Is the Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, good for Americans?
Democracy died in the United States on January 21, 2010. The initial wound was dealt in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad …when the notion that corporations as “legal persons” possessed rights similar to actual persons first came into prominence. Democracy was mortally wounded when the Supreme Court decided in Buckley v. Valeo… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo …that campaign financing is a form of speech. So, essentially a person’s 1st Amendment rights are dependent upon how much money one has…and corporate entities have a lot more money than most individuals. Citizen United v. FEC melds those two decisions into the final takeover of the Corporatist Kleptocrat state. Since elections almost invariably go to the candidate with the biggest war chest, and there are now no restrictions on how much money corporate interests can contribute to these war chests, by definition those
I’m in the middle because – while it’s nice to see the Supreme Court siding on Free Speech – it’s actual effect on elections will be insignificant, yet gives the idiots on the yippy Left a source of endless anti-business and anti-conservative soundbites, while also giving the anti-government luny-Right blogosphere another bogus issue to rant about pointlessly – right along side the FED paying its prophets to Rockefellers and Rothschilds, and how Obama isn’t a natural born citizen of the USA. But the fact is, under this ruling corporate entities are to be classified as individuals for campaign contribution purposes – AND THAT MEANS THAT with the current ridiculously low limits on individual contributions, the ruling makes no real difference. A private citizen, and thus now a corporation or union, may contribute *directly* NO MORE THAN $2,400 per candidate per election, no more than $30,400 per party per election year, no more than $5,000 per PAC per calendar year, AND NO MORE THAN $115,
Before the ruling, corporations had to donate through PACs, which required the employees and management to agree to the donations. Now, the board of directors can hand money directly to a politician without needing to convince its employees of the merits. Before the ruling, corporations were limited to about $1 million per candidate. After the ruling, corporations are limited in their political contributions only by their total profits. Exxon Mobil, for example, was only legally able to give $1 million in 2008, but if this ruling had been in effect in 2008, they would have been able to give up to $46 billion. Here’s a thought: Saudi Arabia uses its oil money, or China uses its vast exportation business wealth, to buy controlling shares in several American corporations. They then use these corporations’ profits to get Congresscritters elected to Congress who are favorable to these foreign interests. In essence, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it possible for a foreign government to comp
