Move over, Chief Justice Taney, they finally had a Supreme Court decision worse than Dred Scott...Today, any restrictions on how...corporate beings spend their money on political advertising are unconstitutional.
Keith Olbermann, Countdown
Yesterday I wrote that the Supreme Court has declared corporations even more equal than ever, and my friend and classmate Charlie Carter wrote today
Howard Fineman was for the longest time a closet progressive, refusing to articulate clearly what seemed to be fuming inside. Here, from his Newsweek blog, is his statement - in marked contrast to his previous reticence - is what he has to say about the Roberts Court.
I still hold the hope that, like the Massachusetts senatorial by-election, this will prove to be a blessing in disguise. However, assuming this is an act of faith - the evidence is mightily against it because it hands power entirely to corporate America. Several commentators have echoed my thought that we are approaching a civil war, while pointing out that Corporate America makes the guns.
Charlie
Blog and more below.
First, I should say that Charlie gave me permission to quote him here, and that I wrote SCOTUS: Corporations are even more equal yesterday.
Second, the doctrine that corporations are persons with human rights, specifically the rights that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed to ex-slaves, is bo-o-o-o-ogus, a complete legal figment. It does not appear in the Constitution, in any statute, or in any court opinion. It was brought into being by ultra-activist Supreme Court Chief Justice Morrison C. Waite, who simply refused to hear argument on the matter, saying that the Justices all agreed that it was so. This comment appeared only in the headnote to the case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, in 1886.
Now for Howard Fineman's commentary, from the Newsweek blog:
The Sweeping Impact of SCOTUS's Campaign-Spending Decision
I rarely attend a Supreme Court argument, but I did last fall for a "rehearing" of the campaign-spending case. I wrote a column about it, predicting that the Roberts Court would sweep away long-established restrictions on spending by corporations. The most vivid image I saw was the red-faced Chief Justice John Roberts, veins popping on his neck as he vibrated with disgust at the idea that government could limit what a corporate entity could do or say in the political arena.
The 5–4 opinion issued Thursday by the Roberts Court—written by swing voter Anthony Kennedy—was even more sweeping than I had imagined and predicted.
It's nothing short of revolutionary. Here's how I add up the possible consequences:
- It adds to Republican chances of pickups in red states with small, cheap media markets.
- It turns the cottage industry of campaign consulting into a Hollywood-lucrative major media sector.
- It reduces candidates and political parties to mere appendages in their own campaigns.
- It will turn corporate boardrooms into political cockfighting pits, since that is where the key decisions will be made.
- It gives President Obama a populist issue, if he has the cojones and imagination and sense of injustice to take it on.
- It rips the veil of "conservatism" from this court, which just rendered one of the most wildly "activist" opinions in decades. It makes a mockery of the legal theory of "original intent." The Founders would be rolling over in their graves.
Other than that, it's not much of a story.
Not just the Founders. Edmund Burke, too, the "Father of Conservatism" who declared of the management of the British East India Company, one of the earliest corporations, that they were "resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication." This was during the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings, head of the company, for creating a famine in Bengal, among other High Crimes and Misdemeanours, including destroying essential documents afterwards. Coverups don't change much, do they?
Here are the choicest bits from Countdown, Jan. 21, 2010
Democracy—it was fun while it lasted. The Supreme Court rules in favor of unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns.
Republicans, like Senate Minority Leader McConnell, reacting to today‘s decision as if it were the emancipation proclamation instead of Dred Scott, and the corporations were the slaves. "For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process."
This wasn‘t Freedom‘s Watch that just won, it was ExxonMobil.
Congressman Grayson joins us now.
Thank you once again for your time tonight, sir.
REP. ALAN GRAYSON (D), FLORIDA: Thank you.
OLBERMANN: You were in the courtroom when the Supreme Court announced this decision. What‘s your reaction to the decision? What has the reaction been to your five bills?
GRAYSON: I‘m shocked. I‘m shocked by the decision. This is the most irresponsible decision by the Supreme Court since the Dred Scott decision...
OLBERMANN: Agreed.
GRAYSON: ...over 100 years ago. The one that you referred to, the Dred Scott decision has some analogy to it. In the Dred Scott decision, the court decided that slaves and their free born children do not have any constitutional rights.
Today, the court, in effect, decided only corporations have constitutional rights.
OLBERMANN: Justice Stevens wrote in the dissent, Congressman, "The framers took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare." Why is it that judges are only called activists when they rule against what conservatives want?
GRAYSON: I wish I knew, but the same five judges today who have overturned 103 years of settled law and relied upon no precedent to do so, these are the same judges who gave us George Bush for eight years. [No, Bush replaced two of them, but the confusion is understandable.--Ed.] They have their own agenda and it‘s time we stopped pretending otherwise. The Supreme Court has become utterly politicized and the result of that is what you see here today.
OLBERMANN: Justice Stevens also wrote in the dissents, "Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office, because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents. Their interests may conflict in fundamental respect with the interests of eligible voters."
Does the decision really make corporations not kind of persons but actually super-persons?
GRAYSON: Absolutely. Why should they bother to run for office or vote when they can buy and sell elected officials by the gross?
Let‘s call in "Newsweek" magazine senior Washington correspondent, political columnist, MSNBC political analyst Howard Fineman.
Good evening, Howard.
HOWARD FINEMAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Hi, Keith.
OLBERMANN: Let‘s look right in front of us. What does this do to the midterms?
FINEMAN: First, I want to say, I have a confession to make. Sometimes I think you get a little turbo-charged, shall we say, about an issue.
OLBERMANN: Yes.
FINEMAN: I think you‘re understating this one.
Go see or read the rest. We'll have to talk a lot more, and for a long time, about the points that these and other people have raised, and what to do about them.