Jump to full article: Opinion LA (Los Angeles Times blog), 2010-01-23
Author: Patt Morrison
Intro: Thanks to the Supreme Court – well, five-ninths of it, anyway – one sector of the economy will be thriving this autumn: campaign consultants, TV ad creators and commercial sales people, and anybody who stands to get rich riding a tsunami of TV and radio political mud. . . .
This ruling is premised on the notion that the 1st Amendment rights of the nation's corporations are being treated cruelly and unconstitutionally when companies are banned from throwing unlimited money chum in the political waters. The court deep-sixed limits on corporate million-dollar bigfooting that have been around since Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting days, and which were strengthened after Watergate, and most recently by the McCain-Feingold limitations. The court found these limits to be constitutional seven years ago, but that was when Sandra Day O’Connor was on the court. What a difference a justice makes.
The Supreme Court ruling means that labor and public interest groups are perfectly entitled to the same spend-a-thons, but that’s just dousing legal manure with eau de cologne. The day that labor can even come close to match the ante of Wall Street or Big Tobacco or Big Pharma is the day Rush Limbaugh is the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for president.
. . .
it’s not illegal to spend ungodly gobs of dough to turn every elected official in the country into a wholly owned subsidiary of Oligarchs R Us.
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Money talks, all right. And theirs is going to out-shout us all.
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