Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections," Obama said. "Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."
We know now who 5 of our 9 Supreme Court Justices work for and it's not the American people.
I lost faith in the Supreme Court in the Bush vs Gore decision years ago. It defies logic that the five Republican nominees and four Democrat nominees can read the same thing and come up perfectly on their own bias. Are they not supposed to set aside personal views and decide on law.
And just a comman man's thought, I thought it took years to get a case to the Supreme Court, but I guess a National election, in which one side feels it's being cheated out of it can trigger an immediate Supreme Court case?? How does that happen, and by the way isn't there something called states rights. What happened to Florida's states right to decide their own process of counting votes??/
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3 comments:
Terry,
The basis of the decision was, as I understand it, that to limit contributions is equivalent to limiting speech because money buys media time which communicates a person's or a corporation's ideas.
I know you don't trust the Rich and Powerful, but think carefully about limiting the rights of ANYONE to speak (even Ganem!). That is a very slippery slope indeed.
We do limit some forms of speech, such as advertising cigarettes to kids. Political speech is a different matter. Tread carefully.
Hags
:
"Not true."
Justice Alito mouthed those words during the State of the Union speech when President Obama challenged a Supreme Court ruling that he believes will allow corporations "to spend without limit in our elections."
Alito has since declined to explain himself, so we don't know exactly what he was upset about. But last week's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is unambiguous. Wrong, but unambiguous...
Astoundingly, the court reversed a century of legal precedent and interpreted the First Amendment as giving corporations a right to spend as much money as they want supporting or opposing political candidates.
Alito's denial notwithstanding, the Supreme Court has set the stage for a corporate takeover of our democracy.
True.
The First Amendment guarantees fundamental speech rights of people. Real, live human beings. It was never intended to protect the speech rights of corporations.
That's why Public Citizen has launched an unprecedented grassroots campaign for a constitutional amendment to restore the longstanding commonsense interpretation of the First Amendment.
More than 25,000 Americans have already signed on to Public Citizen's campaign to overrule the court -- with a Constitutional amendment -- and defeat the corporate takeover of our democracy
I am sure Hags will be surprised when I chime in to support Terry on this. I am a First Amendment fan - almost to the point of being absolutist. I don't think government has the ability to regulate speech (including spending money to spread the word) of individuals. I simply can't see how SCOTUS felt compelled to extend the same rights to corporations. They can't vote. They are financial & legal constructs. The state could decide not to even recognize corporations if they wished. This ruling really puzzles me.
I agree that Bush v Gore was a low moment. If you read the opinion, the justices try to tightly confine the ruling to the specific case so as not to create a (really bad legal) precedent. The three justices that have long championed "states rights" looked pretty silly siding with Bush. I stopped viewing Scalia as a brilliant, principled conservative after that vote. Now, he's merely a brilliant conservative (which is still a rare breed).
One last SCOTUS comment - I was also disappointed in last year's 5-4 ruling interpreting the second amendment as an individual right vs. a right specifically for the purposes of a well-regulated militia as specified by our founding fathers. If you follow the majority argument to it's natural conclusion, we are all entitled to possess nuclear arms as an individual right.
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