Supremes to Corporations: My World Is Empty Without You

In a mindnumbing 5-4 decision announced on January 21, the U.S. Supreme Court decreed that corporations, as "persons" with free speech rights, must be allowed to directly spend money in federal elections. It's as if corporations had been cruelly bound and gagged, like Black Panther leader Bobby Seale during the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, and "Justices" Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy are the great liberators who have finally set them free.

Commentator Jim Hightower warned us of this likely outcome in the September 2009 issue of his Hightower Lowdown newsletter. The timing couldn't be worse; the crucial midterm elections this year, in which the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate is up for election, are now up for sale to the highest corporate bidder.

Some stories on this Citizens United v. FEC decision have pointed out that campaign spending prohibitions were lifted on labor unions as well as corporations, and that this somehow balances things out. Yeah, right. If unions had as much money and power as corporations, wouldn't we all have fully-funded pensions, free healthcare, progressive income tax, and democratized decision-making in the workplace? In this new "one dollar, one vote" system decreed by the Supremes, corporations will easily outspend anyone else, demonstrating that, while all "free speech" may be equal, some speech is more equal than others.

Of course, corporate money in politics is nothing new. Former Senator Henry Jackson (D-WA), patron saint of today's neocons, was known as "The Senator from Boeing" due to their funding of his campaigns and his unwavering support for their corporate well-being. The post-Watergate revelations of suitcases packed with corporate cash being delivered to Richard Nixon's 1972 Commmittee to Re-Elect the President (with the perfectly appropriate acronym of CREEP) are legendary; one of those companies, ITT, got their payback in 1973 when the Nixon administration engineered the military coup in Chile, saving ITT's telecommunications infrastructure in that country from being nationalized by the Allende administration.

However, growing public disgust over these abuses led to a series of restrictions on corporate spending in campaigns. Sure, corporations still have their way with Congress. Capitol Hill swarms with corporate lobbyists on a daily basis, and corporations encourage their executives to make individual contributions to employee PACs, which then give the money to friendly legislators in a process not unlike money laundering. I often refer to Sen. Joe Lieberman as (I-Aetna), although his slavish devotion to the for-profit health insurance companies extends far beyond just those headquartered in his home state of Connecticut. But at least the corporations were prevented from making direct campaign contributions and openly endorsing candidates.

On the other hand, maybe these new rules will make things easier for us to see what's really happening. If corporate "naming rights" can now move from sports arenas to members of Congress, perhaps our legislators will start dressing like NASCAR drivers and wear patches advertising their corporate sponsors. Imagine tuning in to C-SPAN and watching a debate on climate change; when a Senator gets up to claim that science doesn't support calls for limits on carbon emissions, at least the big Exxon-Mobil patch on his or her jacket will explain this. Perhaps Sen. Lieberman can now drop the pretense that he represents the people of Connecticut and openly announce his true corporate constituents.

What to do: Check out the Move To Amend site set up by the Campaign to Legalize Democracy, sign the online motion, and check out any of the fourteen supporting groups listed on the site for further ideas. Public Citizen also has good ideas and actions to take. If all else fails, we can all move to Delaware, the business-friendly state where over half of all publicly-traded corporations in the US are incorporated; if corporations have all the same rights as people, maybe we the people can get in on some of those corporate tax breaks!

Update: For more on the increasing power of corporations, as well as the 1886 Supreme Court ruling that originated the concept of "corporate personhood", check out the excellent 2003 documentary The Corporation.