Roberts Court Overturns Yet Another Precedent in Favor of Corporate Campaign Cash

For those interested....the slip opinion.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

I will read this over the weekend. I simply do not have the time to read 183 pages during the week.

 

Okay, that's fine. We're interested in different parts of this. The central, technical issue? I agree. And any fix (there probably isn't one) would need to include all these entities, in my view.

But I was trying to address those saying it's not a big deal, or that it won't radically shift policy making.

 

I don't remember mentioning unions, but I certainly agree that whatever entity is enabled by this ruling to pour untold amounts of money into corrupting the political process represents the crux of the problem. Gigantic corporations threatening to either give or withhold huge amounts of money, via ad buys, to members of Congress to secure their vote, or unions, with their smaller resources... this is a radical ruling by the court. I repeat, and this can't be repeated enough, this is a radical ruling and, in my opinion, represents only the tip of the iceburg where this court is concerned. There will be other rulings in the future where the narrow majority will walk away from long established law.

 

They would have to pay me by the hr to read it. It is all very simple. Five rightwingers on the S. Ct.

Legal Realism in a nutshell. "What is (un)Consitutional is whateer the current S. Ct. says."

 

You would have all the money that you didn't have to spend on television advertising.

 

Actually...what is surprising is that Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. He leans to the right, but is most often thought of as a swing vote.

 

Probably deserves it's own thread.

Justice Alito has his Joe Wilson moment this evening.

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On the first page of the opinion it cites current federal law as banning political expenditure by corporations and unions and that this opinion is overturning that law.

 

Of course he wouldn't agree with Obama's statement but he keeps his mouth shut and doesn't interrupt. Hardly a Joe Wilson moment.

 

Should the government be able to ban a corporation from publishing a book prior to an election?

That was the basis of the ruling of the court. If you can't ban or censor political speech in a book then you can't do it on any medium wether it's television ads, print media or radio broadcast.

Also the corporate entities have no voice argument is invalid based on the fact that media conglomerates acting as corporations are free to project political speech through its subsidiaries and hold the right to even publicly endorse one candidate or another.

GE/NBC
Disney/ABC
Viacom/CBS
Newscorp/Fox
Time Warner/CNN

All of these Conglomerates freely express political speech through their media arms but somehow other corporations are banned from doing so?

 

If it wasn't for the video title, looking at that video out of context, I would've thought Obama and the rest were cheering the campaign finance decision.

 

really? Because I clearly saw him say "simply not true"

 

...and how did he interrupt the President?

 

I will have to rewatch the video but if he does he just mouths it. I heard nothign in the audio to him saying that.

 

translation: E pur si muove.

 

The man's entitled to his disgustingly powerful opinion.

If the camera wasn't on him, we'd be none the wiser.

 

So much for judicial temperament. In those four seconds we saw how Alito puts the lie to impartiality.

 

I can't pretend that nugget is news to me.


On an unrelated note, Clarence Thomas is my hero.

 

A general fisking of the SOTU, from Cato. the CU bit is around 7:30:

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This is fuss over nothing. I wish he had mouthed "scoreboard." That would have been appropriate.