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Supreme Court Hands US Elections to Corporate America
24th January 2010
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court overturned a century of electoral law by a 5-4 majority allowing unlimited spending by corporations, labor unions and other organizations. Until then corporations had been barred from spending funds on broadcast ads, campaign workers or billboards that urge the election or defeat of a federal candidate. They are still barred from contributing directly to a candidate’s campaign. BFD. If you think for a second there’s a functional difference between Exxon paying millions of dollars for TV ads that cast a negative light on a candidate who is opposed to, say, drilling in Yellowstone and Exxon contributing millions of dollars to his opponent so that he can do it I’d suggest you haven’t paid really close attention to the way campaigns work.
Part of the ill-considered decision rests on the feeling that corporations have the same right to free speech as individuals. The problem is that corporations are not individuals and money is not speech. But I’ll tell you what… as an individual I pay taxes on my gross income not on what’s left over after I pay all my bills. If corporations are now regular individuals, let’s level the playing field regarding taxes and let them support the government that is so clearly concerned about their speech rights in the same way you and I do-by paying taxes on their gross sales.
The other problem is that over the decades we (and by “we” I mean the government) has consistently loosened restrictions on the way corporations can behave. As originally envisioned by the Founding Fathers, corporations were tightly controlled entities limited to certain specific time frames and activities. Now they are not and have become huge juggernauts. And we’ve seen what awesome stewards of the economy they are.
The good news is that I believe this moves us one step closer to the revolution when we (and by “we” I mean the people) will bring down the vengeance that is so richly deserved.
LA Times has an article about the decision.
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