Wytchone: Barbigazi: This is an exciting result of the Citizens united ruling. Companies can give to campaigns but we know who they are and where that money went.

I agree and its a none issue. For now. I HATED the SCOTUS for making this ruling. IMO to much chance for abuse and buying elections.

Lets see if a new law is created.

there is a law still pending in Congress that -Surprise- the Republicans are filibustering, that will, quite Constitutionally, neuter Citizens United. bascially it requires all organizations contributing to campaigns that have less than 1 million mebers and have been around for less than 10 years (aka everybody but the NRA) to disclose who is funding them, and forbids giving by any company with more that 20% foreign ownership and companies having any contracts with the federal government

smileynyc: Barbigazi - to address your other point, I said their major shopper isn't the urban, ultra liberal, tofu eating, green tea sipping, CSA subsrciber. Its the soccer mom.

All the soccer moms I know, including my wife and all her soccer mom friends, are urban, liberal, tofu eating, green tea sipping, CSA subscribers.

Falcon Hunter: jmadisonbiii: I suppose the same people outraged at Target probably think it's just peachy for labor unions to extract money from their members and give it almost exclusively to one political party...thus pissing off half of their membership base. Target customers probably have a hell of a lot more lot more choice in the matter of where to shop than do the union members do about their membership.

This.

THAT actually.

Who controls the unions? The Members. How do they pick thier leaders (who decide who to give to)? By a direct vote with each union memeber getting a single vote just like every other.

Who controls a corporation? The board of directors. How do they chose those board memebers/ by a vote of the Shareholders on the principle of one SHARE one vote, meaning that a single wealthy individual can have complete or near complete contol over hte corporation.

Can you see how these things might be slightly different?

/and while we're at it Who Controls frogtown?

Oh my gosh! A corporation contributed money to a campaign. Well it is kind of dumb when they could just wait to see who gets elected and then buy him like most other big companies do. You going to boycott Wal-Mart too because they tend to contribute a million or so each cycle. As far as Target goes if you notice the opposition to the candidate they donated to is Mark Dayton former owner of Target. Maybe you should consider they might know something about him that you don't. I suspect it was more of an anti Dayton donation than an endorsment.

BTW Target is helping to build a park in my neighborhood. What has Wal-Mart done for yours. Not to mention when my mom opened a women's shelter she when to the local dept stores to get donations to help out. The Kmart in town $150(to be fair they are broke), Wal-Mart 40 miles away $500, Target store 40 miles away $1500.

smileynyc: My original argument was 1% of stockholders is not equal to 'major investors'.

Then I moved on to the fact that the root of this whole 'crisis' isn't really about gay rights; Target has made offers to donate money to causes, issued apologies, etc. This whole thing has been hijacked by people who go into spasms whenever money is given to a Republican candidate. Why? because -ack- the gay issue is the ONLY issue that matters. And any candidate that is right on 80% of the issues and wrong on the gay issue deserves to be burned! This is the only issue that matters! Its all about us!!

Or maybe pay attention to every issue that particular candidate is espousing and realize that ANY corporation donating ANY money to that campaign was going to get a TON of bad press here in MN.

SuperNinjaToad: Target gave $150,000 and Best Buy $100,000 to a business-focused political fund helping a conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota, triggering a national backlash from gay rights groups and liberals.

Hhhmmm ok.. I must be missing something here...I mean a large percentage of Target customers are gays and also liberal leaning. Why would they want to contribute officially to a tea party candidate that is openly anti gay?

...or maybe they've done indepth survey/study that shows their customer base won;t be affected no matter what political affiliations they are connected with.


Or MAYYYBE as a corporation with thousands of front end workers you are drooling over Emmer's promise to slash the min. wage?