"With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding."
The Wall Street Journal's view of the decision:
Without doubt, the gnashing of teeth has begun in earnest about the Supreme Court's politically earth-shaking decision yesterday. The 5-4 ruling upended a large number of unconstitutional restrictions on free speech by corporations, unions and other legal "persons" to speak freely and spend money espousing or castigating candidates for public office."Freedom has had its best week in many years. On Tuesday, Massachusetts put a Senate check on a reckless Congress, and yesterday the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision supporting free political speech by overturning some of Congress's more intrusive limits on election spending.
In a season of marauding government, the Constitution rides to the rescue one more time."
In 2006, here and here, on this blog I expressed the same fundamental opinion: our democracy requires free speech including the right to spend money promoting political opinions without government interference.
When all's said and done the Supreme Court is heavily influenced by politics. Liberals appoint/approve left-leaning jurists and conservatives appoint/approve more conservative leaning people when they are in power. Supreme Court decisions reflect that reality with shifts in judicial philosophy over time based on the composition of the Court.
I firmly believe that if a labor union or a corporation has the standing of 'a person' before the law, they should have the same Constitutional free speech rights as an individual, including spending money on political speech in elections. As a voter, I have a direct power at the ballot box that 'legal persons' do not have, but they should have the ability to freely express their opinions, including spending money, to promote those views. I will then make up my own mind.
If the Burlington Free Press (Gannett Corp.) has the right to endorse a political candidate under the First Amendment, then Seventh Generation, or Google or GE should have that same right as a legal "person." Whether a company is in the "news" business should not be only the determinant. News organizations have Constitutional 'free press' rights." So should all legal "persons," without government restraint. This decision affirms that fundamental Constitutional right.
Cheers for the Constitution and bravo for this Supreme Court decision!
3 comments:
Boy do I disagree on this. Speech is speech and money is amplification. They are fundamentally different elements as we know from advertising rates. A classified is free while a superbowl ad may cost millions.
Money is not speech> It expands its reach.Those with money will be able to afford greater reach than those without it.
Free speech requires the protection of "amplitude equality." Money has distorted policy formation and regulation for years and now it can have free reign with public opinion on both the liberal and conservative sides. Sad day for constitutional principles.
Bill Schubart
An example of "amplitude equality" is the limit *$2,400) on how much any individual can contribute to a political campaign. The idea being that the super rich should not be able to distort the coffers of any candidate. The same rational restriction concept ought to apply to rich corporations. I especially do not get why Conservatives applaud this while decrying the role of big government and big lobbyists. This decisions just handed uzi bullets to the lobbyists. Since when are Conservatives such lovers of the First Amendment - did not they want to jail flag burners for excercising their free speech rights? If I was Conservative I think I would hate this ruling, I am confused by the right's embrace of it.
The issue here is guaranteeing a Constitutional right plain and simple... freedom (unhindered by government or agents of government which may well be the subject of the speech) of speech. Speech is a translation of opinions and views distributed to others. Unless transmitted/distributed/communicated it has little political or practical value.
Distribution of speech flows in many channels and the cost of distribution usually varies with the size of the audience reached. That makes practical and economic sense.
If persons are willing to pay for increased frequency and amplitude, the First Amendment protects that right, as the Court found.
Allowing or suppressing the distribution of legal speech must not be subservient to a person's political proclivities or any like/dislike of certain persons, whether individuals, corporations, unions or news media.
Post a Comment