McCain-Feingold was signed in 2002. In 2010, can anyone point to any evidence that our political environment is fairer, more open, less expensive, or less corrupted than eight years ago?
Corporate money was already involved in influencing campaigns; after McCain-Feingold, it was laundered through PACs, 527s, corporate executives and board members, etc., etc.
The ruling really doesn't affect large powerful corporations one way or the other, because they always have the power to influence legislators through lobbying or private meetings.
The money will just be more transparent now.
What the ruling does do is empower smaller companies and individuals to band together to increase their ability to get their own messages out to the voters.
Corporations come in all sizes, from simple Chapter S corporations to General Motors.
The big difference from a practical political standpoint is Chapter S corporations don't get government bailouts.
This ruling is a net plus for all the corporations who fall below the "I can buy one or more Congressmen" threshold. Which is of course most of them.
The playing field is still far from level.
Corporations will have to spend real earned and taxed money on partisan ads.
The media corporations - ABC, NBC, CNN, CBS, The New York Times, etc - will still have the free use of partisan ads on their own media outlet 24/7 in the form of "news shows" and articles.
Kenny_Powers Wrote:
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> this is great news guys, its only a matter of time
> now until our country is called United States of
> Coca-Cola. Companies will own us soon.
Lobbying congress seems to have worked pretty well for the mega-corps in our system of crony-capitalism, so far. It's not too high-profile, either.
I'm not so sure how quick a company like Coca-Cola or a Proctor and Gamble would be to so publicly support one candidate or party over another and risk alienating a good chunk of their consumer base when it seems fairly easy to get them to pull advertising from shows, publications etc. that are deemed "too controversial" as it is.
Why would, say, Walmart support Scott Brown in the recent Massachusetts race, and alienate 47% of their potential customers in that state who voted against Brown? The same logic applies to most for-profit corporations.
But the ruling will, to an extent, reduce the influence of lobbyists.
Corporations will no longer have to go thru lobbyists to voice their opinions. They can just run an ad, and we get to see it instead of it happening behind closed doors.
The current market is the lobbyists, which funnels all the cash and benefits to the politicians in power.
This decision makes it possible to take the case directly to the people, to put politicians in power who agree with the policies of the corporations, rather than have them secretly pay off the existing politicians via lobbyists.
On a somewhat different but related note, it is certainly amusing to watch Obama attacking corporate interests in the front room, while accepting their money behind closed doors in the backroom.
With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington--while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That's why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-president-todays-supreme-court-decision-0
So Barry, will you set the example and give back all the corporate money you and your campaign took?
Obama had Bill Gates & Warren Buffet, the two richest men in the world, not to mention convicted felon
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Misc/misc.invest.stocks/2008-05/msg00769.html and former Nazi bagman
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/george-soros-on-helping-the-nazis-during-the-holocaust George Soros on his side in 2008.
Also Time-Warner, Goldman-Sachs, General Electric, Citigroup, IBM, Microsoft, J P Morgan Chase:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
The "fat cats" gave more to Obama than McCain by a wide margin.
Obama was the first presidential candidate in history to refuse public financing of his campaign so that he could suck in MORE money than this opponent. (I rather enjoyed the spectacle of McCain being hoisted by his own petard....)
Obama promised up and down that he would never rely upon private campaign funding running for President.
He promised to accept public financing for his Presidential run if his opponent did the same.
He broke that promise with the incomprehensible excuse that "the public system is broken" when everyone, even his supporters, understood he became a hypocrite as soon as he discovered he could stuff his pants with far more cash by rejecting public campaign finance.
He ran a website for donations that deliberately ignored FEC regulations on identifying donors, and his site did not even bother to check credit card numbers to see if foreign donors were buying him off.
Rather than truly deal with health care reform, he brought the health care industry into the room to reward them with trillions of dollars if they went along with his plans to destroy health care.
He already has the corporate money in his pocket, that's why he's so ticked off that now all of us are free to band together and support his opposition.