"Click To Object"
As I tried to digest the unfathomable ruling of the US Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC I wondered if Abraham Lincoln would recognize his party today. Sorry Mr. President, but government: of the people, by the people, for the people, has perished from the earth. It was sold to the highest bidder last week by the firm of Roberts, Alito & Scalia. If Gettysburg was a new birth of freedom, Citizens United was its death. In one stroke the high court overturned a century of standing law. The GOP couldn't win the popular vote in the last two elections, so the high court pimped out the next one -- and many more to follow -- not only to the monolithic corporations on Wall Street, but foreign and multinational interests as well. (I somehow think that this isn't what the economists have in mind when they speak of "globalization".) They've set us up for years' worth of choices between the best candidates money can buy on both sides of the aisle. The Golden Rule has been rewritten to read "He who has the gold makes the rules".It would be bad enough if the Congress had passed such a law. It would take a Herculean effort, but such a law could be repealed, and its authors and proponents replaced in coming elections. But a Supreme Court ruling? Only another Supreme Court ruling can overturn that. Still, despite a reprehensible decision by the Bushisti on the bench, there are a few ways to limit the damage. Because (for the time being at least) Congress still holds the power to amend the Constitution. And there are a half dozen or so House Resolutions already under consideration that could offer some damage control. The image above is linked to a thumbnail of the more prominent ones. I won't say I think all of them are feasible, or even advisable. But do you want to live in a country where the three branches of government are Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Exxon/Mobil?Think about it.
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2 comments:
Well said. Very well said.
Sandra Day O’Connor steps away from the bench and good ole boys club shreds McConnell v. FEC and thumbs their collective nose at the Declaration of Independence… has SCOTUS gone quite mad? Have they forgotten the very concepts this country's infant government was predicated upon?
“--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..”
Justice Stevens said it best, in his dissenting opinion, "At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."
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