There's a Critical Vote Coming -- and It's Not Healthcare

As the title says, there's a critical vote coming. It won't be 60-40, or 268-112, or anything like that. More than likely, it will be 5-4. And it has the power to fundamentally change American democracy.

I'm talking, of course, of the Supreme Court case Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission. This is the case where Citizens United, a right-wing political action group, was prevented from showing their attack movie on Hillary Clinton, as the FEC said it was essentially a very long campaign ad and thus violated campaign finance law.

The case, though, has turned into something much greater than Hillary-hater movies. The court is looking at this as a test case around the whole concept of limits on campaign gifts from corporations. Essentially, some on the court are using the Corporate Personhood concept as a basis for doing away with limits on campaign money from corporations all together.

Policy Wonk Alert! For those of you who don't know what Corporate Personhood is all about, here's a quick intro. If you already know, or try to avoid Policy Wonk stuff like you do brussels sprouts, feel free to jump below the block text.

From Wikipedia:

The corporate personhood debate refers to the controversy (primarily in the United States) over the question of what subset of rights afforded under the law to natural persons should also be afforded to corporations as legal persons.

Opponents of "corporate personhood" believe that large corporations as juristic persons have enjoyed certain constitutional rights intended for natural humans as the result of a misinterpretation of an 1886 Supreme Court Case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Opponents claim that certain rights of natural persons, such as the right to political and other non-commercial free speech, are now exercised by corporations to the detriment of the American democratic process as provided under the Constitution. Some opponents point to the recent discovery of correspondence   between then Supreme Court Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, and court reporter J.C. Bancroft Davis as proof of a conspiracy among the railroad corporations to intentionally create a misrepresentation of that decision for the benefit of the railroads. Bancroft Davis had previously served as president of Newburgh and New York Railway Co.

Proponents of corporate personhood believe that corporations, as representatives of their shareholders, were intended by the founders and framers to enjoy many, if not all, of the same rights as natural persons, for example, the right against self-incrimination, right to privacy and the right to lobby the government.

So why is this a big deal? Because, the argument that a corporation is equivalent to a person also means that a corporation, under the law, has a wide collection of rights, including a right to free speech. Combine that with the current McConnell et al argument that money is speech, and therefore cannot be regulated in political campaigns, and what do you have? The wild, wild West of political campaign funding, with corporations allowed to give unlimited amounts of money to the candidate or campaign of their choice. I leave it to your imagination to describe the resulting effects on democracy and elections.

It appears, from this story in the Wall Street Journal, that Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg may be ready to take a look at the whole idea of Corporate Personhood, and perhaps reign it in to some extent. They are still, though, in the minority, which means we may soon see the United State move from Representative Democracy, as flawed as that may be, to Corporate Democracy.

For more insight, visit the comments section of this diary on Daily Kos.

Comments

[E]

As if corporations don't already dump money into campaigns on both sides of the isle.
I wonder if a rebuke of MF will instead result in corporations outright running ads themselves and NOT filtering it through the corrupting practice of first donating to a 527 or party, or PAC. If that were the case, then it would perhaps take the politician out of the middleman position.

[Bruce]

I bet you're right -- they'll run the ads themselves. At least we'd know who was behind it all, instead of the astro-turfing we have now.

I would prefer to do away with all non-individual gifts -- no PACs, no union gifts, no corporate gifts, no gifts other than individuals. And every gift has to be reported and shown publicly. Would dramatically change the response of elected officials to their actual constituents.