With the Supreme Court ruling by the "Fabulous Five," Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a single corporation will be able tap into its deep pockets and disfranchise a million citizens. A group calling itself "Citizens United" has just won a fight to give huge corporations more control over our politics. Even the 1886 "ruling," Santa Clara Co. v. Southern Pacific, that established a corporation as "a person" was fraudulent. Now these fictive "persons" have been granted more political rights than real human beings. What's to stop these conglomerates from using their vast stores of cash to implant their servants at every level of municipal, state, and federal government?
It's unfortunate that influential commentators, such as the New York Times' David Kirkpatrick, are blind to the grave implications of Citizens United v. FEC. Whether Kirkpatrick and others at the highest echelons of American punditry understand it or not the fact is that the next ten to twelve years promise to be a turning point in American democracy unless some drastic civic action is taken to blunt the effects of this egregious example of Far Right judicial activism. "Polls have shown that relatively few people understand or are even aware of the campaign finance rules," Kirkpatrick writes, and "some politicians say reformers . . . are unrealistic about how money and politicians mix." Kirkpatrick's point: Just go to sleep people -- nothing to see here. This over-reaching, game-changing Supreme Court ruling won't adversely affect anything. No worries.
Corporations are immortal. They don't need health care, or minimum wages, or pensions, or food stamps. They don't raise children and have families. They have no morality or ethics other than maximizing their profits. They are sociopathic.
One example of corporate sociopathology from the dawn of our corporation-loving era involves the Reagan Administration's deregulatory zeal and the pharmaceutical industry. Beginning as far back as the 1960s medical studies had shown a link between the use of aspirin, to relieve the symptoms of childhood diseases such as chicken pox, with the potential to develop Reye's syndrome, a disease that can cause severe damage to the liver, brain, and other organs, as well as death. For years pediatricians had been warning parents not to give their children aspirin when they had chicken pox or other viral infections. In 1981, the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) decided to alert consumers to the danger, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) followed suit, citing a "consensus of the scientific experts" calling for new warning labels on children's aspirin. The pharmaceutical industry responded by funding an astroturf group called the "Committee on the Care of Children" that launched an aggressive public lobbying campaign against the new rule. On November 18, 1982, Reagan's HSS Secretary, Richard Schweiker, withdrew the labeling mandate saying the idea had been "premature."
The battle over the warning labels continued until 1986 when the Reagan Administration finally capitulated to public pressure and imposed the new regulation. In 1980, there had been 555 reported cases of Reye's syndrome, but the year after the labeling requirement went into effect there were only thirty-six. A study by the National Academy of Sciences and the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley found that of the hundreds of children who died of Reye's syndrome between 1981 and 1986, 1,470 could have been saved if aspirin had been properly labeled. "These 1,470 deaths were especially tragic," the report concluded, "because they were, typically, healthy children who never recovered from the viral infection of chicken pox." Here is but one example of corporations willing to kill American children just to save a few pennies on each bottle of aspirin by not printing new warning labels.
And there are countless other examples of corporations egregiously violating societal norms and humane conduct that far exceed the level of damage that an individual citizen could ever cause, such as when Big Coal chews up rural communities with "mountain top removal" mining; or the McWayne foundry brutalizes its workers; or Cargill uses meat processing subcontractors that spread E. coli across the country; or Nestlé's rips off Sacramento's municipal water supply in a time of drought; or Wal-Mart and other "big box" stores obliterate main street America; or Blackwater and Haliburton profiteer from war; or media conglomerates function as corporate propaganda ministries; or Aetna and other health insurance giants prey on the American people like vultures; or ExxonMobil and the energy monopolies flaunt environmental laws and gouge consumers; or the financial services companies bring down the American economy and trade derivatives based on life insurance policies betting that Americans are going to die sooner than later; and so on, and on, and on.
Today, we have levels of inequality worse than the Gilded Age and the "trusts" are bigger, more powerful, and possess a global reach that is greater than ever. The corporations have already given the country years of disastrous public policy. The health care fiasco shows their power to pull the strings in Congress. And George W. Bush's Supreme Court drops enormous new political powers in the laps of these corporate behemoths? So much for Chief Justice John Roberts' promises during his confirmation hearing to respect stare decisis. Just when you think our politics couldn't get worse you get surprised again.
Follow Joseph A. Palermo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/N/A
FYI - Huffington Post is a corporation. It is a for profit corporation. It is a for profit corporation where some of the largest investors are foreign corporations (Softbank).
This is a case where a group was blocked from broadcasting ads for a movie that was to be shown within 30 days of the DNC primaries. The FEC could have blocked the same activity within 60 days of a general election.
Are you really for banning ads for movies? Any such thing as a movie that doesnt have some "corporation" involved at some level?
"Fahrenheit 9/11" was released (by a foreign, for profit corporation - Sony Pictures) just weeks before the GOP convention in 2004. The poster had a picture of Bush. The movie was of course politically motivated. Do you really think Michael Moore or Sony Pictures should have been stopped, or charged with felonies? How about for "Capitalism, A Love Story" - that came out just weeks before the 08 general election.
Or maybe you just think we should have tens of thousands of pages restricting all kinds of basic human activities, and trust that bureaucrats at places like the FEC (in Washington DC, which voted 93% for Obama) will only enforce the law against people you disagree with. Probably a safe bet.
www.dirckthenoorman.com
In a Jan. 23 story at the Washington Post titled "Campaign finance ruling leaves Democrats with few options", Dan Eggen and Ben Pershing write that "[t]he decision further weakens the power of the major political parties, which must adhere to campaign restrictions enforced by the Federal Election Commission." (For some reason, this story has disappeared from the Washington Post’s website.)
