On January 21st, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on the case of Citizens United v Federal Election Commission.
For those of you unfamiliar with the decision of January 21st, 2010, enjoy.
The full text of the decision can be found here.
I would suggest a full reading of the decision. It is quite explicit, even if slanted through a viewpoint which is naïve at best and willfully malicious at worst, and even if the prose, though not legalese, is so dense and dull as to deaden any mounting sense of horror the reader might be inclined to feel. However, the Roberts Court does nothing but draw the logical conclusion on how the law, as it is currently interpreted, should be applied. You might also read the opinions of the other judges, but I won't refer to them here.
In essence, the decision ends the federal limits on how much money a business can spend campaigning for a candidate. It doesn't allow them to donate funds directly to a candidate, because that has the potential for leading to corruption. Instead, it effectively says that corporations can buy as much ad space as they want whenever they want, and promote anything they want. Nor does the decision prevent them from approaching their candidate of choice, for that is a matter of free assembly or speech or somesuch. Likewise, they are free speechificably allowed to freely come to an agreement with their candidate of choice. And if their candidate of choice turns out to be unable to come to an agreement with the corporation, then that corporation is under no obligation to freely spend its funds on the candidate of choice. It is allowed, in fact, to spend its funds on the other guy. Isn't freedom wonderful?
To wit:
“Austin is overruled, so it provides no basis for allowing the Government to limit corporate independent expenditures. As the Government appears to concede, overruling Austin “effectively invalidate[s] not only BCRA Section 203, but also 2 U. S. C. 441b’s prohibition on the use of corporate treasury funds for express advocacy.” Brief for Appellee 33, n. 12. Section 441b’s restrictions on corporate independent expenditures are therefore invalid and cannot be applied to Hillary.”
First of all, the basis for this decision is a faulty consideration of what is and is not a person. This landmark decision has been compared to the Dred Scott case. I find the comparison somewhat off-base, though not entirely without merit. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Taney Court essentially ruled that Dred Scott was not a person. Citizens United v. Federal Election commission does not rule on what is or is not a person, it compels the law to sync up with a decision made (accidentally and by the court reporter, not the Supreme Court itself) in 1886 which equated corporations with people in all particulars. The Citizens United decision does nothing but reinforce the interpretation of the law, however insane that law might be.
With that said, corporations are not people. Corporations are associations. I don't care what the law says; this is a matter of common sense. An association can have a unique action, but not a unique opinion apart from its constituent parts. That is to say, if an association acts, it is not just one person acting but a group. If an association, say, the KKK, chooses to burn down a black neighborhood, then that action is attributable to the KKK because the event was carried out by multiple parties acting in concert. But if you look at why the KKK chose to burn down that neighborhood, you have to look to the individual intellectual contributions of its members. Herd mentality may play into it, but that does not and cannot legally absolve the individual responsible for his or her agency in the matter. For legal precedent, look to the Nuremberg Trials.
But the law says corporations are legal persons. Not merely shorthand for identifying groups of individuals, but people. Corporations are people too. Of course, they're not quite like us in all respects, but that's okay, because neither are people of other races. Because they look different. So we should overcome our distrust of these legal persons, because they are entitled to the same rights as us, even though, for us to be like them in any way, several things would need to happen. First, we would need to lose any definite form or corporeal body. Our individual cells would all have to work at jobs making anywhere from minimum wage (the colon) to substantially more than this, perhaps upwards of ten million dollars a year (neurons). We would also need to routinely fire cells which did not perform their mindless functions above and beyond our expectations. Then cells, both inside and outside our own bodies but probably mostly outside, would need to own stock in our bodies, though not any single component part, and therefore supposedly have a “say” in what our bodies do. We would also need to excrete something which other people would literally kill to obtain. For instance, we might shit out combination iPod/PS3/GPS/Blenders. Though, of course, to produce these items we would only eat food stolen from Vitamin A-deficient Chinese children, because to buy food from greedy Ferengi Americans would not be an effective way to maximize our profits. Of course, in the end, we would retain control of ourselves, and thus our profits, because our brains would retain – I guarantee it – a 51% controlling interest, thus allowing them to use the money absorbed from other people which we did not, in any concrete sense, actually earn, to influence the outcomes of campaigns with our virtually endless financial resources.
