The Denver Post's resident right wing columnist, Vincent Carroll, wrote the following column today:
A blow for the censorship lobby
By Vincent Carroll
Posted: 01/23/2010 01:00:00 AM MST
The censorship lobby is in full fury this week. The politicians, liberal interest groups and commentators who believe some political speech (theirs, certainly) is more valuable than the political speech of corporations, associations and labor unions are outraged that a Supreme Court majority disagrees.
How dare the court strike a blow for equality of speech? The next thing you know, money will be flooding into campaigns, stacking "the deck further in favor of special interests at the expense of hardworking Americans," to quote a fairly typical reaction, in this case from Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet.
(If you have the stomach for it, you can read more at www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_14250329).
Here is the letter to the editor I wrote in response. We'll see if they print it!
In A blow for the censorship lobby, Vincent Carroll asks the rhetorical question “How dare the court strike a blow for equality of speech?" I’d like to respond to him with a non-rhetorical question of my own – Where, in the U.S. Constitution, did the founding fathers grant Constitutional rights to Corporations? The answer, of course, is that they didn’t.
Corporations, which did exist at the time the United States was founded, were viewed with great mistrust by the founding fathers. In an 1816 letter to George Logan, Thomas Jefferson said: “I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Having just fought a revolution to free themselves from the King of England, the founders NEVER would have given the human rights that they fought and died for, to Corporations, which they saw as being nearly as autocratic.
The five conservative Supreme Court Justices in the majority in the Citizens’ United case are all men who have claimed to be “strict constructionists” – judges who base their legal decisions on “the original intent of the framers of the Constitution.” Instead, with this decision, they have proven themselves to be the most radical activist judges to have ever sat on the Supreme Court.
Mr. Carroll may think I am being an alarmist, but, it is not possible to OVERSTATE the terribly negative impact of Citizens’ United decision. The Supreme Court has given Corporations - including huge, foreign multi-national corporations - the Constitutional right to spend an UNLIMITED amount of corporate money to influence U.S. elections.
So let’s say, for example, that my Congressman, Republican Mike Coffman, proposes legislation to cap credit card interest rates at 20%. Now, there is nothing, legally, to prevent an American bank, like Citigroup, or a foreign bank like the Credit Suisse, from coming into Colorado the next time Mike Coffman is up for re-election, and simply buying up ALL of the air time on every local TV station, so that they can run anti-Coffman attack ads, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It doesn’t matter how much money Mike Coffman raises from citizens here in Colorado. A huge multi-national, like Credit Suisse, can simply come in to Colorado, and by writing one big check, match and exceed, every dollar Congressman Coffman has raised.
How is giving Corporations the legal right to buy elections “equality of speech,” Mr. Carroll?
It is not an exaggeration to say that the Supreme Court’s decision means the end of small “d” democracy in the United States. The rule “one man, one vote” no longer applies. From here on out, elections will be won by the candidates backed by the biggest corporate donors.
Benito Mussolini, who coined the term, defined “fascism” as the merger of the power of the corporations with the power of the State. That is exactly what the Supreme Court accomplished with it decision in the Citizens’ United case.
The only question left is whether “We the People” are going to accept the new corporate order, or fight back against it with every legal, and political, means at our disposal?
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(965 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
