US supreme court decision RE- corporations & elections

[meggo]

i find this is a bit frightening. i actually have an american cousin who emailed me this morning and quite seriously asked me for tips on how to expedite the process of emigrating to canada as a skilled worker!

[PS, if anyone knows anything about that, i'm all ears! i know a lot of immigrants, but can't think of any who came with that status off the top of my head...]

Landmark Supreme Court ruling allows corporate political cash

James Vicini

WASHINGTON

Thu Jan 21, 2010 2:42pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Corporations can spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, a landmark decision denounced by President Barack Obama for giving special interests more power.

"The Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics," Obama said after the 5-4 ruling that divided the nation's high court along conservative and liberal lines.

"It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans," Obama said.

Obama said he instructed administration officials "to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue" and "talk with bipartisan congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision."

The ruling, a defeat for Obama and supporters of campaign finance limits, is expected to unleash a flood of money to be spent in this year's congressional election and the 2012 presidential contest.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the long-standing campaign finance limits violated constitutional free-speech rights of corporations.

"The government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether," he wrote.

The four liberal dissenters said allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy.

RULING COULD UNDERMINE INTEGRITY-DISSENT

In his sharply worded dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation."

The justices overturned Supreme Court precedents from 2003 and 1990 that upheld federal and state limits on independent expenditures by corporate treasuries to support or oppose candidates.

In the 2008 election cycle, nearly $6 billion was spent on all federal campaigns, including more than $1 billion from corporate political action committees, trade associations, executives and lobbyists.

The ruling will almost certainly allow labor unions to spend more freely in political campaigns also and it posed a threat to similar limits that had been imposed in about half of the country's 50 states.

The top court struck down the part of the federal law that restricted broadcast advertisements for or against political candidates right before elections that are paid for by corporations, labor unions and advocacy groups.

The 2002 campaign finance law at issue was named after Senator John McCain, the unsuccessful Republican presidential nominee in 2008, and Democratic Senator Russell Feingold.

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele praised the ruling and said, "Free speech strengths our democracy."

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, long an opponent of the law, said, "For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process."

But the law's supporters said the ruling will allow corporations to spend unlimited sums to influence elections.

"The bottom line is, the Supreme Court has just predetermined the winners of next November's election. It won't be the Republican or the Democrats and it won't be the American people; it will be corporate America," Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said.

The decision was a victory for a conservative advocacy group's challenge to the campaign finance law as part of its efforts to broadcast and promote a 2008 movie critical of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. She later became Obama's secretary of state.

The Obama administration defended the law's restrictions on election-related spending by corporations, unions and interest groups.

The court's conservative majority, with the addition of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both appointees of then-President George W. Bush, in the ruling made a dramatic change in the campaign finance law designed to regulate the role of money in politics and prevent corruption.

(Editing by Howard Goller and Cynthia Osterman)

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

This is absolutely staggering. It's being called the worst decision made by the Supreme Court since Dred Scott. Even weirder is how little press it seems to be getting.

[SaggyBalls]

Weird? Really?

You're such a nice guy, Dave.

If the ruling would designate that every political donation over a certain amount (gross, for sections of companies and other accounting loopholes) be matched by a fundraising donation to benefit American Families (food banks, hospitals, etc) then not only would that be acceptable, but would be weird.

Well...acceptable as i write this, but on deeper contemplation it could be almost as sinister.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Yeah, however you slice it, it still stinks. At least Obama's being vocal about it.

Weekly Address (couldn't figure out how to embed the video - suggestions anyone?)

[SaggyBalls]

It reminds me of a salesman saying 'we want it all to work out great for everyone involved' to get support and a sale, when it's just lip service to build confidence under a thick haze of suggestion.

[phishtaper]

[color:purple]hey, corporations are people too

[nibbler]

Quite the powerful counterpunch to Avatar!

[SaggyBalls]

Corporations are PERSONS: Very different; sense of humour duly noted.

[phishtaper]

[color:purple]you should inform the entire US media and legal blogosphere then YT because everybody seems to be getting it oh so wrong

[SaggyBalls]

then I'd have to inform everybody that thinks that they are a person and not a flash-and-blood-human-being, which is pretty much everybody.

We HAVE a persons which we act as a trustee in trust over while we ARE human beings.

While I don't care enough about the 'US media and legal blogosphere' enough to post many places other than here, it's a fact that, while most likely seen with a great deal of disinterest and ignorance even here, is important to share with a community I care about (at least a little bit).

Yes the internet is often wrong, no I'm not charicaturizing myself.

[phishtaper]

NPR

Forbes

is using "people" technically incorrect? probably, but who cares [color:purple]and really YT when have you ever been concerned with being technically correct out here?

[SaggyBalls]

'people' implies that they are something other than legal entities.

correct English, but that's not the language that's used to define corporations as Persons under statute.

You're politicizing it which is something totally different than what I'm talking about.

Carry on.

[phishtaper]

'people' implies that they are something other than legal entities.

come on, YT. those articles, and my post, simply take poetic license and use "people" as a pluralized form of "person". they do not in any way imply that corporations are anything other than legal entities which possess the same rights afforded to natural persons - which was indeed the very essence of the ruling.

[SaggyBalls]

how did you miss the last 2 lines (I hit return twice for you!) of my last message?

Though I admit 'you're politicizing it' misses the mark, as I was lumping you and your articles together, but I did admit the difference was there and I even vaguely conceded.

my reiteration of 'people implies...' ws merely just me spelling it out like a bit of an idiot for anyone that might in the future just be skimming and need a 'wait a minute, what was that he wrote? I usually just skim his bloated posts...maybe there's something here...'

?

now...I wouldn't call your posts poetic but that doesn't mean that I don't like them.

[nibbler]

Corporations do have the rights of individuals, and if diagnosed, they exhibit the psychological profile of psychopaths. Strange how we lock up human psychopaths, yet we allow the corporate psychopaths free reign of our world.

Corporations make decisions unclouded by emotion or ethics, on a regular basis marginalizing points of view which challenge their supremacy, silencing prophets, and when deemed necessary, hiring hit men, armies and death squads to murder individuals, and groups of people resisting the corporation's freedom to profit.

The slave trade is larger and stronger than ever in 2010 on a planet ruled by boards of directors.

Environmental destruction has reached tipping points,the arctic ice cap has melted, and cancer has become so rampant that it is commonplace to hear of young children afflicted with and dying from it.

Some scholars have suggested that our increasing disconnection from nature is what has ushered in this era of destructive corporatocracy.

Its inspiring to see so many people engaged in this David and Goliath struggle. I recognize the good fight is not for everyone, and I sympathize with those souls who have had the fight sucked out of them.

Go hug a tree, or if you're as creatively intelligent as Terry Gilliam, make a movie about it: