This not only has the potential to skew key elections for the foreseeable future, but is riddled with faulty logic to boot. The Court has stated that corporations should have the same free speech rights as individuals. Since when, and why? Everybody should have free speech rights? Where is their compassion federal workers, the armed services or policemen? Who's crying for them? No one, and no one should, because it is a perfectly normal rule of law. Listen to this from Samuel Eliot Morrison on The Gilded Age: "The nation was fabulously rich but its wealth was gravitating rapidly into the hands of a small portion of its population, and the power of wealth threatened to undermine the political integrity of the Republic." Later, in 1957 Justice Frankfurter recalled that there had been a "popular feeling that aggregated capital unduly influenced politics, and influence not stopping short of corruption."
And so it was for corporations for over a century. In 1907 Teddy Roosevelt, as our first progressive president (at least in these things), made it illegal for special interests to control politics. In the previous election wealthy businessmen contributed over $6 million to the Republican candidate, while the Democratic opponent received $400,000. Roosevelt sought to curtail the ever-widening gap of influence between the rich and the not-so-rich. It was good enough for every Supreme Court since, and for every President and Congress, but no Court has been this politicized, this venal, this cavalier towards settled law. You have only to look at the Presidential "election" of 2000 for confirmation.
And who brought this bogus relief to the attention of the Court? None other than Citizens United, the same group of scumbags who brought you "Hillary: The Movie", a piece of poorly made propaganda which they wished to show as an actual documentary. They want to open the floodgates of monetary support for every spurious Riefenstahl-like piece of junk that they can dream up.
Now, you will hear a couple of lies about this in the coming days. The first one is that, since the ruling also mentions unions (who typically support Democratic candidates while national corporations favor Republicans), that things are somehow evened out. Do you think, for even a moment, that union pockets are remotely as deep as America's big corporations? Do you think that they will be operating on a level playing field? Exxon alone reported profits of over $45 billion last year. Could unions hope to compete in a money race with the energy companies, big insurance or Pharma? Not a chance.
The second thing you'll hear is that most companies are already contributing, and are unlikely to pony up more. But they don't have to, only for those campaigns that are of special interest to them, where the issues are most likely to affect them. Then, they can take over the airwaves, and the American people, like the good puppets they can be, will vote for whomever they see the most on TV, or against whomever the most attack ads attack.
Let me be real clear: this decision by the Supreme Court is very political in nature, and even blind justice could see that it favors one party substantially over the other. If this bothers you as much as it should, PLEASE call or write to your representatives, and let them know that you are appalled. Here is a link to a MoveOn petition that will also get the word out:
The Gilded Age was not that cool for most people, really.
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