The U.S. Supreme Court's lamentable 5-4 decision last week to sweep
away a century of practice and precedent and allow torrents of
corporate money to flood elections threatens to make our political
system even more the playground of the rich at the expense of the
average citizen.
Congress and President Barack Obama must do all
they can to temper or reverse the baleful impact of the decision by the
court's conservative majority.
As a result of the decision in
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, corporations have a
right to spend as much money as they want — right up to the point the
polls open — to advocate for or against a specific candidate. Could a
Sen. Smith or a Congressman Cooper possibly refuse to play ball with
the corporate big spenders? Not likely.
Until the landmark
ruling Thursday, corporations and unions were barred from spending
their own money on broadcast ads, campaign workers or billboards urging
the election or defeat of a candidate for federal office. Limits on
corporate contributions to candidates have been in place since 1907,
courtesy of the reformer President Teddy Roosevelt.
But the
restrictions that have helped to level the campaign playing field for
more than 100 years were swept away in one overreaching swoop by a
court majority whose supporters often inveigh against the evils of
judicial activism. This was judicial activism, in spades.
Chief
Justice John Roberts, it turns out, is a dangerous hypocrite, a wolf in
sheep's clothing. At his confirmation hearings, Mr. Roberts promised to
be judicially "modest," respect precedent and simply "call balls and
strikes."
There was nothing modest about this decision, which
bulldozed precedent and was a seismic shift in the political playing
field favoring concentrations of great wealth.
The conservative
majority cast the case as a First Amendment issue. The five justices
said they were merely extending the right of political speech to where
it had unconstitutionally been denied. It's a bogus argument.
Corporations aren't people entitled to the free-speech rights that
humans enjoy. In most cases, officers, directors and shareholders of
corporations can make individual donations — which are limited — to
political causes, just like the rest of us. Their free speech rights
had not been trampled on.
The court majority unjustly gave the
rights of citizens to entities that exist only on paper, and thus gave
deep corporate pockets the legal right to hijack elections.
The
decision Thursday was no good. It's bad for political parties. It's bad
for citizens who now will have even less impact than ever on elections.
It's bad for democracy.
