Listen - I know it's ridiculous that we treat Corporations like people, that we think spending money on political ads is their exercise of free political speech.

But it's not the Supreme Court's fault.  The rules under McCain Feingold were pretty arbitrary and ridiculous.

Citizens United was a nonprofit that got 1% of its funding from corporate sources - the rest was individuals.  Imagine if TYT got 1% of its funding from a corporation and suddenly couldn't do any political commentary 60 days before an election.

It's absurd.

What you ought to get upset about is the fact that Congress ALLOWS the states to compete for corporate citizenship - the state that makes the nicest corporate laws wins!

That's why 70% of all US corporations are citizens of Delaware.  They have a low population, so it's easy to buy all the state elections, get nice corporate friendly judges appointed to the special corporate court, where most lawsuits against those corporations are brought.

All it would take is Congress stepping in and amending corporate law to deprive them of "personhood".  It would take one simple bill.  

The Supreme Court is simply applying the absolutely STUPID existing rules.  We may not like it.  We may want the Supreme Court to do what's right even if it skirts the rules.  We may want them to follow their hearts instead of their heads or wallets.  But that's really not their job.

It's our job to elect people who make laws to protect us, not corporations.  Until we do that, don't expect the judges appointed by the jerks that do get elected to go above and beyond.

by dotkommissar on 03/17/2010 02:51:06 PM EST