Supreme Court Ruling Guts Campaign Finance Law, "Threatens to Undermine the Integrity of Elected Institutions Around the Nation"
Courtesy of Washington’s Blog
The long-awaited Supreme Court decision striking down most campaign finance laws – Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission – happened today.
One of the dissenting Supreme Court Justices, John Paul Stevens, wrote:
The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.
Stevens also said that the court reached to expand beyond the scope of the case. In other words, the court acted for political reasons, not judicial reasons:
Essentially, five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.
This is a gigantic change, and you will see mammoth corporations – including the giant banks who have received trillions in taxpayer-funded bailouts, guarantees and other perks – inundating the airwaves with campaign blitzes to make sure that "loyal" politicians are elected.
Just watch: money which was taken from our pockets to "bail out" the too big to fails will be used to make sure that tame corporate mouthpieces are put into office.
Note: The decision also allows unions to go wild with buying campaign ads. But given that the too big to fails have unlimited access to the spigot of funds at the public trough, they will be able to outspend unions by many orders of magnitude.
Yes, I know that the giant banks have already bought and paid for Congress and the White House. See this, this and this. The Citizens United decision will just make it cheaper and easier to buy elections.
For other horrible recent Supreme Court decisions, see this and this.
