Democracy?

 Seated left to right: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Justice John Paul Stevens, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas. Standing left to right: Justice Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr., Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Photo Credit: Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

 Here it is and I can't believe they got away with it

 

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. ___ (2010), the Court ruled that federal restrictions on corporate electoral advocacy under the BCRA were unconstitutional for violating the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The Court overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652 (1990), which had previously held that a law that prohibited corporations from using treasury money to support or oppose candidates in elections did not violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments. The Court also overruled the part of McConnell that upheld such restrictions under the BCRA.^[9]

Here at the Pagan Sphinx blog, I cannot let another day go by without expressing my outrage over the recent U.S. supreme court ruling  on campaign financing. The effect of the ruling is that corporations and unions can now spend freely on political ads directly related to a candidate, and with no time restrictions.

There isn't enough time before our planet is truly on its death-bed to recover democracy in the U.S. The Supreme Court has now officially given our country's elections up to the entities that have the most money: the corporations. He who spends most wins the most twisted votes.

The corporations already have the most power. They don't need more freedom to speak. Do we want the same bunch that have ruined our environment and our economy, now deciding who we should vote to protect their interests? I can't believe this is what we want in the U.S. But then again, I never dreamed a Republican would replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate, either.

from an opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor

But on reflection, the idea that more speech is always better should seem just as ridiculous as the idea that corporations should have equal moral standing with people. Speech is plainly bad for democracy if it misleads voters. It might even be bad if it affects views by repetition rather than persuasion, if it is simply so pervasive that it effectively drowns out competing voices. Read the whole article here.


 Shoddy Scholarship

Huffington Post:  Supreme Court Rolls Back Campaign Finance Restrictions