Supreme Court Election Funding Decision Blow to Democracy

While I disagree with president Obama on a number of issues, especially the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, I feel that his statement about the recent Supreme Court decision regarding election funding is spot on.

Obama’s statement on the issue was triggered by a 5-4 ruling by the court’s justices on Thursday, January 21, 2010, that removed long-standing campaign finance limits and allowed corporations to spend freely in campaigns for president and Congress as well as in local elections. In the ruling, the court’s conservative majority said the limits had violated corporations’ constitutional right to free speech.

“This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. “It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way — or to punish those who don’t. This ruling strikes at democracy itself,” Obama said.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Supreme Court’s decision is that it grants corporations, that are definitely not individuals, constitutional rights to free speech. It is deeply disturbing that the Supreme Court, which is tasked with protecting American’s constitutional rights, should extend the right to free speech to legal entities such as corporations that clearly were not intended to have such rights by our founding fathers.

The decision rolls back all of the campaign funding laws in the American democracy that were designed to protect our democracy against the efforts of special interest groups, such as corporations and their lobbyists. Now with the 5 to 4 Supreme Court ruling, the floodgates are open for unlimited amounts of cash being used to buy politicians and to influence the voting process through TV advertising and other means.

President Obama’s statement that the decision is a direct blow to democracy is absolutely the truth. In the United States, much of the control of our government has already passed to special interest groups who use lobbyist and the use of cash to influence legislation that is favorable to their special interests. Now that the Supreme Court has opened the financial floodgates for corporate cash to flow through In unlimited amounts you can bet your bottom dollar that’s the corrupting influence of money will be felt throughout the political system.

January 21, 2010, is a sad day in American history. With our democracy already under severe attack by special interest groups the Supreme Court ruling May well be the death blow to any semblance of democracy within the American form of government. It is hard to believe that the five members of the Supreme Court who voted in favor of a corporation being granted constitutional rights to free speech, thereby giving them the ability to use unlimited amounts of cash to influence legislation designed for their benefit at the expense of the public, were thinking of protecting the Constitution.

One has to wonder if the wide spread corruption within our government has spread even to the highest court in the land. In my opinion, this five to four Supreme Court decision could not possibly be based upon the proper interpretation of the law of the land, but upon the influence that lobbyist groups already have upon certain Supreme Court justices.

Sadly, American democracy has become more like fascism than most Americans would care to admit. The recent Supreme Court decision will only make matters far worse as it places a tremendous amount of political power in the hands of corporations that will use that power to punish those politicians whose policies they disagree with and to reward those who help them to pass legislation favorable to their interests. The unsavory relationship between corporations and politicians that the Supreme Court decision will lead to is the very definition of fascism.