An American Lion

I fail to see what the fuss really is:

Go back almost a century, to the time when the modern corporation was created, and you’ll find laws that prohibit or limit the use of corporate money in elections. And yet this week, a 5-4 Supreme Court struck down the limits that Congress passed in 2002 in this tradition in the case Citizens United v. FEC.

The majority’s ruling unleashes a new wave of campaign cash and adds to the already considerable power of corporations. The court’s main rationale is that limits on using corporate treasuries for campaigns are a “classic example of censorship,” as Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. To get there, Kennedy depends on two legal theories that blossomed as constitutional principles in the mid-1970s: money is speech and corporations are people. Both theories are strange, if not simply wrongheaded—why, according to the Constitution or common sense, would money be speech or corporations be people? The court has also employed theories not uniformly but, rather, as constitutional cover for dominance of the electoral system by corporations and by the wealthy.

I was under the impression that politicians were already bought and sold by corporate donations to their PACs. I was under the impression that the members of Congress who whored themselves out for small amounts of cash were already compromised.

What changed?

Oh, their corporate masters can be more open about how they buy votes and wield their influence.

I got it now.

Look, if we couldn’t fix it during the days of the great Richard Nixon, then I would imagine fixing this problem now is going to involve a year of legislative wrangling, negotiating, town hall meetings, and, ultimately, a cowardly majority won’t bother fighting to get it passed.

If you think corporate money didn’t buy votes during last year’s health care fiasco, think again.