January 21st, 2010:

UPDATE 01/23/10

Corporations Understand the Outcome of the SCOTUS Decision!

Re: Corporations Speak Out Against SCOTUS Ruling, Call On Congress To Approve Public Financing Of Campaigns , Think Progress, By Zaid Jilani on Jan 22nd, 2010

Today, in response to the Supreme Court’s catastrophic decision, “dozens of current and former corporate executives” from corporations including Delta, Ben & Jerry’s, and Crate & Barrel sent a letter to Congress asking it to immediately pass the Fair Elections Now Act, which would publicly finance all congressional campaigns out of a special fund created by a fee levied on TV broadcasters:

Roughly 40 executives from companies including Playboy Enterprises, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, the Seagram’s liquor company, toymaker Hasbro, Delta Airlines and Men’s Wearhouse sent a letter to congressional leaders Friday urging them to approve public financing for House and Senate campaigns. They say they are tired of getting fundraising calls from lawmakers — and fear it will only get worse after Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling. [...]

“Members of Congress already spend too much time raising money from large contributors,” the business executives’ letter says. “And often, many of us individually are on the receiving end of solicitation phone calls from members of Congress. With additional money flowing into the system due to the court’s decision, the fundraising pressure on members of Congress will only increase.”

The President of the United States alss understands the dire straights that this decision has put on the American people saying he can’t, “think of anything more devastating to the public interest.”.  His weekly address:

 httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkUeqD7M5t0&feature=player_embedded

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Original Post, 01/21/10

Re:  Supreme Court rolls back campaign spending limits, MARK SHERMAN | 01/21/10 10:18 AM |

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participation in federal campaigns.

By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

Labor unions? Labor unions do not have the funds to compete with corporations for advertisements. The author has warned us here of the influence of organized labor, when he should be ringing the warning bells for the invasion of huge amounts of cash from special interests like the insurance industry.

This is a bad day for politics, and for the nation. At a time when we see the effect of big corporate money in the pockets of our legislators to kill the health care bill, the right-wing Supreme Court has just ruled for even more corporate money to go into politics. There actually needs to be less corporate money in our elections, not more. Now, the corporations can completely own campaigns.

This is ass backwards from the direction we should take. The Supreme Court has once again taken sides with the desires of corporate America and has squashed the hopes of any real grassroots campaigns.

The author attempts to demonize labor unions by putting the power of organized labor on equal footing with the massive treasuries of corporations:

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

Union money comes from meager dues deducted from member’s pay checks. Corporations have vast pools of profit. The author wants you to believe that unions will benefit from the ruling first, when actually they will be out-spent by sizeable margins.

We must override the Supreme Court and remove corporate influence in politics. We must introduce legislation in Congress to set this straight. Join Representative Grayson and tell Congress to stop the high-jacking of America by corporations.

Rep. Grayson said, “I’ve already introduced five bills that would help to counter the effects of a Supreme Court decision that would change our form of government from democracy to corpocracy. Sign my petition now at SaveDemocracy.net, and tell the Supreme Court that democracy is not for sale… This issue transcends partisan political arguments. We cannot have a government that is bought and paid for by huge multinational corporations. We must stop this. If this goes unchallenged, then you can kiss your  country goodbye.”

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