Today, in a radical act of judicial activism, five Supreme Court Justices overthrew 103 years of American statutory and judicial law going back to the Presidency of Teddy Roosevelt by ruling that corporations have the Constitutional right to make unlimited campaign contributions.
This is in effect a bloodless judicial coup which turns the American government over to the biggest corporate interests, to the degree that hadn't happened already.
This is a two-part coup. In 2000, in the judicially unconscionable Bush v. Gore ruling, the Supreme Court handed the Presidency to George W. Bush. Bush, in turn, appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, who, in their confirmation hearings, disingenuously promised the Senate and American people to be judicial moderates and avoid judicial activism. Now, in 2010, in perhaps the greatest act of judicial activism in American history, they overthrew 103 years of precedent to turn the US government over to the largest corporations.
According to the New York Times, during the last election cycled, the Fortune 100 companies alone had combined revenues of $13 trillion and profits of $605 billion. A third of the Senate is up for reelection every two years. Let's say the largest corporations give an average of $10 million to each Senatorial Candidate. (Of course, to sway an election, it would be more in big states like New York, Texas and California, and less in small states Wyoming, Montana and Rhode Island.) That would be $3.3-$3.4 billion every two years. Let's say they spent another $4 billion on the Presidential election every 4 years or an average of another $1 billion a year.
For less than 1% of their profits, the 100 largest corporations would likely be able to control the Senate and the Presidency, and through that, the Supreme Court. (This doesn't even count contributions from the next 400 companies in the Fortune 500, or from slightly smaller corporations.) Good luck passing legislation to limit greenhouse gases, regulate insurance companies, or to reign in the power of the big banks.
In the coming days, many legal experts will dissect the majority and dissenting opinions in the Supreme Court's decision Citizens United v Federal Election Commission. But we can already say that by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court just staged a bloodless corporate coup and sold American democracy to the highest bidder.
You have people who think it's a good idea STILL to provide taxpayer subsidies to a health insurance industry, that's already exempt from anti trust laws.
People are about to screwed with their own money BIG TIME.
And some have been convinced "it's reform".
No. The Democratic party damage is only incidental to the damage to the Republic, Its Constitution and it's people. Posturing business as usual by our leaders is effective cooperation with those who would destroy us. And because International corporations are a foreign element, we may now use the word "treason" in our discussion .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamber_of_Fasci_and_Corporations
In the United States, corporations were recognized as having rights to contract, and to have those contracts honored the same as contracts entered into by natural persons, in Dartmouth College v. Woodward. Corporations were recognized as persons for purposes of the 14th Amendment in an 1886 Supreme Court Case, Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad118 U.S. 394.
The 14th Amendment provides protection to persons previously been denied Constitutional Rights. The inclusion of corporations into a new definition of person with the subsequent extension of “rights” to the corporate person is one of the more amazing acts of judicial legislation ever undertaken. The confirmation since that time that corporations are “legal persons” is of such importance in today’s economic interests that most everyone accepts it at face value.
Listening to the continuing debate on the “death penalty,” I began to wonder how, under the “equal protection clause” is it possible to condemn naturally born “persons” to death while the “fictionally created persons” known as corporations are incapable of such penalty---it seems this would be an “unfair” discrimination in favor of one category of person against a different category of person.
As corporations are free to contribute their wealth, it should be “cause” for celebration for the illogical conclusion that our Founding Fathers considered a corporation entitled to the protection of the naturally born.
The corporations will overplay their hand so completely and obviously that candidates will flee their grasp to distance themselves from the stench.
Eventually even the average dumb voter in this country will see thay are being played and will simply stop paying attention to the propaganda.
The networks too will risk contamination and elect not to discredit themselves by taking blood money.