Will the Corporate Supremes Now Dance on Democracy's Corpse?
The Four Courtsmen of the Apocalypse are poised to finally bury American democracy in corporate money. The most powerful institution in human history -- the global corporation -- may soon take definitive possession of our electoral process.
It could happen very soon.
While America agonizes over health care, energy and war, Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas could make it all moot. They may now have the fifth Supreme Court vote they need to open the final floodgates on corporate spending in political campaigns.
In short, the Court may be poised to shred a century of judicial and legislative attempts to preserve even a semblance of restraint on how Big Money buys laws and legal decisions. The ensuing tsunami of corporate cash could turn every election hence into a series of virtual slave auctions, with victory guaranteed only to those candidates who most effectively grovel at the feet of the best-heeled lobbyists.
Not that this is so different from what we have now. The barriers against cash dominating our elections have already proven amazingly ineffective.
But a century ago, corporations were barred from directly contributing to political campaigns. The courts have upheld many of the key requirements.
Meanwhile the barons of Big Money have metastasized into all-powerful electoral juggernauts. The sum total of all these laws, right up to the recently riddled McCain-Feingold mandates, has been to force the corporations to hire a few extra lawyers, accountants and talk show bloviators to run interference for them.
Even that may be too much for the Court's corporate core. John Roberts's Supremes may now be fast-tracking a decision on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, centered on a corporate-financed campaign film attacking Hillary Clinton. According to the Washington Post's account of oral arguments, "a majority of the court seemed impatient with an increasingly complicated federal scheme intended to curb the role of corporations, unions and special interest groups in elections."
Former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, who in 2000 "persuaded" the Court to stop a recount of votes in Florida and put George W. Bush in the White House, said such laws "smothered" the First Amendment and "criminalized" free speech.
The conservative Gang of Four has already been joined by Anthony Kennedy, the Court's swing voter, in signaling the likely overturn of two previous decisions upholding laws that ban direct corporate spending in elections.
When he was confirmed as the Court's Chief, Roberts promised Congress he would be loathe to overturn major legal precedents. But the signals of betrayal now seem so clear that Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold have issued personal statements warning Roberts that a radical assault on campaign finance laws would be considered a breach of faith with the Congress that confirmed him.
Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did assert during oral arguments that "a corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator with inalienable rights."
But since the 1880s the courts have generally granted corporations human rights with no human responsibilities. Thom Hartmann (Unequal Protection) and Ted Nace (Gangs of America) have shown with infuriating detail how corporate lawyers twisted the 14th Amendment, designed to protect the rights of freed slaves, into a legal weapon used to bludgeon the democratic process into submission.
Civil libertarians like Floyd Abrams and the American Civil Liberties Union have somehow argued that depriving these mega-conglomerations of cash and greed their "right" to buy elections might somehow impinge on the First Amendment.
But the contradiction between human rights and corporate power is at the core of the cancer now killing our democracy. As early as 1815 Thomas Jefferson joined Tom Paine in warning against the power of "the moneyed aristocracy." In 1863 sometime railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln compared the evils of corporate power with those of slavery. By the late 1870s Rutherford B. Hayes, himself the beneficiary of a stolen election, mourned a government "of, by and for the corporations."
The original US corporations -- there were six at the time of the Revolution -- were chartered by the states, and restricted as to what kinds of business they might do and where. After the Civil War, those restrictions were erased. As Richard Grossman and the Project on Corporate Law & Democracy have shown, the elastic nature of the corporate charter has birthed a mutant institution whose unrestrained money and power has transformed the planet.
Simply put, globalized corporations, operating solely for profit, have become the most dominant institutions in human history, transcending ancient emperors, feudal lords, monarchs, dictators and even the church in their wealth, reach and ability to dominate all avenues of economic and cultural life.
The Roberts Court now seems intent on disposing of the feeble, flimsy McCain-Feingold campaign finance law as well as the 1990 Austin decision that upheld a state law barring corporations from spending to defeat a specific candidate.
Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas all voted to overturn McCain-Feingold in 2003, and nobody doubts Roberts and Alito will join them now. The only question seems centered on how broad the erasure will be. This, after all, is a "conservative" wing whose intellectual leader, Antonin Scalia, recently argued that wrongly convicted citizens can be put to death even if new evidence confirms their innocence.
Should our worst fears be realized, the torrent of cash into the electoral process could sweep all else before it. With five corporations controlling the major media and all members of the courts, Congress and the Executive at the mercy of corporate largess, who will heed the people?
"We don't put our First Amendment rights in the hands of Federal Election Commission bureaucrats," said Roberts said in the oral arguments.
Instead he may put all our rights in the hands of a board room barony whose global reach and financial dominance are without precedent.
At this point, only an irreversible ban on ALL private campaign money -- corporate or otherwise -- might save the ability of our common citizenry to be heard. Those small pockets where public financing and enforceable restrictions have been tried do work.
A rewrite of all corporate charters must ban political activity and demand strict accountability for what they do to their workers, the natural environment and the common good.
It was the property of the world's first global corporation---the East India Tea Company---that our revolutionary ancestors pitched into Boston Harbor. Without a revolution to now obliterate corporate personhood and the "right" to buy elections, we might just as well throw in the illusion of a free government.
This imminent, much-feared Court decision on campaign finance is likely to make the issue of corporate money versus real democracy as clear as it's ever been.
Likewise the consequences.
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HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH. This article first appeared at www.freepress.org, where he and Bob Fitrakis will soon write on the monopolization of voting machines.
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Yes!
Contributions are Bribery, not speech.
