Supreme Courts Sets Themeselves Up To Be Thrown Out With Congress

A lack of logic and a pure sense of political alignment led the United States Supreme Court to overrule two precedents regarding the First Amendment right of corporations, when they ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections. Experts who focus on campaign finance law believe that the decision will reshape the way elections are conducted. Moreover, many are now speculating that the Unions will be able to act as corporations do going forward, turning the electoral process into a much bigger shit show that it already is....

The ruling, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205, overruled two precedents: Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a 1990 decision that upheld restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates, and McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, a 2003 decision that upheld the part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that restricted campaign spending by corporations and unions.

The law, as narrowed by a 2007 Supreme Court decision, applied to communications “susceptible to no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.” The five opinions in Thursday’s decision ran to more than 180 pages, with Justice John Paul Stevens contributing a passionate 90-page dissent. In sometimes halting fashion, he summarized it for some 20 minutes from the bench on Thursday morning.

The majority cited a score of decisions recognizing the First Amendment rights of corporations, and Justice Stevens acknowledged that “we have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment.” However, Justice Stevens defended the restrictions struck down on Thursday as modest and sensible. Even before the decision, he said, corporations could act through their political action committees or outside the specified time windows.

The McCain-Feingold law contains an exception for broadcast news reports, commentaries and editorials. But that is, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in a concurrence joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., “simply a matter of legislative grace.”

Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion said that there was no principled way to distinguish between media corporations and other corporations and that the dissent’s theory would allow Congress to suppress political speech in newspapers, on television news programs, in books and on blogs.

Justice Stevens responded that people who invest in media corporations know “that media outlets may seek to influence elections.” He added in a footnote that lawmakers might now want to consider requiring corporations to disclose how they intended to spend shareholders’ money or to put such spending to a shareholder vote.

On its central point, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Justice Stevens’s dissent was joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

So what does this all mean? It means that your drug or oil or bank company can now spend money on a political candidate they want to win--directly by buying and making television advertisements. The problem is that this already goes on. Political Action Groups, and Lobbyists have untapped accounts flowing over in greenbacks to aid in the elections of those they seek to win. This means NOTHING, if you have your head in the ground and do not believe that corporate American owns DC and really runs this country. Have you heard of the Military Industrial Complex? Do you know anything about Politics in DC.

IT MEANS THAT TIMES ARE GOING TO BE GETTING WORSE, NOT BETTER. It means that the media now will not only have their political slants to run with (fox vs. msnbc) but now corporations will be able to add serious cash to their political allies in the media...bombarding the public with their messages.

What is great...I mean really great...is that at least in reading comments to articles written about this decision is that people are pissed. People are talking...REVOLUTION! So let's get that shit going. We need a revolution here. A massive change from business as usual. As I have articulated for years now...we start with Congress, and now we can move on to the Supreme Court subsequent to sacking our Representatives in DC. Fuck this shit. Fuck them all. They do not care one bit for you...THEY ONLY CARE FOR THEMSELVES!