Businesses, unions freed to spend big on elections
By Associated Press Writers Mark Sherman And Jim Kuhnhenn
January 21, 2010
WASHINGTON – A bitterly divided Supreme Court vastly increased the power of big business and unions to influence government decisions Thursday by freeing them to spend their millions directly to sway elections for president and Congress.
The ruling reversed a century-long trend to limit the political muscle of corporations, organized labor and their massive war chests. It also recast the political landscape just as crucial midterm election campaigns are getting under way.
In its sweeping 5-4 ruling, the court set the stage for a wave of likely repercussions — from new pressures on lawmakers to heed special interest demands to increasingly boisterous campaigns featuring highly charged ads that drown out candidate voices.
The election-season blizzard of ads on Americans TV screens is bound to increase.
While the full consequences of the decision were hard to measure, politicians made clear whom they believed benefited. Democrats, led by President Barack Obama, condemned the decision while Republicans cheered it.
Still, more labor and corporate money in the political system could dilute the role of both political parties.
And the decision seeded the ground for further challenges to an already weakened system of campaign finance regulations.
The justices weighed two fundamental political forces — the power of the central government and the concentration of corporate wealth — and tilted decidedly in favor of the latter. The opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy made a vigorous argument based on the Constitution for the right of the public to be exposed to a multitude of ideas and against the ability of government to limit political speech, even in the interest of fighting corruption.
"The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach," Kennedy wrote.
Strongly dissenting, Justice John Paul Stevens said, "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation."
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined Kennedy to form the majority in the main part of the case. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens' dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.
The court overturned two earlier decisions and threw out parts of a 63-year-old law that said companies and unions can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads urging the election or defeat of particular candidates by name. The decision, which applies to independent spending that is not coordinated with candidates, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.
The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.
It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions and didn't touch the McCain-Feingold ban on unlimited corporate and union donations to political parties. Nor did it disturb companies' right to solicit voluntary contributions to political action committees that can donate directly to candidates.
Corporations and unions would still have to identify the sources of money for their political activity — a provision of current law that the court upheld in an 8-1 vote.
Obama called the decision a victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and other powerful interests.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100122/ap_ ... gn_finance
Are we looking at a landslide in the erosion of democracy and the purchase of government by corporations? Looks like the damn has been opened. Now corporations and businesses can donate as much money as they want to political parties and their campaigns. If elections and politics in the US ever involved the average person, it surely won't anymore.
