Against the opposition of their four colleagues, five right-wing Supreme Court justices have now guaranteed that big corporations can spend unlimited funds on political advertising in any political election. In an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, the Court overruled established precedents and declared dozens of national and state statutes unconstitutional, including the McCain-Feingold Act, which forbade corporate or union television advertising that endorses or opposes a particular candidate.
This appalling decision, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, was quickly denounced by President Obama as "devastating"; he said that it "strikes at our democracy itself." In his State of the Union speech of January 27, he said, "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections." He is right: the decision will further weaken the quality and fairness of our politics.
The Court has given lobbyists, already much too powerful, a nuclear weapon. Some lawyers have predicted that corporations will not take full advantage of it: they will want to keep their money for their business. But that would still permit carefully targeted threats. What legislator tempted to vote for health care reform or Obama's banking reorganization would be indifferent to the prospect that his reelection campaign could be swamped in a tsunami of expensive negative advertising? How many corporations fearful of environmental or product liability litigation would pass up the chance to tip the balance in a state judicial election?
On the most generous understanding the decision displays the five justices' instinctive favoritism of corporate interests. But some commentators, including The New York Times, have suggested a darker interpretation. The five justices may have assumed that allowing corporations to spend freely against candidates would favor Republicans; perhaps they overruled long-established laws and precedents out of partisan zeal. If so, their decision would stand beside the Court's 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore as an unprincipled political act with terrible consequences for the nation.
Continue reading at NYRblog
Tamara McClintock Greenberg: Should The Government Regulate Our Health?
The relationship between many of us and our physicians is dysfunctional. Doctors are overwhelmed and receive less respect than ever before in the history of modern medicine.
(1) Senator Byron Dorgan's attempt to allow the reimportation of drugs. Byron counted sixty votes to pass the legislation but suddenly at the time the bill was voted on 60 became 51, insufficient for passage. What happened? Pharma talked to Rahm Emanuel. Rahm in turn passed the word to kill the bill.
(2) A single payer or "Medicare for Everyone" plan was never debated or sent to the CBO for a cost estimate. The reason is obvious, single payer is not only cheaper than private insurance robber baron plans but government involvement rules out problems with private insurance companies weaseling out of paying someone's medical bills or using "prior existing condition" as an excuse not to pay (or raising rates if government rules out using prior existing conditions).
(3) The Senate is unwilling to send a reconciliation bill, necessary to affect passage of HCR legislation, to the House. Bubba Glurp Burp Corp-- the insurance-pharma industrialization complex-- prevented 51 votes from being accumulated for reconciliation.
(4) The Wall Streeters that caused the current financial crisis are killing effective regulatory reform from passing the Senate. The same money the taxpayers bailed them out with is being used by these sociopaths to jackhammer America's economic future.
America is a corporacracy corrupted and condemned by a sociopathic elite.
But as far as you go, yes, I agree COMPLETELY that organizations OF ANY TYPE, and with ANY political affiliation should be prohibited from the political process, with the SOLE exception of actual, legally recognized political parties.
Your logic says "yes". My logic, and the Courts, say "no".
You then cross the line further with attempt to limit the types of speech permitted. You say, "Money is an AMPLIFIER of speech, and as such MUST be limited to AT MOST telling the absolute truth." Whose truth is the absolute truth? Why do I keep seeing images of editions of Pravda (the Russian word for "truth" and the official newspaper of the Soviet Government) dancing in my head as I read your words?
You need to think clearly about the possible results of your ideas before you speak.
I think the founding fathers debated the question about a property qualification for voting and, of course, decided against it.
In fairnerss to Alito and his pals, the most brilliant geniuses often have incredible lapses of judgment in their thinking processes. I don't think I've ever seen a worse opinion in my life.
To change this decision will require either Congressional lawmaking to limit the Supreme Court from hearing First Amendment cases, or a Constitutional amendment restricting First Amendment rights in an election to, say, registered press organizations, or to single Citizens only...
Do we really want to go there? I don't, but do you?
