A Supreme Victory for Special Interests (John Dean)

[struggle4progress]

Posted on Jan 21, 2010
Bossie at the Supreme Court
AP / Lauren Victoria Burke
By John Dean

The conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has given a monumental victory to special interests—i.e., the big money corporations, the folks who already dominate Washington politics—with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy (who wrote the court’s opinion), have gone out of their way to further obliterate serious efforts to reform out-of-control campaign spending—spending that conspicuously distorts democracy in favor of those who can buy political influence. This ruling is of the same judical activism ilk that produced Bush v. Gore, not to mention the ensuing eight years of a disastrous Bush/Cheney presidency from which the nation has yet to recover ...

This decision is long, at 183 pages. It includes a powerful dissent by the four centrist justices (there are no liberals on this court). And the ruling is chock full of nuanced information that spells out what Congress can and cannot do to reform our dysfunctional and money-hungry election system. This is not a ruling that lends itself to instant analysis. Those who follow this subject far closer than I do will be figuring it out for days, if not months ... To understand what the court majority did, scroll down to about Page 88 of your .pdf reader and read the dissent written by Justice John Paul Stevens, and joined by Justices Ruth Ginsburg, Steven Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. It is an eye-opener.

Aside from the fact that the majority ruling reeks of conservative politics, what I find most striking about conservative judicial activism typified by this ruling is the fact that the justices involved are totally out of touch with reality. None of the men involved in this historic decision have been elected to anything, ever. They have no idea how difficult it is for elected officials to deal in the contemporary money-flooded milieu of Washington. The work experience of those who have further opened the floodgates for money in politics is restricted to the executive branch, high-priced law firms, or the chambers of the lower federal appellate courts. Not since the late Justice Hugo Black, a former U.S. senator who retired in 1971, has the court had a member of Congress on its bench, someone who can explain the real world to the other justices. These conservative justices live in a bubble, and they have little true understanding of what they have done, other than, of course, to know that they have taken care of conservatives ...

... this ruling has the potential of being even more pernicious than Bush v. Gore, since it reaches not merely the presidency but every elective office in the United States. Conservatives may not know how to govern when they are in power, but they sure know how to make certain that centrists, progressives and liberals are not given a sustained opportunity to work their will.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_supreme_victory_for_special_interests_20100121/

[jillan]

1. I can't wait until Keith or Rachel interview him. Hopefully they will give him a few days to study

this decision and then let him explain it to us in detail.

[Elmore Furth]

2. It's like 'Idiocracy' is about to become reality

We've already had President Stupid for the last 8 years.

Now we've got Fox News and The Supreme Court's ruling that corporations can have unlimited money to make people stupider.

President Camacho: "Now I understand everyone's shit's emotional right now. But I've got a 3 point plan that's going to fix EVERYTHING."
Ideocracy (2006)

According to Mike Judge’s 2006 film, America’s future is bleak. In a mere 500 years, society turns into a dystopia of commercialism and capitalism thanks to the disintegration of intelligent thought and the mounting national debt forcing the Federal government to take sponsorship of its agencies from corporate America. Brawndo, a fictitious Gatorade-like corporation, takes over the F.D.A. and F.C.C., replaces water with their electrolyte laden sports drink, agriculture dies and hilarity ensues.

Well, we might not have to wait 500 years. Today’s Supreme Court ruling reverses 63 years of decisions precluding corporate participation in the campaign process and throws out the seminal McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act. Politicians, if not already, are for sale to the highest bidder. While this ruling allows unions to contribute to political campaigns, it will surely benefit Republicans far more than Democrats who typically have far fewer ties to corporations. Apparently the lobbying process wasn’t enough for this conservative Supreme Court.


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