The Supreme Court and Campaign Contributions

Usually, the Supreme Court hears 100 cases a year.  Of those, we might hear in the news about one or two of them.  One of the cases this year was Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission.  It sounds boring in principle:  A non-profit organization tried to release a documentary against Hillary Clinton shortly before the primaries of 2008, but it was deemed to be illegal because corporations are not legally allowed to contribute from their own treasuries to political campaigns, and are not allowed to release certain politicking materials within certain timeframes before elections.  Citizens United took this to court, and, just yesterday, the Supreme Court delivered the opinion that corporations are allowed freedom of speech just as anyone else, and therefore no limits should be placed on who they can contribute to in elections.

So what’s the deal here?

The issue is a number of things.  First is campaign finance.  This ruling is essentially a major step on the road to taking away limits for what corporations can spend on campaigns.  Essentially, this ruling has just given corporations an unbelievable amount of clout in elections – if they didn’t have them already.  Additionally, this will probably cause a massive increase in the influence of lobbyists on Capitol Hill.  Which is why the Democrats are against it.

The Republicans are for it because a) it takes away campaign restrictions, which they view as big government, and b) corporations have taken another step towards having the same freedom of speech rights as regular people.  Corporations, incidentally, tend to be pro-Republican.

This is the central issue. The personhood of corporations.  Corporations, under U.S. law, are granted a tremendous amount of leniency in the way of speech.  They have long been granted “person” status, meaning they are subjected to the same bill of rights as we are, and that they are technically allowed to lie, under certain conditions – namely, as long as they are not under oath, and as long as it doesn’t constitute certain types of fraud.

Basically, this extends their free speech rights to elections.

I’m not going to try and remain balanced here.  This is a truly awful idea.  By giving corporations the right to free speech during elections, you are also allowing them to spend as much money as they want during an election.  I know that the theory is Coolidge’s belief that what’s good for business is good for America, but those policies led to the collapse in 1929 and the Great Depression, and I think this recent economic collapse has proven that the interest of the American people and the interests of Wall Street and the corporations is in no way aligned.

So essentially, this gives lobbyists the power to continue funding candidates who endorse views that serve their financial interests rather than the interest of the American people, which is what the philosophy of democracy is supposed to be built around.  The New York Times put it well:  “The Supreme Court has handed lobbyists a new weapon.  A lobbyist can now tell any elected official:  if you vote wrong, my company, labor union or interest group will spend unlimited sums explicitly advertising against your re-election.”

We’ll be seeing an increased number of ads funded by oil companies in favor of the fanatical anti-environment moron Jim Inhofe, and we’ll see the spread of massive swift boating.

I get why a lot of Republicans are celebrating.  Any removal of regulations is seen as small government.  But when it comes to our elections, they need to be tightly regulated so we have the best, most democratic possible outcome.  This may benefit the Republicans in the 2010 election (and what isn’t benefiting them nowadays?) but it will ultimately take away from the voice of the millions of voting American persons, and giving them to the money driven corporate “persons.”  Fail, Supreme Court.  Epic, epic fail.