Tuesday, March 9, 2010
EDITORIAL
The Manchurian Corporate
States of Incorporation: Vector version of the corporate flag, which flapped resplendently last month in the U.S. Supreme Court's most controversial decision since the infamous 1857 ruling Dred Scott vs. Sanford.
By Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOWTuesday, March 9, 2010
Many remember where they were on January 30, 1961. Or November 22, 1963. Or February 21, 1965. Or April 4, 1968. Or June 6, 1968. Or September 11, 2001.
But do you remember where you were on January 21, 2010?
On that day, a critical jurisprudential blow to American democracy, one as heinous as any decision unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court in its history.
If you haven't heard of or read about Citizens United v. FEC, it will go down as the most infamous decision the Supreme Court has rendered since Dred Scott vs. Sanford, when in 1856 Chief Justice Taney ruled that black people had no rights that white people were bound to respect.
The Citizens United ruling, handed down on January 21, 2010, unsurprisingly flew under the radar of most of the American mainstream press, with a special comment from Keith Olbermann being one of the few places on television to hear a cogent and passionate analysis of just what the ruling means to the American political landscape.
If you want to skip reading the 5-to-4, 183-page decision (Supreme Court Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Kennedy and Alito in the majority), what you essentially need to know is that Citizens United holds that any corporation, including those multi-billion dollar behemoths operating overseas (and shipping many American jobs there), can spend unlimited amounts of money to contribute to political campaigns.
The decision, in so many words, declares that corporations are people and deserving of the same equal protection that many blacks among others fought and died for, granted in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Americans' right to vote and make informed decisions about a candidate will be overmatched by "money, money, money, money", as the song goes.
So the next time you see a segment of the TV news program 60 Minutes being brought to you by a sponsor, think about a 2012 U.S. presidential candidate being brought to you by a major corporation. (The wildness of the films "War, Inc." or "Wall-E" or Sunday's Oscar-winning short film "Logorama" come to mind.)
Will the corporate logo be pasted on the politician's back, or on the front for all to see?
Of course, money and politics have forever been an intertwined index and middle finger, but January's unholy decision subverts the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation, which had previously limited private contributions to American political campaigns. Perhaps not coincidentally, since January 21, 2010, a sizable number of American politicians (including Patrick Kennedy and Evan Bayh) have announced that they will not seek another term in office. Could they possibly compete against $200 billion machine campaigns?
The sign, once (or still?) a prominent fixture in Times Square. But in this picture,
as now, much of the American public isn't paying attention to it.
If you thought President Barack Obama, whose 2008 campaign raised more than half a billion dollars, most of it small-money contributions from people making less than $100,000 a year, was a biggest spender, think again. The Citizens ruling means that billions and billions of dollars can now be contributed to a campaign to win or -- excuse my French -- buy an election.
Buy the presidency. Buy The White House.
Under this new rubric, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who spent more than $70 million of his own money to narrowly defeat William Thompson last November to win a controversial third term, would be on the outside looking in.
To counter this unprecedented judicial move, last month House Democratic member Chris Van Hollen and Democratic U.S. senator Charles Schumer co-sponsored legislation to provide a cushion against the Court's decision. The proposed legislation will require disclosure of the CEOs and corporations donating to an American political campaign, among many other things. This yet-to-be-passed legislation is a good start, but unless a new Court with new faces overturns this precedent courtesy of a new case brought before it, this financial fatality and calamity of a Supreme Court decision will change the American democratic process forever.
Today, Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" arrives on DVD in the U.S. and Canada. Mr. Moore's excellent film, which while a tad flawed should have done much better when it was released last October, addressed the ferocity of corporate dominance -- Wall Street as the real powerbroker in the U.S. and how it greatly influences the American political process.
So while the Tea Party movement, which is getting plenty of attention from the media, rages on, the overlooked concerns are the very corporations that have laid off millions of Americans, the same corporations bailed out by the TARP legislation passed in October 2008.
They are now people. So where's the bailout for 310 million people living in America? (The Census form is coming around very soon, so take note.)
Worse still, American news organizations are slowly but surely making real news hard to find or remain free on the Internet. In recent months both the News Corporation and The New York Times have announced that their news and content will come at a cost. Readers will have to pay to access articles. For the Times, that begins next year.
You think that the New York Yankees or Chelsea or Manchester United or Real Madrid received scorn from some envious or outraged sports fans for having a large payroll of athletes or being accused of "buying championships"?
You ain't seen nothing yet.
Will the American public be as outraged about a corporation buying an election?
It's over to you.
Read Omar's "Far-Flung Correspondent" reports for America's pre-eminent Film Critic Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times - here
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