THE CONSERVATIVES ON THE US SUPREME COURT “GIVE THE FINGER” TO THE AMERICAN VOTER

...This Court is where the nation is slowly being taken away from it’s citizens.

 

This latest decision is one more move for making America into an oligarchy nation run by the wealthy and corporate America.

 

Well, the name doesn’t roll off your tongue like “Citizens-United”, but “McCutcheon - v – FEC (Federal Election Commission)”  has a potentially even heaver effect on the ability for the 1% to buy politicians and whole, local or state elections.

Yes, the activist Robert’s US Supreme Court ruled in the case of McCutcheon v FEC, that the limits on the amount of money a person can spend on elections violates free speech rights. 

The court did leave in place a cap on donations to a single candidate.  But a wealthy individual no longer has a limit on the total amount they can donate or spend in any given election. 

 

Therefore, someone like the billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson, that spent over $90 million in the 2012 elections, (much of it to the likes of Newt Gingrich), or the billionaire Koch Brothers, that spent millions supporting more conservative candidates or right-wing positions in 2012 than you have fingers and toes, they can all now spend whatever amount they want on any given election with no restrictions.  Therefore, the court’s decision also does not have limits on individual contributions to Political Action Committees (PACs) and political parties.

In other words, in local or district or state elections where the dollars spent on the elections is much less than national campaigns, a wealthy donor or corporation could basically purchase any politician or whole election they desire.  So, if you have big money, why not buy your choice for Mayor, or council person, or US Representative or even a local school superintendent?  Oh, and let’s not forget all the propositions or local decisions that are made through local elections.  All of those propositions, or tax or zoning proposals, all of those are now up for sale.  Therefore, if a wealthy company wants a particular zoning ordinance changed, why not just buy the election for changing the zoning?

To make matters even worse, the conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, he actually wrote a separate opinion stating that he would have preferred to have also struck down the current cap on donations to a single candidate. 

And the conservatives wonder why the rest of us want to work so hard in retaining our democracy.

The court's conservatives, in a 5 to 4 decision against the liberals on the Supreme Court, just made it easier for big money to buy elections.  

I know what you're thinking.  You didn't think it was possible for that to get any easier than it is. But this will make it so much easier to buy a politician, and that will raise the price of politicians.  You do realize that if they could be bought before, this decision will make them more affordable to even fewer individuals, (Just keep thinking, the top 1% are the only ones that will be able to afford this approach). 

What the court has done is to ignore the millions of average Americans, and to make it possible for a group of less than 5000 Americans to have their way by purchasing the politicians, elections or causes they support.  For billionaires such as the Koch Brothers, worth an estimated 80 billion dollars, what's the big deal in them spending one of those billions for winning an election?

With the past donation limits, every American voter had at least a bit of a voice…and all those voices were not totally, but were all kind of equal. This latest change allows for even fewer people to amplify their voices to drown out everybody else. Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the opposing opinion even stated, "if Citizens-United opened a door, then this decision will open a floodgate," of money.

The Supreme Court wasn't satisfied with allowing the rich to just buy our elections, now they have made it positively convenient for the wealthy to do it!

Copyright G.Ater  2014