Lotsa Luck on Any Constitutional Amendment Re Campaign Finance

given this absolutely worthless shitstain of a Congress and the equally worthless shitstain legislatures.

I do agree with former justice Stevens, but it's pissing in the wind.

It was absolutely essential to get rid of any restrictions on campaign bribery by claiming money is "speech."

Buckley v. Valeo should have been overturned by constitutional amendment YEARS ago. Now Congress is so useless, any amendment passing a 2/3rds vote has utterly no chance.

Video:

More Commentary About Bush v. Gore II

Robert Reich finds yesterday's decision absurd since corporations as persons is a legal fiction and says there should be a shareholder protection act.

The decision, of course, had little to do with granting corporations more power; this was about granting the REPUBLICAN PARTY more power and permanent rule ala Norquist and Rove. The 2008 elections pretty much put the GOP on the ropes, and this decision "coincidentally" helps it make a huge comeback.

There is little doubt Chief Justice John Roberts is nothing more than a GOP hack.

Bush v. Gore II

The WSWS writes about the horrendous Citizens United v. FEC ruling of yesterday.

Although the WSWS won't state the obvious, I will. This decision was about permanent GOP rule.

Snip:

In other words, according to the Supreme Court, when corporations spend billions manipulating elections and obtain the desired results, this is “democracy.” This Orwellian characterization of democracy could have been dictated by the hedge funds, financial institutions, insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations that routinely inject billions into American politics in return for favors from both corporate-controlled parties.

Up to now, under established law and Supreme Court precedent, corporations were obliged to funnel their campaign bribes though “independent” political action committees, or PACs. This placed certain legal and public relations restraints on their manipulation of the electoral process. Now, even these restraints are lifted.

From a legal standpoint, the majority opinion rests primarily on the specious claim that corporate campaign spending is protected by the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. The majority opinion baldly asserts, in disregard for the historical origins of the Bill of Rights, the democratic conceptions of its authors, and the egalitarian traditions that are deeply ingrained in the public consciousness, that corporate money equals speech.

This legal fiction turns the First Amendment upside down.

The NYT Talks About Citizens United v. FEC

as a blow to "democracy." Of course it is about keeping the Republicans in charge--forever.

Snip:

The majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money. They are given special privileges, including different tax rates, to do just that. It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.

The majority also makes the nonsensical claim that, unlike campaign contributions, which are still prohibited, independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” If Wall Street bankers told members of Congress that they would spend millions of dollars to defeat anyone who opposed their bailout, and then did so, it would certainly look corrupt.

After the court heard the case, Senator John McCain told reporters that he was troubled by the “extreme naïveté” some of the justices showed about the role of special-interest money in Congressional lawmaking.

McCain is wrong. This isn't "extreme naivete." The majority knows exactly what they are doing. This is as blatant a partisan decision as Bush v. Gore.

Keith Olbermann and Thom Hartmann

commented on the USSC legalizing bribery in this country.

Olbermann:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hartmann:



This is really about ending the Democratic Party in this country. The GOP was on the ropes, but now Democrats are on the way out.

David Bossie, as you may recall, was a key person in the phony Clinton scandals in the 1990s. He hasn't changed his fascist tendencies at all.

Rep. Alan Grayson doesn't think much of it, either:



He can forget about running for president, for there will be NO Democratic Party anymore.

Olbermann doesn't really get it, and neither does Hartmann. The decision isn't just "corporate"; it's REPUBLICAN first and foremost. THAT is what needs to be said. We will have REAL one-party rule.

This isn't the only decision the Roberts court has invented from whole cloth; it also fabricated a Second Amendment decision based on the NRA's twisted view of the amendment being about the "right to bear arms" for everybody instead of militias, as all previous decisions rendered. But most people don't understand the amendment at all or of previous court decisions, so they didn't get up in arms over it.

A Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day

Ralph Nader, who deserves some measure of blame for the situation we are now in thanks to Election 2000, does nail it with his view on today's USSC sellout to corporate bribery:

This corporatist, anti-voter decision is so extreme that it should galvanize a grassroots effort to enact a Constitutional Amendment to once and for all end corporate personhood and curtail the corrosive impact of big money on politics. It is indeed time for a Constitutional amendment to prevent corporate campaign contributions from commercializing our elections and drowning out the civic and political voices and values of citizens and voters. It is way overdue to overthrow “King Corporation” and restore the sovereignty of “We the People”!

Obituaries

This country's democracy, once and for all, although Bush v. Gore was really the beginning of the end:

It is with deep sadness that I note the passing, on the morning of January 21, 2010, of American democracy. It died in Washington, D.C., in the chambers of the United States Supreme Court, after a long and painful illness, as five of the nine justices finally pulled the plug.

Born July 4, 1776, democracy in America had a difficult childhood culminating, in its early adolescence, in a tragic and violent civil war. This was followed by a painful growth spurt leading up to attaining adulthood in the early part of the 20th century, when the overgrowth of some of the limbs and organs, a dangerous asymmetry that threatened to end its life in its youth, were restrained by the drugs of trust-busting and unionization that helped its continued growth to take place along healthier, more prosperous lines.