If a corporation chooses to support candidate X over candidate Y, you can just bet it isn't because everyone affiliated with the corporation, or every single stockholder, took a vote and came to a decision on who would be best for the country or the state. After all, jobs come and go, but hereditary plutocracies are forever.
But never mind that. If a corporation is a person, then I have only this to say: I hereby offer my hand in marriage to General Electric. I am an eligible bachelor, and, although I had heretofore believed that I would live and die alone, an obscure failure in all respects putrefying in some ratty, rundown apartment littered with half-finished, unpublished tracts of vitriol and invective, I see now that we are meant to be.
Come live with me and be my love
In some far-distant destination;
Who cares if others should approve
Of us, my fair-faced corporation?
(Yes, I know the fabricated difference between a “person” and a “legal person” prevents this from actually happening.)
Now, the Citizens United decision doesn't give corporations the ability to remain anonymous. Even the Roberts Court recognizes that so much power, operating unseen, could be dangerous to the so-called “democratic process” (an electoral process is practically by definition an aspect of a republic and not a democracy), and corporations or unions are therefore required to identify themselves in their ads. I assume they will do this in a manner similar to the way cigarette commercials alert their audiences to the health risks of smoking. You know, they'll use the white text, size 2 font, in Arial Hyper-Narrow script. It'll show up, probably in the ultimate scene with the voluptuous blonde in the red dress and the cigarette in her hand and the inviting, friendly smile on her face, right at the bottom, totally marring an otherwise wonderfully alluring image.
The Supreme Court also says this (from the court reporter's syllabus):
“All speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech. Under the antidistortion rationale, Congress could also ban political speech of media corporations. Although currently exempt from §441b, they accumulate wealth with the help of their corporate form, may have aggregations of wealth, and may express views “hav[ing] little or no correlation to the public’s support” for those views. Differential treatment of media corporations and other corporations cannot be squared with the First Amendment , and there is no support for the view that the Amendment’s original meaning would permit suppressing media corporations’ political speech. Austin interferes with the “open marketplace” of ideas protected by the First Amendment . New York State Bd. of Elections v. Lopez Torres , 552 U.S. 196 . Its censorship is vast in its reach, suppressing the speech of both for-profit and nonprofit, both small and large, corporations. Pp. 32–40.”
The court is essentially arguing that media make money and use it, and corporations make money and use it, and limiting the power either has to influence the electoral process based on how much money it possesses/makes/steals is the first step on the road to tyranny. Because allowing an inherently unequal system to perpetuate and increase its inequality is the antidote to tyranny. The problem with this notion is that real free speech is protected for those with a voice and form by truth and fair comment. If the corporation wishes to address others with its voice and in person (do you get the joke I am making it is very clever), then it is perfectly free to do so. What it is not free to do is monopolize media for the sake of controlling an electoral process, hence the former limits on what it could spend in pursuit of that end. In addition, journalists are bound by codes of ethics and legislation which, supposedly, prevent them from becoming propagandists. If they break those ethics and laws, then they are legally liable. Faux News, for example, could be seen as a gigantic lawsuit waiting to happen. On the other hand, corporations are not bound by any duty, however alleged, to the truth. But of course, the issue here isn't really persuasive power but purchasing power.
The worst thing, I think, is what I noted earlier. The Roberts Court may well see itself as actually upholding some noble ideal (if it isn't either indoctrinated completely into the Cult of the Free Market or simply just bought-off products of it). I cannot articulate how profoundly twisted this is. In no way does this benefit the people. It only benefits a group – the plutocrats, and not necessarily only the American plutocrats. Much as I hate the masses, I hate the plutocrats with even greater intensity. And for any of you who actually believe there is any sort of equality or similarity between an imaginary, corporate “man” with an income of $400,000,000,000 a year and a real, corporeal man with an income of $40,000 a year, I have to say your minds are seriously warped.
But yes, I know how entrenched are corporate and special interests. I know how much power lobbyists have today. I was one of those kids in high school who passed on the “Politician for Sale” application form to his “friends” with a wry and bitter laugh.
