Citizens United

Citizens United

In January, we said:

With lobbyists already such an imposing force on Capitol Hill, you might think that the Supreme Court would rule against expanding the powers of corporations to spend money influencing politicians and public policy, but you would be absolutely incorrect. Thursday, the US Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of Citizens United, a conservative corporation non-profit corporation, to reverse years of legislation forbidding companies to spend money on ads for political campaigns, essentially setting back any campaign finance reform indefinitely.
Corporations can now use their overall profit to support any candidate, PAC, or special interest group publicly, giving them more lobbying power for various issues and more pull over candidates and elected officials. It is paramount to our country's future that elected officials answer to people rather than companies, and this new decision will put the opinions of corporations over constituants.

The Supreme Court's decision has real-world ramifications. This ruling is not disconnected from actual campaigns, rather, it has given way to the brand-new 'Super PAC', whose spending- especially on ads- is practically unlimited.
These PACs have already poured money into the midterms in an unprecedented way. Districts that were previously won with maybe a million dollars spent by all groups involved with every candidate, like Rep. Peter Defazio's, are now multi-million dollar affairs- and these are just the Congressional elections. Imagine what this means for the 2012 presidential race. This sort of inflation of campaign value renders individuals irrelevant. All the power now belongs to the PACs, who are in turn funded primarily by large corporations.
The base problem with the court's ruling is a corporations is not a person. Its owners are, its employees are, but it is not. In America, we treat corporations legally as individuals, but this was never intended to render them equivalent to US citizens. Socially, a corporation is not a person- it cannot vote, and it shouldn't be able to throw money at an election. Even if the idea of a corporation being a person was upheld, therefore keeping the rationale of the decision being one of free speech, it would still not be valid. The entire premise of the first amendement rights is that they are inalienable until they infringe upon the rights of someone else, and the new powers of corporations according to the ruling would decrease the validity of the free speech of an individual. Regardless, a corporation is not a person.
The Koch brothers, raw material moguls who fund politically active groups like the 'grassroots' organization Americans for Prosperity, just have one vote each. Their votes are equal to every other citizens, not inflated due to the millions- or even billions- of dollars behind them. Their access to nearly unlimited funds combined with the new ruling gives the Koch brothers much, much more influence over politicians than everyday constituants.
The same is true of every other mogul or corporate group with enough spare funds to fuel a Super PAC. Maybe the new addition of Elena Kagen- whose first official day as a justice last week marks the unprecedented presence of three female justices- will result in the Court reassessing the role of corporations in the increasingly money-based political system, but, in all likelihood, it won't.


[Photo credits: CNN.com and WashintonPost.com]