Justice Stevens is right but forget history, the part of the nation that still has some sense left that hasn't watched Fox News and "reality" shows daily are already looking harshly on the court that delivered this ruling that finally totally destroyed any semblance of democracy we have left in this nation. We already think that the U.S. Supreme Court has become just as corrupt as the rest of government and because they are voting along party lines and obviously from this ruling selling their votes to Corporations just like the rest of government they are a useless intstitutioun. They have gone beyond just handing over elections with disregard to the popular vote as they did in 2000 all the way to allowing Corporate money to decide the elections in this country. They passed this ruling because in the 2008 election grass roots Americans matched dollar for dollar Corporate donations to Republican candidates to elect Pres. Obama in hopes of change and cleaning up the rampant corruption in this nation.

After this corrupt decision they tried to smooth over and cover their overt attack on democracy and the U.S. Constitution they are sworn to uphold with the stupid remark that " Unions could also contribute more. " What a joke!!! They know full well that any union that still exists after mostly Republican leadership for the past 50 years could never garner the amount of money into elections that corporations and banks can contribute. They are also saying that special interest groups no longer have the restrictions they had on them and can get more done for environmental concerns. That is bull too and for the same reason - they cannot match the money that corporations pour in to fighting their oil drilling in sensitive habitats etc.

Published: January 21, 2010 New York Times

With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.

Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.

As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.

The ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission radically reverses well-established law and erodes a wall that has stood for a century between corporations and electoral politics. (The ruling also frees up labor unions to spend, though they have far less money at their disposal.)

The founders of this nation warned about the dangers of corporate influence. The Constitution they wrote mentions many things and assigns them rights and protections — the people, militias, the press, religions. But it does not mention corporations.

In 1907, as corporations reached new heights of wealth and power, Congress made its views of the relationship between corporations and campaigning clear: It banned them from contributing to candidates. At midcentury, it enacted the broader ban on spending that was repeatedly reaffirmed over the decades until it was struck down on Thursday.

This issue should never have been before the court. The justices overreached and seized on a case involving a narrower, technical question involving the broadcast of a movie that attacked Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2008 campaign. The court elevated that case to a forum for striking down the entire ban on corporate spending and then rushed the process of hearing the case at breakneck speed. It gave lawyers a month to prepare briefs on an issue of enormous complexity, and it scheduled arguments during its vacation.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., no doubt aware of how sharply these actions clash with his confirmation-time vow to be judicially modest and simply “call balls and strikes,” wrote a separate opinion trying to excuse the shameless judicial overreaching.

The majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money. They are given special privileges, including different tax rates, to do just that. It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.

The majority also makes the nonsensical claim that, unlike campaign contributions, which are still prohibited, independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” If Wall Street bankers told members of Congress that they would spend millions of dollars to defeat anyone who opposed their bailout, and then did so, it would certainly look corrupt.

After the court heard the case, Senator John McCain told reporters that he was troubled by the “extreme naïveté” some of the justices showed about the role of special-interest money in Congressional lawmaking.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens warned that the ruling not only threatens democracy but “will, I fear, do damage to this institution.” History is, indeed, likely to look harshly not only on the decision but the court that delivered it. The Citizens United ruling is likely to be viewed as a shameful bookend to Bush v. Gore. With one 5-to-4 decision, the court’s conservative majority stopped valid votes from being counted to ensure the election of a conservative president. Now a similar conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections.

Congress and members of the public who care about fair elections and clean government need to mobilize right away, a cause President Obama has said he would join. Congress should repair the presidential public finance system and create another one for Congressional elections to help ordinary Americans contribute to campaigns. It should also enact a law requiring publicly traded corporations to get the approval of their shareholders before spending on political campaigns.

These would be important steps, but they would not be enough. The real solution lies in getting the court’s ruling overturned. The four dissenters made an eloquent case for why the decision was wrong on the law and dangerous. With one more vote, they could rescue democracy.

Connie

Big biz needed no help in election game

BY MITCH ALBOM
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Detroit Free Press
Sun. Jan. 24, 2010

This was in junior high, the student council elections. Each candidate got two posters to hang in the hallways. Buttons were forbidden. Flyers were a no-no. Two posters. Same size. After that, it was up to you to convince voters.

It remains, three decades later, the smartest election system I've ever seen.

My junior high could teach the Supreme Court a thing or two, after this past week's disastrous decision to remove campaign contribution limits on corporations and unions.

Look. Let's state this clearly before your eyes glaze over at "campaign finance." Money talks. Money runs the world. Money dominates politics.

And the high court, in a bitterly divided, 5-4 decision, aligned on conservative/liberal lines, just gave those with money infinitely more power.

Or, in junior high school terms, they get a million posters, you still get two.

What's a group of concerned citizens?

It would be laughable if it wasn't so sad. Cloaking itself in the First Amendment, the Supreme Court rushed through this decision, based it flimsily on a case involving a film and knocked down a half-century's worth of wise, hard-fought limits on how much influence a corporation can have in choosing our leaders. One justice defended the ruling by claiming the First Amendment clearly prohibits punishing "citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."

Let me ask you something: Does anyone consider Exxon Mobil an association of citizens? Goldman Sachs? The UAW? You want an association of citizens, go to a PTA meeting or a soup kitchen volunteer line. Don't look on the stock exchange.

Yet by acting as if these poor corporations were being denied their fundamental rights, the door is now open to spend whatever they want on ads and commercials up to the moment you pull the lever.

Oh, don't worry, you can, too. Of course, if by "you" we mean the shoe salesmen or truck driver, you may be outspent by oh, say, a million bucks.

The old laws, though imperfect, at least kept some walls in place. President Theodore Roosevelt, in 1907, had enough foresight to sign legislation barring corporate contributions to federal campaigns -- lest a handful of businesses all but buy a president. Over the years, other laws and court rulings upheld an arm's length distance.

Now that's gone. Businesses basically can tell a candidate "either you support what we want, or we'll keep throwing money at your opponent."

And before you say, "Money isn't everything," ask yourself how many candidates you bother to hear in person or read about in depth. TV and radio increasingly form people's opinions, and with the spigots now open, corporations can bury a candidate in the hate-spewing negative ads that typify today's elections.
You won't just be running against Joe Opponent, you might be running against Merrill Lynch.

Less power to the people

Now, of course, all corporations are not evil. But let's be honest. History shows us the group that pollutes usually has more money than the group that wants to stop pollution. The group that benefits from high health care costs usually will be richer than the group that wants to keep costs down. The group interested in war profits will have more than the group interested in peace -- and so on and so on. You see where this goes.

And it's not as if these corporate CEOs don't get a say in politics. They get to vote and contribute the same as any other American.

But if corporations were the same as citizens, why do they have their own tax rate? If people were the same as corporations, why aren't people split into pieces and traded on an exchange?

Corporations exist to make money, and whatever stands in their way is bad -- even if it's good for the average American. Can anyone truly argue that they deserve more influence in American life?

Yet now -- in 2010 -- is the time to hand more power to corporations and the often disgraceful lobbyists they employ? Now? When 103 years ago, lawmakers had the foresight to put clamps on big business? Now we do this?

There is a dangerous, misguided movement out there that if we just let business rule the nation, all will be well -- markets will take care of themselves, health care, jobs, just let business handle it. You know who says that the loudest? Business.

And now, it can say it even louder. It can shout down any candidate who opposes it. What happened to "of the people, by the people, for the people?" I think I last saw it on a poster in a junior high school hallway.

That's where I last saw it too.

Connie ( moonflower )