A very destructive ruling was handed down today by the Roberts Supreme Court, which will unleash a flood of corporate-backed campaign ads in future elections.
The SCOTUS sided with the idea—a legal bone of contention going back to the 19th Century Robber Baron era, then picked up again by conservative ideologues in the 1970s as a route to enlarging their political influence—that corporations have the same First Amendment “free speech” rights as individuals.
Congressman Alan Grayson (D-Fla) has introduced a suite of bills, which he’s calling the Save Our Democracy package, to try to roll back this and other court decisions empowering big corporations over ordinary citizens. Meanwhile, a coalition of public interest groups have launched the site Free Speech for People in an effort to overturn the right-wing activism of justices appointed by Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. But hey, it’s only judicial activism and legislating from the bench if the judge is a Democrat...
