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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJim Hightower: Welcome to our new plutocracy: Citizens United has effectively destroyed the 1st Am.
In todays so-called democratic election process, Big Money doesnt talk, it roars usually drowning out the peoples voice.
Bizarrely, the Supreme Court decreed in its 2010 Citizens United ruling that money is a form of free speech. Thus, declared the learned justices, people and corporations are henceforth allowed to spend unlimited sums of their money to speak in election campaigns. But wait if political speech is measured by money then by definition speech is not free. It can be bought, thereby giving the most speech to the few with the most money. Thats plutocracy, not democracy.
Sure enough, in the first six months of this presidential election cycle, more than half of the record-setting $300 million given to the various candidates came from only 358 mega-rich families and the corporations they control. The top 158 of them totaled $176 million in political spending, meaning that, on average, each one of them bought more than a million dollars worth of free speech.
Nearly all of their money is backing Republican presidential hopefuls who promise: (1) to cut taxes on the rich; (2) cut regulations that protect us from corporate pollution and other abuses of the common good; and (3) to cut Social Security, food stamps and other safety-net programs that we un-rich people need. The great majority of Americans adamantly oppose all of those cuts but none of us has a million bucks to buy an equivalent amount of political free speech.
Its not just cuts to taxes, regulations and some good public programs that are endangered by the Courts ridiculous ruling, but democracy itself. Thats why a new poll by Bloomberg Politics found that 78 percent of the American people including 80 percent of Republicans want to overturn Citizens United. But those 358 families, corporations and Big Money politicos will have none of it. In fact, Americas inane, Big Money politics have become so prevalent in this election cycle that believe it or not candidates have found a need for yet another campaign consultant.
more
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/30/welcome_to_our_new_plutocracy_citizens_united_has_effectively_destroyed_the_first_amendment_partner/
Octafish
(55,745 posts)When money is equated by law to free speech, those without money are cut out of democracy and plutocrats rule.
2naSalit
(86,332 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)Never have recovered. They don't give us time to.