At the age of about 144, still young for this family but becoming more mature, democracy sickened again as a recurrence, in slightly modified form that was able to elude the antibiotics administered previously, again threatened its life. Again democracy recovered, but more slowly this time, by the mild application of social and economic reforms that led to a more sustainable rate of growth. This second recovery came in a very timely fashion, allowing the body of democracy to regain enough of its strength to survive a long fight against a vicious foe with superior weapons and save not only itself but the whole neighborhood. For this brave act, American democracy was briefly loved by all, very nearly everywhere on earth.

But shortly afterward, democracy was threatened by a new disease brought on by an overreaction to a perceived condition that did not really exist, an imaginary internal parasite that some practitioners, particularly one Dr. McCarthy who wasn't really a doctor but played one on TV, advocated that we cure ourselves of by cutting out our tongues and removing the left halves of our brains. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and the correct medicine, a low dosage of decency and courage administered by Drs. Wilson and Murrow, restored it to strength once again.

Throughout our 180s and 190s we achieved our greatest strength as we finally began to equalize our various parts, some of which had been out of kilter since birth, and despite some inconvenient coughs and colds and a case of the Indochinese Flu we were so strong and powerful that our celebration of our 200th birthday was one of the most spectacular and joyous occasions in the history of the world, and by the age of 215 we had become clearly the mightiest thing that had ever walked the earth.

But, almost unnoticed, a cancer had begun to grow in its late 200s, as we ingested some bad Supreme Court appointees, named not for their wise jurisprudence but because they towed a particular ideological line. This cancer, or "Scalioma," could not have harmed us if, just six months before our 200th birthday, we had not first been weakened by a condition called Buckley v. Valeo-itis, which officially defined corporations, with their immortality and unlimited resources, as individuals who normally don't share those advantages, and miraculously transformed money into speech. Scalioma has taken over now, and one of this disease's agents of metastasis, the Kennedy microbe, today provided the final symptom that has led to the death of the once mighty Democracy six months before what would have been its 234th birthday.

See, the Supreme Court today handed down their decision in the "Citizens United v. FEC" case today, a little noticed event but one that has absolutely enormous consequences for democracy and American liberty, possibly greater than any event throughout our entire history. Today's 5-4 decision, with the usual breakout (Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts and Kennedy on one side, Breyer, Ginzburg, Sotomayor and Stevens, who wrote a 90-page dissent, on the other), holds that corporate expenditures on political campaigns cannot be limited by law because to do so violates corporate "freedom of speech."

So now, the FULL resources of Exxon-Mobil, of Verizon, of Eli Lilly, of The Hartford, etc., etc., etc., can be brought to bear in purchasing media time for political advocacy during the period leading up to our elections. The content of the material they broadcast is unlimited as is the scope of their investment -- they can lie (as they so frequently do) in ways rendered particularly persuasive by the cleverness of the professionals they can hire to do it. Their ability to devote vast sums of cash to the effort will drive prices for media time into the stratosphere, rendering it unaffordable for lesser entities like those that espouse a more egalitarian or societally responsible view. The notion that this can somehow be balanced off by a similar lifting of regulations on union political spending is like equating a child's popgun with a nuclear bomb.

Did you appreciate the work of the Swift Boaters? Now you will see it times a hundred or more. Truth will be lost. Democracy is lost.

We are now officially a plutocratic oligarchy. Those of us who earn our living by the fruits of our labors, rather than by the proceeds of property, are now cerfs, in complete and hopeless permanent thrall to our corporate masters.

This is a day to mourn the final passing of mankind's greatest idea, American democracy. Final services will be held on the morning of Wednesday, November 3, 2010.

Like the Gun Nut Ruling

and the child rape ruling there are other rulings the USSC is making with 5-4 decisions. Justice Kennedy is being used as the swing vote in this series of close rulings. Kennedy took the side of the NRA/Federalist Society hacks on the gun issue, and he took the side of the so-called "liberals" on the high court on the child rape death penalty issue.

You can figure Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts are the Federalist Society hacks who will always rule in favor of right-wing talking points (as in the completely fabricated Second Amendment ruling), and for corporate and financial elite interests. Kennedy will flip whichever way the wind blows. The high court is not ruling on constitutional issues at all or acting as an independent arm; it has become nothing short of another political arm of the GOP for the most part.

The high court struck down a portion of the McCain-Feingold law that allowed candidates to accept larger-than-normal contributions if their opponents use their own wealth to finance campaigns.

Go ahead and tell me the high court gives a goddamned shit about free speech. They care only about the right of the elites to hold and keep office:

The decision basically views a candidate’s ability to buy a political office with a private fortune as a freedom of speech question, equating the unrestricted spending of money with the exercise of First Amendment rights. Alito wrote that the provision was unconstitutional because it “imposes an unprecedented penalty on any candidate who robustly exercises” these rights.

Fucking unbelievable.