Interesting post on the SCOTUS decision from another message board.

[Odin2005]

This poster claims this ruling was an act of desperation by the Corporatists.

http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/showpost.php?p=288777&postcount=36

"I just realized something about this Court decision: it's a sign of desperation.

Consider how it was rushed through the Court in a truly high-handed and appalling manner. Consider that it represents serious overreach, since the case brought had little to do with the ruling. Now consider the political context. We have Obama's election in 2008, showing massive discontent with the corporate republic of the post-Reagan era. Granted, Obama has in fact been a lot less progressive than the expectations he raised, but those expectations were real nonetheless.

We have disaffection and the beginning of an insurgency on the left. We have disaffection and an insurgency on the right in the form of the tea party movement -- which despite its right-wing tinge is anti-corporate and anti-establishment. In NY 23, this insurgency succeeded in throwing an election in a securely Republican district to the Democratic candidate. In Massachusetts, it succeeded in defeating a corporatist, machine Democrat in a securely Democratic state, with a not-very-corporatist Republican candidate. From all sides, the corporate republic is under siege. The Court's majority, doing the bidding of its corporate masters, has now brought out the big guns in a desperate attempt to stave off disaster.

Can it work? I'd say probably not. Over the next two elections we will see a sharp turn to the left on Obama's part, responding to the insurgency; we will see damage done to the Republican party by the tea-party movement, which rejects the party's real agenda while adopting a few of its red-meat political issues; we will see corporatists in both parties under attack and in very difficult positions.

Much has been made by commentators about the advantage this ruling will give to Republicans. But that's not consistently true, nor is it the real point I think. It's intended to give an advantage to corporatists, and because it is a radical and desperate move, it would not have been done except that corporatists are under threat by populist forces within both parties. This move is meant to shore up conservative Democrats as much as Republicans. But I don't think it can succeed.

For one thing, there's a point of diminishing returns in the influence of money on elections. Political history shows us many examples of a candidate with less funding winning an election. The main thing that corporate money does is to raise the amount of money that candidates must have in order to have any chance to win elections, and this has in the past given corporate donors veto power; it has never permitted them to simply decide elections, however, and this ruling won't either. One other reason the Obama election put a fright into the corporate elite is that he found another effective source of campaign funding. If other politicians manage to do the same thing, appealing to small donors in large numbers via the Internet, the corporate veto power will be undercut. Since the main effect of corporate financing on elections was always that veto, a flood of extra corporate money as permitted by this ruling will not have the power to completely fix the electoral outcome, and is a desperate attempt to shore up a crumbling dike.

The main effect of this ruling will be to piss people off, and to galvanize anti-corporatists both left- and right-wing. It is likely to accelerate the very trends that it was intended to combat. In that respect, the comparison to the Scott v. Sanford decision is apt, as that decision galvanized and outraged abolitionists in a comparable fashion.

As for the decision itself, it can be reversed if one conservative Supreme Court justice should retire or expire while Obama is in the White House."

[Deep13]

1. Thank gawd for heart disease!

It's time for Ginsburg and Stevens to retire so Obama can replace them. Scalia and Kennedy are up there in age too.

[struggle4progress]

9. Stevens' dissent is a bright point of light in the decision and should be read carefully

[MrsCorleone]

12. Ginsburg and Stevens fought HARD against the SC conservcorps. nt

[clear eye]

13. Thank you. It would hardly help for the LIBERAL Justices to die.

I think wishing people dead is pretty well banned on DU anyway.

[Deep13]

14. I'm only pointing out a fact: people age and die.

Stevens has been on the court forever and I would not want him to die in a R. administration. Ginsburg has pancreatic cancer.

[leftstreet]

2. That's interesting!

Thanks for posting

[L0oniX]

3. So all that's left is for the corporations to own the internet and that will cut off that $ source.

OOOPS ...they already own the internet. Net neutrality anyone?

[hisownpetard]

4. I'll vote for 'expire'. eom

[blueworld]

5. Do you know about the Concord Coalition?

It's an interesting website, but I wanted to be sure everyone understands the background of the authors. Not that it necessarily invalidates anything, but I always like to get as much background as I can. Thanks for posting about the book & website.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss_and_Howe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord_Coalition

[Odin2005]

7. The authors are a bit socially conservatve, but most of the posters there are Liberals.

With a few Libertarians thrown in for comedy. Many of the posters, myself included, have critiqued notions about my Millennial Generation that were based on the authors' socially conservative prejudices.

[Gregorian]

6. Thanks for the optimism.

I'll take all I can get.

Somehow I think this decision isn't going to be as much of an affective one as some think. There really are too many thinking beings on the planet. They aren't going to just let something they fought and died for to dissolve.

[fasttense]

8. Two problems with this analysis.

1. Perhaps they are desperate but it doesn't mean it wont work. When the Supremes appointed our president for us in 2000 and stopped the vote counting. They were desperate because Gore was ahead. The problem was that it worked and we had eight nightmarish hellish years under the idiot son.

2. It's how the money is spent that counts. I use to think Americans, who have been exposed since birth to constant advertisement, were more savvy about advertising and more likely to discount it. But it's just the opposite. Americans are very influenced by TV and Radio advertising. Politicians despite getting money from corporations, still have a limited amount they can spend. They rarely buy large amounts of TV advertising, if they think they are winning, because it is very expensive. But with the corporations and their endless price rigging and monopolies have never ending amounts of money to spend on advertising. And Americans believe what they see on TV.

[Poll_Blind]

11. +1 Yes. n/t

PB

[PATRICK]

10. There is also a chilling echo

of the strange SCOTUS intrusive ruling leaving Bill Clinton vulnerable to the type of suit and investigation that miraculously erupted during the Whitewater investigation. Underneath the idiotic mushy game board everyone pretends to be playing on(stacked toward corporations and the GOP) there is always another underneath where they do not have to play at all but simply use brute force. When the upper board is swept the MSM pieces settle abruptly down into place with a sigh and the Dems go underwater with all pretenses at democracy. Blackwater private army, instigated assassination motivations, loads of "Seven Days in May" political/corporate generals who are generally lousy at war and frankly bored with outward focus, corrupted political parties, weak leadership(if any), complete idiots taken seriously as spokesmen and contenders for the obscene absurdity the Imperial presidency has become, the complete strangulation of most "news" sectors", lots of natural hatreds and fears(economic, security) to focus at leisure as they search for the right mix of demagoguery, complete legal obliteration of the Bill of Rights or government as it pertains toward a civil society and service to its citizenry. Total surveillance, presidential power, suspension of habeas corpus and torture is OK'd by the people who prove they are all entirely evil.

Of course the laws are still on the books like laws against wearing the wrong kind of hat on Sunday and they don't apply to people of money and power anyway(exceptions really prove that rule).