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Many of the comments on the SCOTUS decision have centered on the technicalities of what constitutes a "corporation" and quite a few of them seem to be of the "how many angels can dance on the head of pin?" variety. I feel that this question should not get lost in a forest of technicalities, at heart there is an issue here that you could say transcends even the US Constitution, without, of course, contradicting its intentions.
At the bottom of this whole business is something very simple, something which we might consider the basis of our civilization, not just our democracy: protecting the many powerless from the oppression of the powerful few.
It is in the nature of things, that if left to themselves, without regulation or restriction, a few people finally control almost everything, in much the same way that in a troop of monkeys a few alpha-males monopolize all the females. Monopolies are the natural state of things in a world "red in tooth and claw". Anti-trust legislation, seats reserved for the physically challenged on public transport, even very ancient institutions such as monogamy and the keeping of the sabbath, all were designed to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.
Many are not aware that today's huge corporations that have outsourced so many of America's jobs, are actually controlled by a very small percentage of the total equity... all that power is in reality concentrated in a very few hands.
In reality we are not talking about faceless corporations that represent objectively the interests of their shareholders. The percentage of the total shares that actually control the boards of these organizations usually is very small, often tiny. In fact we are talking about a very small group of men... in America and abroad that will make the decisions of whom to back in elections and, make no mistake, they are just as given to having strange ideas and caprices as the rest of us... perhaps more so, as their chance of living out their fantasies is much greater than ours. Their humors and their whims are in many ways what control our lives. With this ruling, more so. What the Supreme Court's decision has done is to convert the Congress and the Senate, in fact all elected institutions in the USA into a great smorgasbord for these men (mostly men).
There are some who think that this is how it should be: the "Darwinists", the followers of Ayn Rand like Alan Greenspan, the disciples of Milton Friedman and of course the former National Socialist Party of pre-war Germany. For all of the above, the weak exist to provide the strong with a living. What the Supreme Court decision has done is to further empower this philosophy.
You may well ask: "McCain-Feingold has only been in place since 2002, how did democracy survive before the law?"
How indeed.
It didn't.
You've put your finger right into the wound. Campaign finance is at the core of America's decadence.
That is the beauty of this SCOTUS decision, it makes people wake up and understand what the United States really is... (fill in blank).
McCain/Feingold was a trap for SCOTUS and they fell into it, for as Joni Mitchill sang:
At the bottom of this whole business is something very simple, something which we might consider the basis of our civilization, not just our democracy: protecting the many powerless from the oppression of the powerful few.
It is in the nature of things, that if left to themselves, without regulation or restriction, a few people finally control almost everything, in much the same way that in a troop of monkeys a few alpha-males monopolize all the females. Monopolies are the natural state of things in a world "red in tooth and claw". Anti-trust legislation, seats reserved for the physically challenged on public transport, even very ancient institutions such as monogamy and the keeping of the sabbath, all were designed to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.
Many are not aware that today's huge corporations that have outsourced so many of America's jobs, are actually controlled by a very small percentage of the total equity... all that power is in reality concentrated in a very few hands.
In reality we are not talking about faceless corporations that represent objectively the interests of their shareholders. The percentage of the total shares that actually control the boards of these organizations usually is very small, often tiny. In fact we are talking about a very small group of men... in America and abroad that will make the decisions of whom to back in elections and, make no mistake, they are just as given to having strange ideas and caprices as the rest of us... perhaps more so, as their chance of living out their fantasies is much greater than ours. Their humors and their whims are in many ways what control our lives. With this ruling, more so. What the Supreme Court's decision has done is to convert the Congress and the Senate, in fact all elected institutions in the USA into a great smorgasbord for these men (mostly men).
There are some who think that this is how it should be: the "Darwinists", the followers of Ayn Rand like Alan Greenspan, the disciples of Milton Friedman and of course the former National Socialist Party of pre-war Germany. For all of the above, the weak exist to provide the strong with a living. What the Supreme Court decision has done is to further empower this philosophy.
You may well ask: "McCain-Feingold has only been in place since 2002, how did democracy survive before the law?"
How indeed.
It didn't.
You've put your finger right into the wound. Campaign finance is at the core of America's decadence.
That is the beauty of this SCOTUS decision, it makes people wake up and understand what the United States really is... (fill in blank).
McCain/Feingold was a trap for SCOTUS and they fell into it, for as Joni Mitchill sang:
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
DS
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