All of which leads up to the "Citizens United" decision of 2012.
All that is necessary to correct most of the problems of the
world, said Confucius, is "to rectify the names." In which case, I submit, the name of this
perverse decision be changed to "Corporations United."
If Marshall's court declared in 1819 that corporations were
entitled to the same rights and privileges guaranteed to persons under the
Fourteenth Amendment, then "Citizens United" took matters one step further and
stressed what every American already knows: Money talks! With the same sort of twisted logic the Court
applied in Plessy v. Ferguson ("separate, but equal"), we now have the Court
affirming that those with the most loot can game the system, stack the deck,
purchase the biggest bullhorn (the glitziest TV ads, etc.) while maintaining
that beloved fiction of "one person, one vote"!
Basically, the
Court struck down provisions of the
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that had prohibited corporations and
unions from spending on "electioneering communications." (Nice touch to add "unions" there! One wonders if all the unions in America
could match the buying power of one giant corporation!)
The sagacious
Justice Stevens led the four "liberal" dissenters to the majority opinion. In a 90-page dissent, Stevens averred that
the ruling "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across
the Nation. " A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members
believe laws are being bought and sold."
That pretty much
cans the cant: "laws are being bought and sold"!
6. The Voting Rights Act
The sixth
instance of Court defilement is not yet a "case," merely a "review." But, one must wonder: with glaring, documented
examples of "voter suppression" in the 2012 election, why would the Court train
its beagle eyes on the Voting Rights Act of 1965--perhaps the best achievement
of the Johnson Administration?
Once again,
Justice Antonin S. has put himself out front of the pack. He wonders about the "phenomenon that is
called racial entitlement."
There's that
loaded word again--"entitlement." It
seems that, in the Court's purview, protecting a people's right to freedom of
speech and assembly--manifesting most fundamentally in their right to vote--is
some sort of suspect "entitlement." But,
a corporation's right to spend multi-millions on "electioneering"--that is not
an "entitlement," that is protected under our First Amendment!
The timing here
is one "phenomenon" that seems to have escaped Mr. Scalia. As The Washington Post noted: "The
challenge to Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was launched two years
ago, and the court added it to its docket just days after an energized minority
electorate played a critical role in the reelection of President Obama, the
nation's first African American president."
It's well past
time to exercise our First Amendment (while we still can) to speak out against
the abuses and myopia of our very flawed Supreme Court!
Gary Corseri has taught in US public schools and
prisons, and at US and Japanese universities. His prose and poems have appeared
at Opednews, Z-Net, ActivistPost, The New York Times, CounterPunch, The Village
Voice, CommonDreams and hundreds of other periodicals and websites worldwide.
His dramas have been produced on Atlanta-PBS, and he has performed his work at
the Carter Presidential Library and Museum. He has published books of poetry,
the Manifestations literary anthology (edited), and the novels, A Fine Excess
and Holy Grail, Holy Grail. He can be contacted at Email address removed .
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