Friday, January 22, 2010

The United States Supreme Court Rejects Campaign Spending Limits

BLACK BUZZ NEWS SERVICE
January 22, 2010
Washington D.C.

According to a New York Times report dated January 21st, the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participations in federal campaigns. ,
The Court on Thursday overturned a 20 year -old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for campaign ads. The decision almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns and threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.
The Justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union-and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

This was a 5 to 4 decision and Justice Sotomayor was on the right side of this issue while the conservatives led by Anthony Kennedy basically have said that corporations have more fundamental rights than the American citizens.
What we have in the instant case are true activist ideologue Justices making new law that ignores 20 years of precedent based upon their own biased political philosophical views. In the view of the Anthony Kennedy and the other neo-cons on the court, the citizens of the United States are relegated to a position of secondary consideration while corporations are granted wide sweeping powers for the rich, of the rich and by the rich. This ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court relative to campaign spending limits has made a mockery of our First Amendment and our U.S. Constitution.
What is needed is law that states that a Congressman or Congresswoman or U.S. Senator may not vote on a bill if they receive money from a lobbyist on that legislation.
The corporations with the biggest pockets will be able to control and manipulate every election. The smaller businesses and corporations will be left out in the cold.
Who do you think the Joe "Liebermans" of the world are going to listen to---the person who owns the local hardware store or a corporation like I.B.M or Microsoft ?
Union membership in this country is about 12 to 14 % of the total work force so the unions will not be able to compete with the big dogs in the national or state elections when it comes to spending for campaigns.
On January 7, 2010, I asked this question:
Will the next U.S. President be a corporation like EXXON/MOBIL or General Electric ?
We already have a Corporation with Obama at the helm.
See my blog post for January 7,2010 at http://blackbuzz.blogspot.com/


President Obama's public utterances on the subject of campaign spending limits don't match his track record on this vitally important topic.
For a very long time now, the U.S. government and Congress people on every level have been opened to the highest bidder. Will this Supreme Court ruling be the "Straw That Breaks The Camel's Back "relative to our experiment in participatory democratic governance ? But isn't that really the "American Way " ?
Thus this anti-U.S. citizen ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court only validates the claim that the United States has fallen into a type of Machiavellian decadence in every aspect of our private and personal lives. Corporations have taken priority over individual rights, so it's just business as usual. But the average Joe and Suzie Six-Packs don't have a clue to what is going on because they simply don't read, examine, or evaluate what is being presented to them by the Corporations who inundate the American Electorate with show/style nonsense masked as news. The average American is so damn lazy that they rely on these Mass Media Corporations to pump this misinformation disguised as news into their living rooms every night rather than going to the library, attending town meetings and educational and political seminars, or reading books, various newspapers and magazines to really find out what the issues are. Case in point is sister Sarah Palin who is no more qualified to run for President than "Mickey Mouse" is. Sarah Palin couldn't tell Katie Couric of CBS News what the hell she read because she didn't read anything. And there are millions of Americans in the same position as Sarah Palin who are "Functional Morons hooked on ignorance. "
Case closed !

2 comments:

RayP said...

This is change that we can believe in !!??

RayP said...

Good post. I absolutely agree with it. Nothing has changed. Government run by the lobbyists. The highest bidder(s) call the shots.