Citizens United v The FEC

First off, thanks to Phil et. al. for providing me a spot on his site.  I just don’t write enough to make it worth running my own blog anymore.  Work is just too demanding these days.

So yesterday, the US Supreme Court opened up the field so that corporations & unions can directly spend however much money they want on creating and distributing politcal messages during election cycles. Many are hailing this decision as a victory for free speech, while many others are declaring this the end of democracy since companies can now just buy elections.

Now, while I personally think that there is far too much money in politics these days. I also think that politicians are far too beholden to those who donate instead of those who vote. But that is also utterly irrelavant to the issue at hand.

The big reason I agree with this decision is because almost every major media comapny is a corporation, and every single media corporation can devote resources to producing and distributing any message they see fit. Media corporations should not be the only corporations with the right to air their opinions.

Put this in perspective, all this does is open the door to even more political advertising to annoy us and compete for our attention. Companies can produce messages, but media distribution networks are not required to accept the message (except for the internet). While such companies live for those advertising dollars, broadcasters have refused to air objectional material in the past, and publishers have done the same.

Still, even if companies accept the messages for distribution, that does not require the voting public to read/watch/hear the message, nor does it require the voting public to agree with message. Other corporations, or the media distributers themselves, can produce messages with opposing viewpoints. Sure Exxon can blanket the airwaves, but so can Ted Turner, especially seeing as how he owns a lot of them. Which brings up another point, not every company leans right. Most of Hollywood leans hard left, and they have billions to spend if they want to, and access to a whole lot of talent for creating messages.

If you are thinking about how the corporate message is the wrong message. Free speech is free speech, whether you agree with it or not, whether it offends you or not. You can’t shut of the signal just because it irks you. That is behavior I see too often, and the hypocrisy of it infuriates me. Right up there with thinking that your average voter will get confused by all the corporate messages. Sorry, the average vote is all we have, you just have to trust them. Even if you think they’re stupid and you know what is best, just remember, the average voter thinks the same about you. And a lot of them have just as many degrees and letters after their names as you do.

Now, companies still can’t hand money directly to candidates or political parties, and any issue message, or candidate endorsement, must still be branded, so you’ll know if it’s Tim Jones for Senate, brought to you by BP and Eli Lily, or the UAW & the SEIU. I know many say that we’ll have politicians that are owned wholly by corporate/union interests. To that, I say, “How is that any different than now?”.

This puts the point most succinctly, I feel:

“Can you justify this:The law being struck down prevented a corporation, or any other organization, from buying space in The New York Times day after day to advocate for or against a candidate 60 days before an election, and put other limits on the total amounts that could be spent otherwise. However, The New York Times could write editorials in any volume, and at any time, doing the exact same thing.If you can’t justify this, and I don’t really see how anyone could, then this law must be either struck down, or editorials also must be suppressed by the government.”

Will we return to the days of robber barrons and tame politicians? Maybe, although I doubt this will make things any worse than they already are. Actually, I take that back, it will get worse…it’ll get more annoying when the back and forth rhetoric gets cranked up a bunch.

PS I have ideas about how to better limit campaign finances, changes I will make as soon as I take control of the world, but I’m not gonna waste time listing those now.

UPDATE: More excellent discussion as to why the liberals really need to stop losing their collective shit over decisions like this (or Heller, or the coming McDonald).