The recent Supreme Court ruling on corporations, political advertising and free speech is highly troubling. Overturning decades of precedent and the McCain-Feingold law, the court in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission decided that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of funds for speech in favor or opposition to political candidates and may do so at any time, overturning McCain-Feingold's previous 30-day before an election rule. The 5-4 decision split along familiar lines, with conservatives in the majority and liberals in dissent.
Many rulings in the past have affirmed the ability to restrict money as opposed to speech. This ruling appears to equate the two. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion also seems to consider corporations people, saying, "By taking the right to speech from some and giving it to others, the government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech..." The language thereby puts a corporate entity in the same legal class as a human person. Presumably this applies even if the corporation is primarily owned by foreign investors such as BP or even a foreign government, as with many Chinese companies. That's a cheery thought. Imagine Chinese Communist front corporations given unlimited power to run advertising for U.S. politicians who support their agendas and unlimited funds to slam those with whom they disagree.
The decision does uphold the principle of requiring the financial backers to identify themselves. But I wonder whether the ads will have to say, "Paid for by Exxon Corporation" or can run as many now do as sponsored by, "Citizens for a Better Tomorrow" or some other such innocuous-sounding group serving as cover for the real backers.
Of course the ruling will increase even further the power and influence of corporate interests over the political process. Corporate resources dwarf those of unions. But I would expect first the mud to come from activist groups like the Swift Boaters.
In a best case scenario there could be a backlash against too much corporate interference and manipulation, but recent history offers little encouragement to believe in that scenario. In a worst case scenario the actual public interest could become practically without advocacy in the major media. President Obama warns it could lead to a "stampede" of special interest government and is calling on Congress to pass some new restrictions. Of course he is right but it is hard to see that they can do much good other than to require the utmost transparency of commercial funding sources.
If not overturned in the future this further unleashing of corporate power could have far-reaching and extremely pernicious effects on the fabric of American democracy. Hopefully there will be a proliferation of media-monitoring groups like Accuracy in Media to at least try to keep the public informed about who is trying to influence them and why.
3 comments:
What I find even more troubling is the Republicans applauding an "activist" judicial branch's decision when they've decried activist judges for decades.
It's interesting when the activist decision favors your party, you're no longer against activist judges. Methinks they were just down on activist liberal decisions, rather than the entire activist decisions.
In most cases union members are allowed to opt-out of the portion of their dues that goes for lobbying. Wouldn't it now be logical to have a similar opt-out for prices of goods and services from corporations? A regular gallon of Chevron gas would cost $3.00 but a advocacy-free gallon would cost $2.90. Consumers should have choices, right, just like union members?
Great comments, both of you. I regret not including them in the original post!
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