The U.S. Supreme Court
Let's not mince words. When the Supreme Court last week refused to consider the merits of the one hundred year old law in Montana banning corporate money in that states elections saying their 2010 Court ruling in "Citizens United" applies to Montana as well, any real electoral reform in this country is simply dead unless there is a Constitutional amendment that supersedes SCOTUS' monumental error.
As for Justice Anthony Kennedy who wrote the 2010 majority opinion supporting "Citizens United" stating, "The Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption and the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy", he has clearly shown he is without integrity. As for the four other right wing stooges on this Court, they rank as low as those members of an earlier Court in 1857 that ruled in the Dred Scott case people of African descent brought to the U.S. and their ancestors held as slaves were not protected by the Constitution and were not U.S. citizens as well as the 7 to 1 majority Court in the 1896 Plessy v/s Ferguson case instituting "separate, but equal" and upholding state laws requiring racial segregation.
Getting a Constitutional amendment enacted needs to be the first order of business by the people in all the states with the Montana ruling, now overturned by the Court, being the catalyst to bring it about.
Such an amendment would be the linchpin to begin restoring our representative democracy, ending an electoral process now auctioned off to the highest bidders solidifying their stranglehold on the political agenda who work to enact the laws, regulations, oversight and enforcement to their benefit which relates to every important issue facing this country.
The Court's ruling in "Citizens United" represents a silent coups and a subversion of our democracy into a plutocracy of rich oligarchs that serves their interests.
Now money has always been a corrupting influence in our electoral process making some office holders sycophants beholden to those who underwrite their campaigns. But with this "Citizens United" ruling the electoral process has been completely corrupted leaving no other recourse but have it overturned by a Constitutional amendment.
Big money swamping our electoral process codified by the Court in the Citizens ruling should not be seen as a partisan left wing issue. It is probably the one bi-partisan issue that should be embraced by all sides as the cancer destroying our democracy that requires it be excised by a Constitutional amendment lest it becomes fatal.
All our unnecessary wars and occupations, the rise and ascension of the military/industrial/political complex bringing with it the intrusiveness of the national security state and our obsession with terrorism and terrorists are the by-products of an electoral process corrupted by the outsized largesse of individual, corporate and special interests, making the people nothing but useful pawns in the process, plied with propaganda, distracted with technological gadgetry and dumb downed with corporate sponsored inanity.
The occupy movement unmasked and exposed the venality of what is happening in this country depicting it most poignantly as the 1% reigning over the 99%.
It's time for the people to reassert their supremacy and overturning "Citizens United" with a Constitutional amendment is the place to begin.
