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Against Monopoly
I wrote earlier about the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v FEC and expressed doubt that it would produce much additional corporate money in politics because there wasn’t much additional air time free to buy. I watched Bill Moyers Journal last night and wish to revise my conclusion. Moyers has a long review of money in elections of state court justices link here. That is where the decision is likely to cut first. And the program reviews three judicial elections, one each in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Texas where corporate contributions bought the result Big Business wanted.
It also has a 1999 interview with Justices Kennedy and Breyer opposing corporate money in such elections. Since Kennedy was the crucial deciding vote in favor of the Citizens United decision, their words drip with irony. They argue that corporate money will destroy public faith in the fairness of our legal system. In fact, most people when asked, find it very strange that the courts have given corporations so many of the same rights as a real person.
Moyers also makes the point that the Supremes did not have to decide Citizens United on grounds so broad that it greatly expanded the first amendment free speech rights of corporations from more than a hundred years of settled law. And the decision was only reached after very unusually reconsidering the case from an earlier hearing. All the justices currently on the …