Supreme Court Endorses Corporatocracy – Worst Decision Since Bush 2000

Remember the date January 21, 2010. Mark it well, because it is the day that Democracy died in the United States.

In the year 2000, we had the Supreme Court deciding that all the votes in Florida should not be counted because Bush was ahead by a narrow margin, thus ensuring his victory. Now, in 2010, we have the Supreme Court taking the bogus case that “Corporations are people” and therefore entitled to free speech, and ratcheting up the concept. Now, these “people”, in the form of corporations, have no limits on what they can spend on Federal elections.

Now, with the ability to flood the airwaves to promote any cause, we will have corporations writing every piece of legislation. This will be coupled with the corporation’s already established ability to buy any members of Congress that may oppose their favored bill in Congress. During campaigns, the enemies of corporations will be Swiftboated so badly that what big money did to John Kerry will seem like a birthday party.  Just think: Fox News on all the stations all the time, as if Glenn Beck’s head were constantly floating in the sky, talking, crying, talking, crying…

Is my maximum contribution to a political candidate of $2,300 likely to turn the tide in elections when compared to the Fortune 100′s combined income of 13 trillion dollars in the last campaign? The right-wing Supreme Court justices argue that all that this means is that the corporation’s rights of free speech will not be suppressed by the government.

First of all, corporations are not individual U.S. citizens. They cannot vote, do not necessarily die, and they cannot go to jail for crimes they commit. They cannot “speak” despite having a million microphones attached to their corporate logo. Oh yes, this gives corporations free speech, but in this case, the free speech uttered by corporations that is broadcast on 15 cable networks will drown out the speech of the human citizen standing on the street corner or gathering in front of the Capitol building.

The corporation’s free speech will more likely be heard than the individual’s free speech. This devalues the standing of the individual and vests the corporations with so much political power that future elections will simply be a sham, with the corporate candidate guaranteed to win. Think of it as the New York Yankees winning the World Series every year because they buy the best players. If you don’t like it in sports, you really are not going to like it when it affects your livelihood, your career, your savings, your health care, your retirement, and your Social Security. Expect the campaign to privatize Social Security for Wall Street’s benefit to begin almost immediately.

Unless this is changed or restricted by the sane members of Congress, this is politically the last nail in the coffin for our Democracy. Game over.

From the Huffington Post (emphasis mine):

By a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court on Thursday rolled back restrictions on corporate spending on federal campaigns. The decision could unleash a torrent of corporate-funded attack ads in upcoming campaigns.

“Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy — it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people — political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority.

In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens accused the majority of judicial activism and attacked the use of corporate personhood in the case: “The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case.”

Progressive good-government groups and Democratic politicians reacted to the decision with universal despair. Republicans offered measured praise…

Democracy 21′s Fred Wertheimer, for years a leading advocate of campaign finance reform, called the decision a “disaster for the American people and a dark day for the Supreme Court.”

“The Supreme Court majority has acted recklessly to free up corporations to use their immense, aggregate corporate wealth to flood federal elections and buy government influence. The Fortune 100 companies alone had combined revenues of $13 trillion and profits of $605 billion during the last election cycle,” Wertheimer wrote.

Supreme Court Rolls Back Campaign Finance Restrictions.

That $13 Trillion is just for the Fortune 100. Think what the Fortune 500 can do with their combined resources.

Greg Palast, independent investigator and reporter, offers a more chilling view of the Supreme Court’s decision:

The Court’s decision is far, far more dangerous to U.S. democracy. Think: Manchurian candidates.

I’m losing sleep over the millions – or billions – of dollars that could flood into our elections from ARAMCO, the Saudi Oil corporation’s U.S. unit; or from the maker of “New Order” fashions, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Or from Bin Laden Construction corporation. Or Bin Laden Destruction Corporation.

Right now, corporations can give loads of loot through PACs. While this money stinks (Barack Obama took none of it), anyone can go through a PAC’s federal disclosure filing and see the name of every individual who put money into it. And every contributor must be a citizen of the USA.

