Now here's a case where I completely agree with President Obama and the Democrats.
Last week's US Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance was supremely stupid.
Seriously.In a sharply divided 5-4 vote, the court overturned decades of precedent and common-sense limits on corporations and unions with regard to political spending.
The court ruled that corporate political spending cannot be limited. Now, that doesn't mean that corporations can give money to political candidates or political parties - yet. But they can spend all they want on ads promoting or attacking their candidates. (My guess is that it will be mostly attacking and not so much promoting.)
If you thought the Swift Boat ads were bad, just wait. This next election cycle is going to be littered with attack ads. The only hope now is for transparency. Congress already is looking at some options - measures that would counter the deep-pocket, unbridled corporate and union spending that is virtually certain to materialize.
All these measures are being put forth by Democrats, by the way. Good for them.
Some of the things they're looking at include requiring the approval of the shareholders before a corporation can fund political advertising and blocking corporations from deducting election spending as a business expense.
Congressional Dems also may propose a measure requiring the CEO of the corporation to make a declaration at the end of the ad. You know, like if Apple ran an ad you would hear, "I'm Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, and I approve this message."
One congressman already introduced a constitutional amendment to reverse the decision, but that bill has a snowball's chance in Phoenix of passing.
So as it stands, unions and corporations can spend limitless amounts of money to buy political ads. This is because - the conservative majority ruled - political speech can't be infringed.
Ah, the First Amendment.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
I don't pretend to be some deep-thinking Constitutional scholar or anything, but I think the Founding Fathers - throughout the Bill of Rights - were talking about individuals.
I'm not gettin' where these corporations fit in with regard to free speech and the First Amendment.
What the court did in this ruling, which is frankly pretty stunning, is put corporations on the same footing as individuals with regard to First Amendment. Of course, this begs the question, where do we go from here?
Wouldn't it follow that corporations should be allowed to give unlimited sums to individual candidates or political parties?
Corporations originally were considered entities apart from their owners. But over time, corporations began sharing some rights with their owners. It just made things easier for a corporation to be able to write contracts or own property - even though the owners were doing the writing and owning.
But this ruling goes well beyond that.
A couple hundred years ago, the government granted charters to corporations. The charter spelled out the corporation's function, and the corporation's powers were pretty much presumed to be limited to what was spelled out in the charter.
Over the years, corporations began to take on more and more rights.
During the Industrial Revolution, lots more corporations were formed and the way judges viewed them started to evolve even more.
Judges seemed to want to afford corporations a certain level of shielding from being over-regulated and over-taxed by the government.
The courts probably figured by affording corporations more "rights" they were making it easier for them to do business, create jobs and make America stronger.
Despite this evolution of rights being bestowed on corporations, there were limits in place with regard to political spending.
But no more.
Remember when I said I wasn't a deep-thinking Constitutional scholar?
Well, here are some people who are:
Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissenting opinion, said corporations "have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. ... They are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."
And Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong. She said the court should reconsider those early 19th-century rulings that got us headed down this path in the first place.
Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," Sotomayor said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with ... [imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."
And Ruth Bader Ginsburg, evoking the Declaration of Independence, had this to say: "A corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator with inalienable rights."
Sorry, my conservative friends, but the liberals have it right on this one.
At precisely the moment in history when we need to be reining in corporate influence in politics and government, we open the floodgates.
Everyone who thinks corporations and unions have too little influence, raise your hand - then slap yourself in the kisser for thinking that.
