Monday, January 25, 2010

One nation under Corporations....

Last week, the Supreme Court overturned decades of limitations and a previous ruling handed down 20 years ago on the ability of corporations to donate to political campaigns. The Court basically decided that the First Amendment rights of the corporations were being restricted unfairly. Not surprisingly, of the 5 judges who ruled in favor, 3 of them were on the bench deciding Bush v Gore and all voted in favor of Bush then.

As soon as this happened, people on the right did what they always do when years of precedent are struck down, they started railing against "activist" judges. HA HA ! I'm kidding, of course. Judges are only accused of being "activist" and "ignoring the Constitution" when their rulings benefit the poor or those who are being discriminated against. In a case like this, where the people who benefit are the rich and powerful or the corporations which the Right are all buddy-buddy with, then it's ok. In fact, quite a few people on the right were quick to praise this decision.

Corporations already have more influence than they should on elections. They are not people, therefore to consider them as having the same 1st Amendment rights as people is ridiculous, especially when you consider that this ruling doesn't make any distinction between U.S. owned corporations and foreign owned corporations, which means that a foreign owned corporation operating in this country would be considered to have the same free speech rights as a U.S. citizen and would be given free reign to influence an American election.

This is unacceptable. Luckily, the President and the Congress are already working on ways to put limits back on corporations in ways that don't conflict with this ruling (and therefore, hopefully, can't be struck down by the Court). I would strongly suggest that you write to your Representative in Congress and the Senators from your state and let them know how outraged you are at this ruling and your desire for something to be done about it.

You can do something else as well. You can go to this website: www.movetoamend.org. You can sign a petition there asking for a Constitutional Amendment that would overturn this Supreme Court decision. Although this would be a much slower process than getting new laws through Congress and might be derailed by corporations making sure that officials in State houses and U.S. Senators are elected who will stop the ratification, perhaps just having enough signatures will get the attention of those in Washington who might be hesitant to join in a bipartisan effort to do something about this horrible ruling and let them know that it's what the people want.

By the way, I know the next Presidential election is 3 years away and Obama has plenty of time to start doing the stuff that those on the Left who helped him get into office expected him to do. However, I also know there are many people like myself who are already very disappointed in him, some of whom may already be thinking of voting against him in the next Presidential election. For those people, I say, look at this ruling. The next President will probably be appointing at least one new Supreme Court justice, maybe more. If a Republican gets elected in 2012, I can guarantee you will end up with more judges who will hand down rulings like this, something to think about....

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