"By a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court on Thursday rolled back restrictions on corporate spending on federal campaigns. The decision could unleash a torrent of corporate-funded attack ads in upcoming campaigns."
"'Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy -- it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people -- political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence,' wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority."
"In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens accused the majority of judicial activism and attacked the use of corporate personhood in the case: 'The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court's disposition of this case.'"
"With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics," said President Obama in a statement. "It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans... That's why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision."
"Democracy 21's Fred Wertheimer, for years a leading advocate of campaign finance reform, called the decision a "disaster for the American people and a dark day for the Supreme Court."
"'The Supreme Court majority has acted recklessly to free up corporations to use their immense, aggregate corporate wealth to flood federal elections and buy government influence. The Fortune 100 companies alone had combined revenues of $13 trillion and profits of $605 billion during the last election cycle,'" Wertheimer wrote.
"'Under today's decision, insurance companies, banks, drug companies, energy companies and the like will be free to each spend $5 million, $10 million or more of corporate funds to elect or defeat a federal candidate -- and thereby to buy influence over the candidate's positions on issues of economic importance to the companies.'"
PLEASE, read the entire article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/21/s... -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
People, I wish I could but even I probably cannot emphasize strongly enough, just how big this decision was. And here it is being reported off the front page and is not the lead story. That's because they don't want you to realize how big this is. Forget health care, forget wall street, and yes, forget race. All of them pale in comparison to this.
With this, the supreme court has basically said a corporation, is a person and as such can give unlimited amounts of money to a candidate. Lobbyists just became that much more powerful, because now they can walk into a congressman or senator and basically tell them if you want to keep your seat do xyz or else.
With this decision, the court basically nullified what little was there in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws and kicked the door wide open for corporate money. Instead of reps names being prefaced with (D-SC) for example it will essentially be (D-General Electric) or (R-WalMart).
I have said time and again that the problem with our government is money and the power it buys. As long as bribery is legal via campaign finance, democracy is essentially nullified because voting means little. They get us to laugh at American Idol and fight each other over race, while they have their hands in our collective back pockets, as we are thoroughly distracted from what the real game is.
If we don't see our way to stand up against this and beat it back, we can forget about health care, financial regulation or anything else that might significantly impact our lives for the better.
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Thursday, January 21st 2010 at 2:29PM
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