It never is a person. The Citizens United ruling determined that the people in the corporation have the right to free (political) speech, regardless of the coalition they are part of.
Everyone pretty much agrees with this, The Democratic party liked to push the meme you're repeating because it helped them beat Romney. They intentionally misinterpreted his and the court's words to win an election and people have been repeating the lie ever since.
The answer to your question is no, a corporation without people isn't a person and neither is a corporation with people. The "people" in the phrase "corporations are people" are the ones with rights.
The singular if the phrase is "a corporation is people" not "a corporation is a person", as you were misled into thinking.
> It never is a person. The Citizens United ruling determined that the people in the corporation have the right to free (political) speech, regardless of the coalition they are part of.
Oh that's right, this was part of the whole "money equals speech" plan to get around donation limits. I had forgotten how convoluted the thinking gets if you take every link in the chain at face value.
I find that I'll need to break most political arguments down to the "Who, what, where, why, and how" level if I want to get a grip on what's happening around me and how I'll be impacted. With Citizens United I started by trying to determine what rights I didn't have before the ruling.
> With Citizens United I started by trying to determine what rights I didn't have before the ruling.
That's an easy answer. You didn't have the right to make a movie about a politician with your friends while also forming a corporation so that, when the camera man you hired breaks his leg and sues you, you don't personally go broke.
Before Citizens United, a single (wealthy) individual could have funded a movie like that to try and turn an election. After Citizens United, collective political speech got easier.
After Citizens United, the amount if money spent on political campaigns (outside of the campaign, wink wink) has skyrocketed, that's true. However, the source of that money isn't billionaires, they were already able to use their wealth to influence politics (think Fox News/Murdoch). All that new.money is coming from smaller donations from more people.
