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With no limits on campaign financing, corporations will take over the government.
I was flabbergasted by the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which overruled two precedents: Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a 1990 decision that upheld restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates, and McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, a 2003 decision that upheld the part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that restricted campaign spending by corporations and unions, the New York Times said today.
The ramifications of this are incredible. Everything Keith Olbermann says in the video above is true. Sometimes Keith overreacts. Not this time.
I didn’t get a chance to listen to Thom Hartmann today, but I’m sure he was beside himself. Hartmann has been arguing for a long, long time that corporations are not people. He’s right. A corporation is a legal entity which exists on paper only. The First Amendment should not apply at all, but it was the First Amendment which persuaded five of nine justices otherwise.
This is incredibly unnerving. The New York Times editorial board is correct: "Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy."