Supreme Court’s abomination: How McCutcheon decision will destroy American politics

[hue]

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/02/supreme_courts_abomination_how_mccutcheon_decision_will_destroy_american_politics/

Thanks to Scalia and co., the rich will now be able to buy politicians as effortlessly as they buy anything else

“Money talks,” Elvis Costello once observed, “and it’s persuasive.” The belief that this is especially true in the world of politics led to the passage of the Federal Election Campaign Act. In the aftermath of Watergate the FECA was strengthened in an attempt to limit the corrupting influence of money on politics, and, until 2010, the Supreme Court largely upheld Congress’s power to do so.

That year the Citizens United case, which essentially found that the free speech rights of corporations were more important than legislative attempts to keep money from corrupting the political process, occasioned a great deal of outrage. But that case marked merely the beginning of what is likely to prove to be a series of increasingly successful assaults on campaign finance laws.

And now, Wednesday, the next blow to attempting to keep the rich from being able to buy politicians as effortlessly as they purchase anything else has been struck by McCutcheon v. FEC, a Supreme Court case dealing with limits on how much money individuals can contribute to candidates.

McCutcheon has now struck down overall limits on individual campaign contributions. This latest outburst of judicial activism in the struggle to render campaign finance laws completely toothless is merely accelerating a historical process that is coming to seem almost inevitable.

To see why, consider the practical implications of the theory that weak or nonexistent limits on campaign finance will allow the rich to transform what is putatively a democratic republic into an unapologetic plutocracy.

[GeorgeGist]

1. John Roberts ...

a clear and present danger to democracy.

[rock]

2. Ah the Supreme Court, an absolutely reliable government body

You'll notice that I do not mark this Sarcastic, 'cause it isn't. Of course it may be Ironic.

[greatlaurel]

3. John Roberts shows his stupidity once again.

John Roberts will go down in history as the most ignorant man to ever become chief justice. It also shows that private religious boarding schools and Harvard educations are way over rated. He just learned how to suck up to the billionaires and rip off ordinary people.

What a complete sleaze. Has anyone investigated this guy to see how much money he gets from the billionaires for his appalling decisions? He has to be paid handsomely for these idiotic rulings, because he surely knows he will be reviled in history.

[bemildred]

4. I continue to be dumbfounded by his arguments and his prose.

This is a Chief Justice of the USSC?

[mulsh]

5. Watch for the bribes to roll in when he retires and hope he retires early.

That's the way smart pols do it. after they leave office, when it's no longer such an obvious quid pro quo.

I'm betting that when his kids get our of college he'll be ready to hang things up.