But under today’s Supreme Court ruling that corporations can support candidates without limit, there is nothing that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias.

Candidate Barack Obama was one sharp speaker, but he would not have been heard, and certainly would not have won, without the astonishing outpouring of donations from two million Americans. It was an unprecedented uprising-by-PayPal, overwhelming the old fat-cat sources of funding.

Well, kiss that small-donor revolution goodbye. Under the Court’s new rules, progressive list serves won’t stand a chance against the resources of new “citizens” such as CNOOC, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation. Maybe UBS (United Bank of Switzerland), which faces U.S. criminal prosecution and a billion-dollar fine for fraud, might be tempted to invest in a few Senate seats. As would XYZ Corporation, whose owners remain hidden by “street names.”

George Bush’s former Solicitor General Ted Olson argued the case to the court on behalf of Citizens United, a corporate front that funded an attack on Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary. Olson’s wife died on September 11, 2001 on the hijacked airliner that hit the Pentagon. Maybe it was a bit crude of me, but I contacted Olson’s office to ask how much “Al Qaeda, Inc.” should be allowed to donate to support the election of his local congressman.

Olson has not responded.

The danger of foreign loot loading into U.S. campaigns, not much noted in the media chat about the Citizens case, was the first concern raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who asked about opening the door to “mega-corporations” owned by foreign governments. Olson offered Ginsburg a fudge, that Congress might be able to prohibit foreign corporations from making donations, though Olson made clear he thought any such restriction a bad idea.

Tara Malloy, attorney with the Campaign Legal Center of Washington D.C. says corporations will now have more rights than people. Only United States citizens may donate or influence campaigns, but a foreign government can, veiled behind a corporate treasury, dump money into ballot battles.

Malloy also noted that under the law today, human-people, as opposed to corporate-people, may only give $2,300 to a presidential campaign. But hedge fund billionaires, for example, who typically operate through dozens of corporate vessels, may now give unlimited sums through each of these “unnatural” creatures.

And once the Taliban incorporates in Delaware, they could ante up for the best democracy money can buy.

In July, the Chinese government, in preparation for President Obama’s visit, held diplomatic discussions in which they skirted issues of human rights and Tibet. Notably, the Chinese, who hold a $2 trillion mortgage on our Treasury, raised concerns about the cost of Obama’s health care reform bill. Would our nervous Chinese landlords have an interest in buying the White House for an opponent of government spending such as Gov. Palin? Ya betcha!

The potential for foreign infiltration of what remains of our democracy is an adjunct of the fact that the source and control money from corporate treasuries (unlike registered PACs), is necessarily hidden. Who the heck are the real stockholders? Or as Butch asked Sundance, “Who are these guys?”

We’ll never know.

Hidden money funding, whether foreign or domestic, is the new venom that the Court has injected into the system by its expansive decision in Citizens United.

We’ve been there. The 1994 election brought Newt Gingrich to power in a GOP takeover of the Congress funded by a very strange source.

Congressional investigators found that in crucial swing races, Democrats had fallen victim to a flood of last-minute attack ads funded by a group called, “Coalition for Our Children’s Future.” The $25 million that paid for those ads came, not from concerned parents, but from a corporation called “Triad Inc.”

Evidence suggests Triad Inc. was the front for the ultra-right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers and their private petroleum company, Koch Industries. Had the corporate connection been proven, the Kochs and their corporation could have faced indictment under federal election law. As of today, such money-poisoned politicking has become legit.

So it’s not just un-Americans we need to fear but the Polluter-Americans, Pharma-mericans, Bank-Americans and Hedge-Americans that could manipulate campaigns while hidden behind corporate veils. And if so, our future elections, while nominally a contest between Republicans and Democrats, may in fact come down to a three-way battle between China, Saudi Arabia and Goldman Sachs.