Last week's Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court will have far-reaching implications here in our fair state, but -- to help you understand this -- I have to explain several key points.
The first is the nature of free speech. Our First Amendment allows me to express myself freely. I can say: "Chief Justice Roberts is a pinhead and a tool of Wall Street." I can say, "Justice Samuel Alito is a mangy dog licking the boots of corporate America." I can say, "Justice Clarence Thomas is a crazy person who should be in a facility where he can't hurt anybody." And no one can stop me.
This aspect of free speech has relatively little to do with the case, but it did make me feel better.
The court had to get your boot off the neck of corporate America. It is unfair and disgusting the way you, the reader of this column, have been holding down Morgan Stanley and Aetna and ConocoPhillips by not letting them pour quite as many millions of dollars as they want to into political campaigns. It is humiliating the way they are forced to set up political action committees to funnel money out of their treasuries and into elections. Stop, it you bullies! Stop picking on Walmart and ExxonMobil and Bank of America! They deserve to have a voice in the public debate, just the way you have.
That's what the court's majority said.
So this whole idea we've had for the past 10 years that maybe Big Business has too much say in our political process turns out to have been a completely nutty concept, and trying to do anything about it has been a slightly less productive use of our time than trying to start a professional jai alai league in which all the players would be monkeys and pigeons.
One of the alarming images that was invoked over and over last Thursday when the decision came out was the idea of floodgates. Almost every analysis said the decision would "open the floodgates" for corporate political spending.
See, I would have thought the floodgates were already open, but apparently Chevron and General Electric and AT&T have huge stinking ponds of even more money than they usually spend. The biggest danger from now on is that some candidates may get hurt by the huge sacks of money that will be thrown at all of them.
The court did say that we citizens could insist on knowing exactly how much money was being pumped into the beaks of our politicians. Under the circumstances, I think it would be helpful if they were forced to dress, at all times, like race car drivers, with little patches all over their clothing identifying their biggest sponsors.
The court decision was good news/bad news for Tom Foley and Ned Lamont and Linda McMahon, all of whom are planning to use millions of dollars from their personal fortunes to run for office here in Connecticut. The good news is they might not have to, especially if they can persuade corporations to, just for example, pay for a 30-minute video titled "Dan Malloy/Rob Simmons/Richard Blumenthal [circle one] will raise your taxes, frog-march your grandmother in front of a death panel and force you in a Soviet-style health care system where you have to wait in line for days to get toilet paper to clot your untreated aortic rupture" and then run that video on 299 cable channels 24 hours before Election Day.
The bad news is that Malloy/Simmons/Blumenthal could try to find companies that would pay for similar videos about Foley/Lamont/McMahon. And what are those companies going to want in return for all that help? Nothing! Well, almost nothing. OK, complete cooperation by all elected officials with their agendas so that they can pollute and foreclose and market hazardous products and never be sued and raise your premiums and leave you to die in the gutter at 2 a.m. But how different is that from right now?
According to the high court majority, it's not wrong for companies to spend huge amounts of money influencing your perception of candidates. In fact, it's encouraged. It's profoundly American. Only when every thought in your head has been molded, inserted and lubricated by CitiGroup, Verizon and Target will you ever be sure that you are truly free.
"Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction"
By Chris Hedges
"Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d’état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place."
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/democracy_in_america_is_a_useful_fiction_20100124/
We must find a different way.
The current Centrist American seems more interested in keeping their heads down and not drawing the fire of "people" who can make or brake real people.
While the culture war has divided our country into "real America" (where very few actual people actually live) and "others" (who live in the most populous regions in the country), the corporations, who owned this system before the ruling, have removed the line separating "real people" and things that are sort of like people.
The Great Depression was a tremendous equalizer for democracy. The voice of the people came back through FDR and the fact that the powerful special interest, ie. Corporations, were flat on their backs and their war chest was greatly reduced.
Move Your Money is a good start. We need to reduce our consumption of goods from these companies to get them back under control. I would suggest that you start buying from your local merchants as much as possible, and reduce as much consumer activity as possible. If you can't afford to pay cash for something, then don't buy it.
If we want to regain control of our government, as in of the people, by the people and for the people, then stop feeding the monster that has taken over our country.
Another plus, they started out good like all of us--and like Frankenstein's Creature.