Waltham, MA January 23 -Thursday's Supreme Court opinion in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, a campaign finance law case, opens the floodgates to allow unlimited corporate spending to influence state and federal elections and further entrenches corporate power in our nation.
This 5-4 decision overturns previous Court decisions that limited corporate money in politics. In lifting the previous federal ban on corporate "independent expenditures," the court has overridden laws in 22 states banning "independent expenditures" by corporations and unions. Now corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to buy the election results they want and manipulate politics and policy in their self-interest.
"The Constitution was written to protect real people, not to give corporations the power to challenge our fundamental rights and enacted laws," said NancyPrice, Alliance for Democracy Co-Chair. "With this decision, a business-friendly Supreme Court majority is further eroding the very basis of our democracy by allowing corporate money to dominate the political process. Corporate political speech is a lot louder than that of ordinary persons. This is a critical time for our democracy and many are alarmed."
The Alliance welcomes the observation by Justice Stevens in his dissent with Justices Ginsburg, Breyer and Sotomayor concurring, that
"The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court's disposition of this case."
However, this should apply to all Constitutional rights conferred on corporations by the courts through the doctrine of corporate personhood. It is these court-conferred rights which have robbed, "we, the people" of our ability to govern ourselves without interference by the monied-power of corporations.
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