Entry 976 of 1084
By Blue Prevails On January 21 at 7:40 PM
The President's prerogative to select Supreme Court Justices is reason enough to elect a Democrat to the office. Unfortunately, Obama has not had the opportunity to replace any of the five who voted today to treat a corporation as a person. In the ruling today, the Court did away with the restraints on corporate spending in federal campaigns. Don't bring up the debate about whether corporations are legal persons, and therefore, entitled to free speech. This may be a debate point in terms of some limited legal purposes, but not in the interest of good politics. This is a blatant move by Republican-named Justices to allow a deluge of special interest money to have even more impact than it currently has. As Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 says, "The Supreme Court majority acted recklessly to free up corporations to use their immense, aggregate corporate wealth to flood federal elections and buy government influence. The Fortune 100 companies alone had combined revenues of $13 trillion and profits of $605 billion during the last election cycle[.]"

I wonder whether Tea Baggers, who are so worried about Big Government taxation and spending, will be equally concerned about Big Business controlling elections. Now, I suppose we will see which Congresspeople can be bought; and, for those who cannot or will not be bought, I guess we'll be saying, "bye-bye" to them. As a single citizen, I feel less important than ever. There are restrictions on how much I can contribute to candidates in federal campaigns, but corporations that are fabulously wealthy are allowed to spend what it takes to kill democracy.