So why not let the corporations purchase politicians? They do it in backrooms already. Why not remove the legal consequences of doing it? They own the media outlets, so why not let them dictate what their employees report on and how they slant it? The reason we have no health care system similar to those in place in Western Europe, after all, is because corporate power already wears both red and blue. (Why, oh why, didn't FDR ram through a socialized medical system when he had the chance? Apart from George W. Bush and maybe Lincoln, there was probably no president in our history with greater power to do virtually anything he wanted.) And before you call me out as a Marxist, let me note that my father, an ex-Marine Corps captain and harrier fighter pilot who would have had no problem voting for John McCain in the last election, finds it despicable that this country can spend a hundred billion dollars in corporate welfare but refuses to take any interest in the health and wellbeing of its own citizenry. If a government exists for the protection of its citizens, then this is not meant only in a military sense against invasion, but against other ills, including those citizens' own stupidity, and, in some measure, against itself and its own tendency to overcomplicate and suffocate life.
To return to the matter: Citizens United v Federal Election Commission does nothing but essentially legalize what is already common practice. Yet, if Congress doesn't compel a reversal of this decision soon (and I doubt that they can), then within a couple of election cycles there may be no politicians who still own themselves left in the federal government. After all, people are stupid, and propaganda works. What does it matter if McDonalds has to let you know that it is the group sponsoring Republican Shill X? After all, the only thing you know about McDonalds is that it loves to see you smile.
When you fall this far down the rabbit hole, it becomes difficult or even impossible to see a logical way back out. This decision has been compared to Dred Scott, but it is not Dred Scott. It is, in fact, a step beyond that. It has also been compared to fascism, but it is not that either. Fascism is a revolutionary movement designed to rejuvenate a people. Fascists are idealists who subordinate corporate interests to the government (along with everything else). There is nothing idealistic about this, and corporations will not be subservient to anyone.
Can anyone say with certainty what this will actually mean? No, they cannot. It is entirely possible that nothing at all will happen. Jon Stewart has yet to react to this, and he's a rationalist worthy of public trust. In fact, this received remarkably little attention in the news media. And even Keith Olbermann concluded his apocalyptic vision of what the Citizens United case will mean with this:
“Maybe it won't be this bad. Maybe the corporations, legally defined as human beings but without the pesky occasional human attributes of conscience and compassion, maybe when handed the only keys to the electoral machine they will simply not redesign America in their own corporate image.”
Considering that the corporations already own a sufficient number of politicians and portion of political power to maintain the status quo (not a stunning achievement considering the inherently self-defeating and conservative nature of the government created by our outdated Constitution) but have not completely managed to subordinate the government to their own interests, it is entirely conceivable that things will continue on the way they are, maybe only marginally worse. Maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
The great Florentine political philosopher, Niccolò Machiavelli, the first modern proponent of republican political theory, believed that the interplay of all strata of a society was necessary to the well-ordering of a state. He was neither a populist nor a plutocrat (nor an aristocrat in the Aristotelian sense of the term), but a man dedicated to good of the people – all of the people. Consequently, he lauded the Rome tribunes of the people who were put in place to check the power of the senate, because these tribunes were created to balance the amount of control each class had in the functioning of the nation. Similarly, he deplored the usurpation by the plebeians of all offices and the support for all those inclined to attack the nobles, which led to the “rise of Marius and the ruin of Rome.” For a society to function, there must be harmony and proportion between its parts. A social imbalance can be so called because sufficient imbalance is enough to topple a nation under its own bloated, distended, unevenly-distributed weight.
Thus Machiavelli says:
“[Evils] are most frequently occasioned by those who possess; for the fear to lose stirs the same passions in men as the desire to gain, as men do not believe themselves sure of what they already possess except by acquiring still more; and, moreover, these new acquisitions are so many means of strength and power for abuses; and what is still worse is that the haughty manners and insolence of the nobles and the rich excite in the breasts of those who have neither birth nor wealth, not only the desire to possess them, but also the wish to revenge themselves by depriving the former of those riches and honors which they see them employ so badly.”
So yes, perhaps the associations-as-individuals really will fail to take advantage of this opportunity and corporations really will neglect to tighten their grip on the system. Perhaps. But – to echo Olbermann – after this, who's going to stop them?