THANK YOU!
No one realizes just how much corporations are ruining our democracy! We should be taking MORE "personhood" status rights from corporations and NOT giving them more power.
You ever wonder why you're being ignored? You're elected officials DON'T LISTEN TO YOU, ANYMORE.
Either fight this with everything you got or plan on NEVER getting the things you want from government.
EVER AGAIN.
This, after all, is a "conservative" wing whose intellectual leader, Antonin Scalia, recently argued that wrongly convicted citizens can be put to death even if new evidence confirms their innocence.
good grief anto ------even the NFL has video replay to make sure the refs GET IT RIGHT -----and no ones life is at stake.
i think you need to resign or be impeached ---that is just too horrible an argument to let you sit on the courts and i am amazed the other eight dont resign in protest.
I agree with this completely.
I have been saying to all of my friends who are interested that the ONLY move that can really save this country, and quite possibly the planet, is public financing.
This country is absolutely heading for a revolution. It is only a mater of time. While I actually welcome a development of that kind, there is no assurance that the change which coalesces will be positive.
I am constantly weighing the reality, economic and political ability and possible destination if my family decides to leave the country. This country is circling the toilet as we speak.
"The contradiction between human rights and corporate power is at the core of the cancer now killing our democracy.
And has been since Reagan!!!!
Democracy in the US is dead, and has been for decades. We're just now waking up to that fact.
This is a shame, 13 comments with 3 pending as I write this.
Oh look something shiny.
Is there any way to remove a sitting Supreme Court Justice?
Yes, they are subject to impeachment just like the President, and for the same reasons. Sadly, these don't seem to have done anything actually illegal...
.
.
Only impeachment.
Don't hold your breath.
Fear not:
Wealthy people always know what's best.
Corporations certainly must have our best interests at heart.
.
.
In theory, they can be impeached (and I think Scalia should have been years ago) but it's virtually impossible to get done.
I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the Corporate Owned States of America, and to the Greed, for which it stands, One nation, Under lobbyists, With POVERTY and riches for all.
In-conjunction with business-friendly courts and lawmakers awash in lobbyists money, citizens have little say in the way Washington operates. Once business and government are indistinguishable, the quality of life disintegrates and democracy becomes a thing of the past.
Although corporate power has been on the uptick for decades, the magnitude and reach of influence exponentially grew at alarming rates under Bush. He appointed over 100 judges to the federal courts, knowing they were business-friendly, and rolled back 100's of environmental, consumer and worker protection laws that had been on the books for decades. For Bush government was simply a vehicle to further corporate profit-making ability. That is how he defined democracy.
Apparently the Supreme Court Justices do, too. Should they decide for Citizens United, I agree, it is likely to have a devastating effect on democracy and our lives.
The halls of Congress are already nothing more than a huge brothel. We arrest street walkers for taking far less than our elected officials do. This is insanity. We need corporate money OUT of our elections. This is legalized bribery at its finest.
We are seeing the corrupting influence of money in the healthcare debate where the corporate owners of the Republican Party and media are orchestrating absolute lies and rabble rousing as a smokescreen to hide the truth about just how poor the heath service is is the USA (it's ranked 37th in the world, just behind Costa Rica). Even Obama has suggested he'll include measures to protect corporate profits at the expense of the nation's health.
When both parties are in the pockets of the corporations, who speaks for the people? Superman?
You, Harvey Wasserman, are/is raising the SOS for our democracy. Corporations already rule plenty, but now they will rule a gazillion-plenty more? This is not to be.
Enshrining the "personhood" status of BUSINESS ENTITIES (Krispy Kreme, as example, sheesh), is INSANE.
Only a Roberts/Al
Ok, corporations are "people" legally. If we can execute people, why can't we execute corporations? Corporations have been responsible for untold misery and death over the last century. Instead, we give corporations bailout money and tax advantages.
Corporations cannot hold office, be jailed for breaking laws, sit on a jury....Th
Granting them this power will end any sort of citizen representation as corporations purchase Congress people's votes.
Why do some corporations get free speech rights and others do not?
The issue of corporate control of government is a bit of a pet subject of mine and I go along totally with what you say Harvey. This will legitimize that control and make democracy a greater farce than it is already.
Already there is no way a four yearly election charade, with no effective interim means for "we the people" to make an input on policy or to hold the peoples representatives accountable can be called democracy. Yet corporates and special interest groups get to participate in writing that policy. Voters are not consulted and polls showing voter sentiment are ignored.
This seems to be something Americans cannot openly admit, the tendency being to want to feel part of the process of democracy. So while there are cries of indignation at the influence of corporates through the lobby system, the will to put a stop it does not exist. Besides, my fear is that any significant mass based attempt to change the system will be harshly dealt with.
Mass based attempt? Yep it just may come to that and I also fear that will be the only way and as you said it will be dealt with savagely by our corporate overlords.
So when we go to the National Mall I am not sure what will be worse, looking at the tanks or seeing someone holding a poster with Obama Joker poster standing next to me.
The tea parties are the "mass based" attempts you mention, among the lunatic fringe.
When the corruption turns the lives of normal Americans into a living hell, the kind of response you'll see will make the tea parties look like, well, tea parties. It will be civil war, and it will be horrific.
And, I'm afraid, it's what's in store for us within a decade or two, at the rate we're going.
I'm right there with you.
One only has to read some history to realize that we are closer to that possibility than most Americans and anyone in the media eye are ready to admit.
Gated communities and billions offshore won't protect the wealthy when the 'have-nots' become mob-like. This has been true throughout human history.
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