America For Purchase

On January 21, 2010, the 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United (argued by George Bush’s former Solicitor General Ted Olson) v. the Federal Election Commission shredded the very fabric of America’s already weakened, Patriot Act enacted democracy by allowing corporations to more completely dominate our corrupted electoral process. This decision overturned two prior Supreme Court cases and undid a century of First Amendment doctrine, declaring that corporations are just like people and have the same 1st Amendment rights as individuals! Decades of election reform have been undermined.This decision is outrageous in that corporations already attempt to and are successful in influencing and bribing our political candidates through political action committees (PACs), which solicit employees and shareholders for donations and funnel hundreds of millions into political campaigns today.  Corporations can do this without approval from their shareholders and corporations can now reward or intimidate people running for office at the local, state, and national levels.

Previously corporations and unions have been barred from spending their own treasury fund on broadcast ads or billboards that urge the election of defeat of a federal candidate.  These restrictions date back to 1907 when President Theodore Roosevelt called on Congress to forbid corporations, railroads and national banks from using their money in federal election campaigns.  After World War II, Congress extended this ban to labor unions.

This Court, for all intent and purposes, obliterated “We the people.” It will be no more. The implications could not be clearer; it is the corporation that reigns in America now, clearly unabashedly and unshamefully.  Americans need no longer wonder if our office holders are beholden to the corporate interests that bankroll their campaigns. The Court made it official, undermining human liberty in this affront on self-government. Anyone who thinks the earthquake in Haiti was massive, should realize the political earthquake that just hit American Democracy has shattered Lady Liberty and individual freedoms for generations to come.

This Supreme Court decision was nothing less than a ‘supreme’ act of judicial treason against the people of the United States and will lead to the election of a pro-corporate government. The right wing conservative Court who support corporate takeover of America’s political system are Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, John G. Roberts Jr., Antonin Scalia, and Samuel A. Alito Jr.  Remember it was also Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas who betrayed the U.S. Constitution in appointing George W Bush as President in 2000, disavowing the electorate of the people in Florida.

No wonder America has the best Congress money can buy.

Common Cause responded correctly, “Moments ago, in a stunning decision, the Roberts Court opened the floodgates to out-of-control corporate and union spending in elections. This wrong-headed ruling doesn’t just disrupt the way elections work. It poses a direct and immediate threat to the vibrancy of our democracy. An already corrupt system that makes it hard for citizens to have a voice could become a chaotic free-for-all in which ordinary people’s voices will be permanently drowned out of the electoral process. Only a popular uprising in response to this decision can save the day. “

This is the same rightwing Roberts’ US Supreme Court, America’s most activist supposedly conservative court ever, which recently opened the door to Venezuelan-owned CITGO throwing its money around in USA elections.

The financial sector invested more than $5 billion in political influence purchasing in Washington over the past decade, with as many as 3,000 lobbyists winning deregulation and other policy decisions that led directly to the current financial collapse, according to a 231-page report titled: “Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America” (See: WallStreetWatch.org).

The Center also reported big lobbying expenditures by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (Pharma) which spent $26 million in 2009. Drug companies like Pfizer, Amgen and Eli Lilly also poured tens of millions of dollars into federal lobbying in 2009. The health insurance industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) also spent several million lobbying Congress. It is no wonder Single Payer Health insurance, supported by the majority of people, doctors, and nurses, is not moving in Congress.

Energy companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron are also big spenders. No wonder we have a national energy policy that is pro-fossil fuel and that does little to advance renewable energy (See: OpenSecrets.Org).

James Brett recently wrote: “Benito Mussolini, the most notorious exponent of Fascism (who used the “fasces” as the symbol of his political party in the 1930′s and 1940′s) said that the philosophy of Fascism would be better described as “corporatism,” that is, a melding of the corporate interests in the productive sectors of the nation with the government of the nation, in other words a government of, by, and for corporations. This week the U.S. Supreme Court declared that corporations may not have their spending on political campaign restricted, because that is an infringement on their civil rights … reiterating the 1870′s ruling that corporations are “individuals” with classical civil rights!

The ruling 140 years ago, made during the so-called Gilded Age when robber barons and financier plutocrats ran the federal government was wrong, of course, and now this Supreme Court has doubled-down on that fallacious argument and brought our fragile democracy to the gallows.”

Justice Stevens’ got it right as he recognizes the power corporations wield in our political economy and finds it “absurd to think that the First Amendment prohibits legislatures from taking into account the corporate identity of a sponsor of electoral advocacy.” He flatly declares that, “The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation.”

He notes that the, Framers of our Constitution “had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind.” He is absolutely correct for the words “corporation” or “company” does not exist in our Constitution.

Dave Lefcourt * once wrote “We the people have not been vigilant in defending our liberty.” If “We the People” do not rise up and decry this abominable decision by the Court and demand redress, we will be enablers to the complete corporate dominance over our lives, ceding away what liberty we have left. That is what is at stake. For it is as if the Court said, “Of, by and for the people” no longer exists. From here on it is to be, “Of, by and for the corporation” that applies.

Bob Edgar of Common Cause added, “We have to immediately press Congress to pass the Fair Elections Now Act — public financing of campaigns. It’s the only way ordinary people can have a fighting chance that we won’t be completely overwhelmed by special interests. We also must make it clear that corporations, unions, or anyone else exploiting the Roberts Court‘s indefensible ruling will be exposed to public scrutiny. We’ll have to act fast if we want to prevent the 2010 elections from becoming a special interest-driven tragedy. With spending limits thrown out, corporations and unions could spend as much as $6 billion to directly influence the election of candidates in 2010. And that’s just if they match what they spend lobbying Congress in an election cycle. As massive corporate spending goes flying into campaigns, the opportunity to make progress on critical issues like health care and energy will go flying out the window.  We can’t let that happen.”

Americans must realize that we now live in a world of giant transnational corporations, with allegiance to NO sovereign government, let alone the United States, sworn only to exploit the most vulnerable and desperate workers they can find in any country of the world.  Americans should not be surprised when mega-Corporations operating in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Japan, China, Russia, and Iran or even corporate-sponsored Taliban and al-Qaeda, will now have the ability to invest, buy and influence U.S. elections with the buying power freely given to them by Justice Roberts and the five rightwing Supreme Court Justices.

This Supreme Court decision is praised by Republicans and teabaggers who support all Corporations -  Wall Street’s AIG, Citi-Group, the Federal Reserve along with Health Care and Pharmaceutical Corporations, and big oil, all of which put profits over the good of ‘the people’.  These are the people who have and continue to sell out hardworking, taxpaying American families overseeing the largest income gap in U.S. history between the working class and the 1%of America’s wealthiest.  And we should not forget all the grief Republicans heaped on Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination about being an activist judge and all the fake outrage about a “wise Latina woman”? Well Judge Roberts just teabagged the entire United States!

The negative consequences of this ruling are frightening and dire, giving corporations unlimited power to elect pro-corporate politicians.

If you want to join the efforts to rollback the corporate concessions the Supreme Court made, visit Citizen.Org and freespeechforpeople.org.

Call and register you protest by contacting your elected officials. See contact information at www.congress.org.

*Pg. 118, “DECEIT AND EXCESS IN AMERICA, HOW MONEYED INTERESTS HAVE STOLEN AMERICA and HOW WE CAN GET IT BACK”, Authorhouse, 2009

Tags buying elections Citizens United conservative justices corporate influence corporate lobbyists Federal Election Commission John Roberts news politics Supreme Court

Filed under: American Injustice