You see, in today's Orwellian world, money is speech and corporations are people with all the rights you and I enjoy with none of the responsibilities, and the conservative majority, those damned judicial activists, went far beyond the limited legal questions of the case before them and overturned decades of legislative restrictions on the role of corporations in political campaigns, including a large part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act that the same court, albeit with a different lineup, declared constitutional just six years ago in McConnell v. FEC, and even broadened the scope of the case to include constitutional questions raised by a 1990 case (Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce), which they also managed to overturn. The decision also threatens many state laws.
In the minority dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens declared, "Essentially, five Justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law." Later, he declared, "Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech." Perhaps that's next. Stevens concluded his dissent with...
"At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."For a fascinating look at how far this court overreached and how badly they managed to subvert American democracy call up the .pdf file of the decision and skip ahead to page 88 where Justice Stevens's dissent begins, then read until you feel your head start to explode. If you're not that ambitious or masochistic, the Progressive Review has a very small excerpt.
The Roberts court struck down a law dating back to 1947 which prohibits corporations and labor unions from using money from their general treasuries to produce and air campaign aids in congressional and presidential races, and struck down a McCain-Feingold provision that prohibits corporations and unions from airing campaign ads in the 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election. They did manage to retain a century-old ban on donations from corporations from their general treasuries directly to federal candidates and upheld disclosure requirements on campaign activities.
So why is this such a big deal? In 2008, the Fortune 100 companies amassed $600 billion in profits. Just 1% of that enormous total ($6 billion) would double the amount spent by Obama, McCain, and every candidate for the House and Senate in 2008 combined. The Roberts Court expressed concern that the free speech rights of corporations were being suppressed, but even with the restrictions that were in place, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce still managed to spend $123 million in lobbying efforts in 2009, the financial sector invested $5 billion in influence peddling in the past decade, and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) spent $26 million in 2009 alone to influence health care reform, with the individual drug companies ponying up tens of millions more in the effort.
