Open floodgates (Louisville Courier-Journal)

[struggle4progress]

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that largely erases long-established restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates is an appalling error and poses a threat to the integrity of American democracy itself.

If that sounds like hyperbole, consider what the Court is saying the government must allow: Wall Street banks and investment houses, insurance firms, oil companies and other mega-industries can now flood campaigns, including on the eve of elections, with massive amounts of money — however many millions of dollars it takes — to elect candidates who do their bidding and to defeat those brave enough to resist ...

Let no one be in doubt about the radical and potentially transformational nature of this ruling. Efforts to curb corporate power to influence elections date to 1907, during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, and have been strengthened frequently by Congress in bipartisan actions. While the Court's majority decision breezily dismisses the perils of corruption and scandal, what do they expect to happen when lobbyists can lure votes with pledges of massive expenditures on behalf of supportive officials?

At least the ruling shatters the misleading claim that conservatives are interested only in strict adherence to the Constitution. By exploiting a relatively obscure case that could have been decided narrowly to order sweeping reversals of even relatively recent Court rulings, the majority engaged in the starkest form of judicial activism. By disingenuously tying their logic to the First Amendment, they ignored that the Constitution makes no mention of corporations' rights and no suggestion that companies have identical rights and interests as individuals ...

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100124/OPINION01/1240323/Open+floodgates

[Hekate]

1. KnR