The United States is now for sale
Pharyngula 2014-04-03
Charles Pierce provides some pithy commentary on yesterday’s Supreme Court decision.
The remarkable story of how we have come to privatize political corruption in this country reached another milestone today as the Supreme Court, John Roberts presiding, handed down its decision in McCutcheon v. FEC, effectively demolishing the aggregate, two-year limit on contributions by individuals, and taking a big chunk out of Buckley v. Valeo, the misbegotten 1976 decision that got the ball rolling in the first place. It was a 5-4 vote, with the court split exactly as it had in the Citizens United case. In writing the opinion for the court, Roberts further emphasized the equation of money with speech, and also seemed to agree with Anthony Kennedy’s famous assertion in Citizens United that the ability of megadonors to shovel gobs of money into the election process,"We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."
We’re done. The only hope would be if legislation were passed to close this giant campaign finance loophole (“gaping wound” might be a better phrase than “loophole”), but in a legislature dominated by kamikaze Tea Party freaks and cautious Democrats who just care about getting re-elected, I don’t see it happening. Goodbye, cruel world, America is standing in the toilet bowl and the Supreme Court just opened the door to selling the right to press the handle. This is Sheldon Adelson’s United States now.
