that our "speech" (spending) of the affluent few. My opponent is right, political speech is the most important type of speech -- it should have some impact on policy. Well, for most people, it doesn't, which means its rendered useless by our campaign finance system. Contention 3: The demands of fundraising make it harder for Congress to legislate. Congresspersons are expected (by their parties) to spend 4 hours a day raisng money, and 2 hours a day on committees and the House Floor. More analysis on this to come. [1]. http://journals.cambridge.org......[2]. https://act.represent.us......;