When I asked President Jimmy Carter about Citizens United and this doctrine of money as speech in 2015, he said: "It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and Congress members.
"So now we've just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election's over," said President Carter.
In nation after nation throughout modern history, every time government has been taken over by oligarchs and corporations, democracy has died usually to be replaced by a strongman form of oligarchy or outright fascism.
Congress could have reversed the Supreme Court's decision at any time with either legislation that explicitly says money is not speech and that (per Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution) this issue is an "exception" on which the Supreme Court may not rule.
It could also be done by two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states passing a constitutional amendment declaring that money is not the same thing as speech, and that corporations are not persons.
Because of a corrupt Supreme Court, oligarchs and the corporations that made them rich have taken over the American political system. If we don't take it back from them soon, the entire experiment of an American democratic republic will come to an end.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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