Second, you only mention unions once, in the first paragraph. This is because you want it to sound like only corporations can spend money on campaign ads.
Yous eem amazed that the court found parts of McCain Fiengold unconstitutional. This has been thought by many legal experts since the day it was passed. And that is the court's job. Right? Rule on constitutionality?
You seemd shocked it was a 5/4 decision. Many impartant decisions are decided 5/4.
In regard to Bush V Gore. Eight justices ruled against Gore's idea that they should only recount certain counties. Counties that favored Gore. It was 5/4 to stop the process, and declare Bush the winner.
A study conducted by many in the mainstream media of the 2000 election, concluded that Bush would have won a recount.
You also don't mention the "loophole" in the campaign law that allows broadcast corporations an examption to the law.
Justice Kennedy pointed out how there was no, clear, principled way to determine exactly what is a broadcast corporation.
The majority cited a score of decisions recognizing the First Amendment rights of corporations, and Justice Stevens acknowledged that “we have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment.”
Second, COMPANIES ARE NOT PEOPLE, THEREFORE THEY DON'T HAVE RIGHTS!!!
I would say that a corporation has all of the rights that the people comprising it have.
Again, we do not restrict Freedom of the Press to just Citizens here in the United States. And if a group of foreign persons create an organization -- a corporation, if you will -- for the dissemination of their political viewpoints, and they use the same means of dissemination that Citizens are permitted to use, where does the Constitution stand?
Here is the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Where are the rights of religion, free speech, and of the press limited to just Citizens? I don't see it in the text of the First Amendment at all. All of these rights are present whether we are dealing with individuals or groups of individuals (corporations, if you will).
As far as unions causing GM to go bankrupt, that's just right-wing spin. You DO realize that GM owned GMAC financial services, yes? You know, the same company that loaned money for mortgages and new car purchases and insurance and...you get the picture. Just like many mortgage companies they also had too many "volatile" loans floating out there. Just like many lenders they were using the same tools as everyone else with credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations and so on. It wasn't the car part of the company that drove them to bankruptcy, it was the whole economy deciding that now wasn't the best time to be buying a car because of the housing bubble causing the crash and the fact that GMAC had a bunch of severely over-valued loans.
The decision is breathtakingly incompetent. A corporation has no independent speech to infringe. It is only a legally-licensed megaphone for owners and managers to engage in commerce. Violate terms of that license, have the megaphone unplugged, and the owners and managers still have unfettered free speech.
The decision guts US sovereignty. It is now perfectly legal for Venezuela-owned CITGO to air ads attacking, e.g., Mitt Romney. It is a "domestic" corporation, not a "foreign" corporation -- just foreign-owned. But the ownership of a corporation is irrelevant to current law--look up the phrase "corporate veil."
SCOTUS gutted US sovereignty, and didn't even bother to consider the implications of rigidly enforcing a bizarre ideology.
It is time to impeach the five for incompetence on the bench.
Right. What do the other four justices who dissented know and so many others who have spent years studying the progression of this assault on our representative government? Nothing I guess. According to you.
1) Justice Kennedy is hardly right-wing. He is a key "swing" vote that goes either way.
2) I agree with Obama in that this is a horrible decision. But the anger should be directed at Congress (both parties). Congress has the power to pass a law or, if necessary, a constitutional amendment to place limits or ban corporate campaign money. But that will never happen because Congress is corrupt and they want their $$$$.
2) Congress does NOT have the power to fix this, SCOTUS has made VERY strict rules about Campaign finance reform laws for the last couple decades, meaning that it would take a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT, which not only requires 2/3 of BOTH houses of Congress, but 3/4 of the STATES!
Violations should be prosecuted.
Secondly, there some field levelling between media corporations and non-media corporations as each now has a somewhat of a equal voice for opinions in future elections.
More importantly, when President Obama was overseas as candidate Obama, how much foreign money (private and public) was used to support the trip?
Or was the trip, viewed in a certain way to skirt current campaign laws?
Should the President admonished himself for actually accepting some manner of foreign contributions in 2008, and is this President admonishing the Supreme Court from a position of previous experience?