Last week the U.S. Supreme Court decided 5-4 that corporations, entities created to emulate a single person, have one more “right”–the right to contribute without limitation to political and referenda campaigns.
This quote is from Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority:
“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.”
Writing for the minority, Justice John Paul Stevens opines:
“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.”
What does that mean? It means that, as far as the lotus-eaters of the Supreme Court is concerned, Citibank is the political equal to John Doe and Jane Roe.
Who the hell does the Court think it is kidding? Corporations now have no limit to financing the election campaigns for the sock puppet politicians that do their political bidding.
If Wal-Mart decides that labor unions should be outlawed in a given state, or a latter-day Enron decides to cook their accounting books out of the eyeshot of regulators, it can happen. And will.
Be afraid.
Very afraid.
It’s bad in the sense that the ones that wouldn’t participate in this previously for fear of lawful restrictions will now more than likely get involved, but you don’t think that there’s actually been a mechanism in place to stop a corp from spending anything they’ve wanted to in the past, do you? The laws that were in place had so many steps to work around them I’m surprised no one has choreographed them and turned them into a musical, but they were there. If Wally World wanted to spend billions last year, they could.
Fear should still be observed though. The floodgates of money from smaller businesses will now be substantial.
darkknight9′s right about the loopholes having existed. Any corporation that wanted to spend large amounts could have done that before now. What limited them then, and will continue to do so, is the drive for profit. Money spent on politicians hurts the bottom line. CEOs risk pissing off their stockholders by spending too freely; they avoided this in the past by giving soft money to the parties (both) instead of individuals. Attempting to buy a senator, or just giving to one party or cause, gives shareholders who disagree the basis for a lawsuit. The claim would be that the directors should look after shareholder interest by disbursing or reinvesting the profits, rather than looking out after their own personal political interests. The defense against such a suit would be that buying politicians is reinvestment, and they’d have to show the return on such an investment (or just that a return is possible). No politician wants that.
Mingfrommongo: “Money spent on politicians hurts the bottom line.”
True enough, but keep in mind that $8 million, the amount spent on a good senatorial race, is “less than the rounding error for the annual caviar bill at Exxon”. (I will I could find the source of this quote, but I can’t.)