This probably won’t be that big of an issue in the news because the networks won’t be able to put a red-blue spin on it. It’s bad for American democracy as a whole.

The legal fiction of corporate personhood keeps getting stretched farther and farther. Yesterday the Supreme Court overturned several precedents and ruled part of the 2002 campaign finance reform law to be unconstitutional saying that corporations have the same free speech rights as actual people, and as such the government can not place any restrictions on corporations and labor unions spending money from of their general funds to support of specific candidates.

Companies are not people. They can’t be found guilty of a crime, have no emotions or social connections and don’t fear punishment or ostracism. That’s not criticism of companies. It’s just a fact. They are not people and should not be treated as such.

Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like.
— Edward Thurlow

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at 7:11 pm and is filed under America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.