ACTIVIST JUDGES DESTROY AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
Conservatives are always crying out against “Activist judges”. Well, were they now? By a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court rolled back precedence and restrictions on corporate spending in federal campaigns. This decision will unleash a flood of corporate-funded attack ads in upcoming elections. We the people are now “We the Corporations. Why bother getting out the vote when we the people will be smothered by Goldman Sacs and Big pharmaceuticals…But why should Alabamians care?
Justice John Paul Stevens a dissenting judge said, "The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court's disposition of this case." "The Supreme Court majority has acted recklessly to free up corporations to use their immense, wealth to flood federal elections and buy government influence. The Fortune 100 companies alone had combined revenues of $13 trillion and profits of $605 billion during the last election cycle," Judge Wertheimer wrote. "Under today's decision, banks, drug companies, energy companies will be free to each spend $5 million, $10 million or more of corporate funds to elect or defeat a federal candidate -- and thereby to buy influence over the candidate's positions on issues of economic importance to the companies." The Supreme Court struck down seemingly all bans on expenditures provisions.
Make no mistake; this is an activist court that is well on its way to recrafting constitutional law. Today the court struck down decades-old limits on corporate and union spending in elections and opened up our political system to a money free-for-all.
Free speech rights are for people, not corporations, in wrongly assigning First Amendment protections to corporations, the Supreme Court has now unleashed a torrent of corporate money in our political process unmatched in US history. Since the late 1970s, a divided Supreme Court has transformed the First Amendment into a powerful tool for corporations seeking to evade democratic control and sidestep sound public welfare measures. For the first two centuries of the American republic, corporations did not have First Amendment rights to limit the reach of democratically-enacted regulations. In recent years, corporations have misused the First Amendment to evade and invalidate democratically-enacted reforms, from elections to healthcare, from financial reform to environmental protection.
Today's ruling, reversing longstanding precedent which prohibits corporate expenditures in elections, now requires a constitutional amendment response to protect our democracy. Corporate spending on elections defeats rather than advances the democratic thrust of the First Amendment.
"With this decision, the Court has abandoned adjudicating non-constitutional claims before constitutional ones, a radical departure that indicates how far the conservative Roberts Court may be willing to go in order to serve the powerful 'business civil liberties' agenda," says Charlie Cray, director of the Center for Corporate Policy. "While the immediate effect is likely to be a surge in corporate cash in election campaigns, this could signal the beginning of a sustained attack on the rights and ability of people to govern the behavior of corporations, which, if successful, could effectively eviscerate what's left of American democracy."
What about Alabama? The new anti gambling czar John Tyson received tens of thousands of dollars from PAC’s funded by gambling supporters in his 2006 race for attorney general. The Press-Register of Mobile reported that more than $100,000 came from PAC’s linked to gambling, and he claims he knows nothing about it!
And now the Alabama Senates Democratic leaders have chosen to put the House passed ban on PAC to PAC money transfer in the Senate committee on Economic Expansion and Trade which has no chairman and nothing to do with campaign reform bills!
So what are you going to do about it? Or is it… “All About the Money?
Stephen Valdes