It seems to me this view may be wrong. If a corporation is a person, surely a political party is a person. In fact, aren't political parties incorporated?
For the entire history of our country, though, we have chosen to ignore it.
The recent Supreme Court decision is the most blatant effort to "ignore it."
But let the record show (and you can verify this yourself with a trip to the National Archives):
(a) No one has scratched-out the word "BRIBERY" from Article 2, Section 4. Nor the phrase, "ALL CIVIL OFFICERS," nor "SHALL BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE."
(b) The entire document does not contain any of these words: "corporation," "campaign," "contribution," "lobbying," "loophole," or "unconstitutional."
(c) Article 3 does not grant the Supreme Court, nor any other court, the right to "interpret" law nor to declare any thing "unconstitutional."
(d) Article 5 remains the one and only (difficult...) way to Amend the Constitution.
One day, perhaps, we will repudiate the idea of "government by bribery (and therefore, extortion)." We'll reject the notion that what benefits less than 1,000 people(!) trumps the legitimate concerns of 308 million(!!) others.
Until then . . .
Fanned
Corruption is not a problem in our government--it has become our system.
Less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the U.S. population gave 86 percent of all itemized campaign contributions for the 2004 elections.
I see on the liberal, republican, and libertarian sites voters like ourselves all cry for campaign reform.
ALL voters agree that our system is corrupt, but it is always the other side. It is both sides and we need leaders to come together on the left and right to come together on this.
Campaign Reform would heal the split of the American people that big money has encouraged in order to weaken us and keep us fighting with each other.
http://www.fairelectionsnow.org/volunteer/petition
Fair Elections Now Act (FENA) sign the petition
I feel this recent court decision is just as important in its own way as the Dred Scott decision. Only instead of blocking the road to freedom from slavery like Scott, this decision is just as wrong because it is a direct path from freedom to serfdom.
The Constitution begins, "We The People," and applies to human beings. How could the court so misconstrue something so obvious?
If we accept this without taking to the streets then every Americans should lower their heads in shame when they hear the lyrics “the land of the free and the home of the brave” when our National Anthem is sung..
Corruption of our system has done what no foreign power has been capable. It has nullified the checks and balances in our government.
Oil monopolies, Insurance monopolies, Wall Street, and the Banks if not in league are aiding and abetting Bin Laden, who’s plainly stated goal is to bankrupt the United States like they did the Soviet Union.
Does it really matter which one succeeds?
It has become obvious that our government is heavily swayed by corporate interests and more often than not their interests are put ahead of the people's. Now unfettered by law big business can spend as much as they like to influence the outcome of elections and any candidate who opposes their agenda will be hit with a barrage of negative advertising. Worse foreign corporations are basically given citizenship rights to use their money to influence US elections, too.
A couple of articles in Slate were helpful in explaining Kennedy's opinion. Basically he used 2 legal theories to defend his decision: 1) money is speech and 2) corporations are people. In 1976 (?) the court ruled money is itself speech and the "quantity" of expression cannot be unlimited.
Yet just last year Justice Kennedy agreed that a candidate running for judicial office would be more inclined to rule in favour of a contributor who had donated $2 million. So why did he change his mind?
The Roberts Court ignored precedent at the expense of the people. Instead of preserving the individual's rights and protecting our freedom to be heard and to make a difference in our political system, 5 Supreme Court Justices decided otherwise. I don't want to hear one more word about "liberal" "activist" judges.
The 2 supporting theses underlying the SupremeCount ruling are #1)unlimited free speech #2)corporate personhood. Now, it seems obvious to me that thesis#2 hasn't been adequately addressed by anybody on Huffpost, in SC or anywhere else. Maybe you or Mr. Palermo can address that issue:--
"There is no logical rational definition of a 'real person' in law or in nature possessing PERPETUAL LIFE or ENDLESS LIFE, or LIFE WITHOUT END, or IMMORTALITY. If there is, I'd be shocked out of my chair. Yet, corporate charters as defined in law have conferred "ETERNAL LIFE" to artificially created (in my opinion Frankenstein monsters) legal entities to do business. If that legal fiction is accurately stated, then the framers of that legal fiction is exercising powers of a religious GOD, in its conventional concept of God. Framers of that fiction is exercising EXTREME HUBRIS. There're 2 reasons why that illogical hubristic legal assertion in statues can be and now must be frontally challenged in court, all the way up to this treasonous SupremeCourt:--
In a way, this is a huge loss for politicians. Corporations won't need to buy their support; now corporations can advertize directly to the public, and politicians will read the tea leaves. Politicians will fall into line; there will be no bargaining.
If you think your precinct walking, calls, petition signing, individual contributions (incredibly limited, compared to corporate support), or your vote on election day equals the advertising corporations will do before elections--I have an underwater house I'd like to sell you.
How many of your aunties and uncles do their homework before voting? Do you yourself study all the issues every election? It's easy to write a bill that purports to be something it isn't; it will be easy to advertize and tell you a bill is something it isn't. League of Women Voters and other neutral analysts will have only the tiniest of voices. How many people do you know who have any idea that the Supreme Court even ruled on this issue, let alone a thorough understanding of what it said?
Deny it all you want, but corporations already influence you to an inordinate degree. You think they spend their money just to entertain you?
Advertising works, "big time."
Then I started speaking about various stakeholders in the debate and mentioned "teaparty" and got response--"What's a tea party?"
Our dear Democracy will be the "New Coke"