It does not. If you read it, it in no way states they have any authority over individuals or their business dealings. "Among the several states" is not the same as "among the citizens of the several states".
No, it is not the same because you have added the phrase "the citizens of". But as drafted, and as read by every Founder, Congressman, President, Supreme Court justice, and nearly every citizen (except, apparently, you), "among the several States" is read as commerce carried out between citizens, entities, and businesses in the several states.
This is all an academic argument because no matter what your literal reading of the Constitution is, very few people (and no one in power now or in the last 219 years) have read the phrase the way you do. You're facing an uphill battle against what is, essentially, 219 years of law, practice, precedent, and constitutional theory, as well a republicanism and democratic governance.
Furthermore, to read it any differently would throw the country back into the mischief and illness of the confederate years (1781 to 1787), where each state regulated commerce that came into and out of its own state, with varying laws and regulations. In 1787, not a single state transacted its own business--so to read the "among the several States" language to mean commerce between the states themselves would be to give the clause an absurd and meaningless definition and interpretation, one which is and must be avoided. Words in the Constitution mean something--they cannot mean nothing. That is a basic tenet of constitutional and statutory analysis.
Words may not be read literally in the face of absurd results, otherwise how many phrases in the Constitution would have no meaning?
Here's what James Madison had to say in Federalist No. 42 (Madison wrote the Commerce Clause (Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 3)):
The defect of power in the existing confederacy, to regulate the commerce between its several members, is in the number of those which have been clearly pointed out by experience. To the proofs and remarks which former papers have brought into view on this subject, it may be added, that without this supplemental provision, the great and essential power of regulating foreign commerce, would have been incompleat, and ineffectual. A very material object of this power was the relief of the States which import and export through other States, from the improper contributions levied on them by the latter. Were these at liberty to regulate the trade between State and State, it must be foreseen that ways would be found out, to load the articles of import and export, during the passage through their jurisdiction, with duties which would fall on the makers of the latter, and the consumers of the former. We may be assured by past experience, that such a practice would be introduced by future contrivances; and both by that and a common knowledge of human affairs, that it would nourish unceasing animosities, and not improbably terminate in serious interruptions of the public tranquility. To those who do not view the question through the medium of passion or of interest, the desire of the commercial States to collect in any form, an indirect revenue from their uncommercial neighbours, must appear not less impolitic than it is unfair; since it would stimulate the injured party, by resentment as well as interest, to resort to less convenient channels for their foreign trade. But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamours of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.
"[W]ith duties which would fall on the makers of the latter, and the consumers of the former." Madison has recvognized what everyone at the time recognized, and which everyone now recognizes--that the regulations, whether they come from the states or from the federal government affect the persons transacting business--those engaged in commerce, not the states themselves.
It does not regulate commerce solely between the states as actors themselves--
That is exactly what it says.
As I explained above, and before, there were no states as commercial actors in 1787. The clause did not apply to the states--it applied to commerce among the several States. The federal government, that is, can regulate commerce, not the states. That would be a serious Tenth Amendment issue (one which, admittedly, wasn't an issue in 1787, but was remedied by 1791).
Every time the USSC upholds another peice of legislation that is outside the enumerated powers granted the federal government (like overreaching the language of the Commerce Clause), they are doing just that.
But the power to regulate interstate commerce IS an enumerated power--it's in Article I, where all the other enumerated powers are located. But, you are somewhat correct--probably unwittingly so. The Supreme Court has taken the interstate commerce clause and molded it into something far beyond what the Founders' surely intended. There was no disagreement at all that the federal government should be able to regulate interstate commerce (your nascent objections aside). However, when the Supreme Court has upheld the federal regulation of wheat production for purely personal consumption (Wickard v. Filburn (1943)) and the federal regulation of medicinal marajuana for personal use (Raich v. Gonzales (2005))--actions that do not have a twinge of interstate commerce to them but "might" affect it, that is the Supreme Court "screwing up whatever they want". We agree there. But i doubt you had that in mind.
The fact that the Constitution forbids its meddling, should prohibit regulation.
But the Constitution does not forbid the federal government's "meddling" in broadcast communications. It endorses such regulation, and as such is not "meddling". Again, whether the federal government should regulate or not is a policy argument. Bringing in an absurdly myopic and limiting reading of the commerce clause does not advance that argument.
