Fairly apocalyptic words from Keith Olbermann …
… but it’s hard to substantively argue against it. Or the irony that the Limbaugh and Beck and the Tea-Partiers, in supporting the decision, are “cutting their own throats,” too, once the corporations decide that rabble-rousers on the Right are no longer good corporate citizens, either.
Corporations being able to pump millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars into elections, all in the name of “free speech,” cannot help but influence those elections. Money isn’t everything in campaigning or an election — lesser spenders can and have won on occasion. But if you’re going to bet on results — money in a candidate’s coffers has always been a leading indicator, and always will be.
All based on a legal theory — certainly not something I see clearly laid out in the Constitution — that corporations are legally “people,” and thus have the same Free Speech rights that you and I have. The Right has long claimed that activist judges would be the death of this country. Maybe they were onto something …
The history of how corporations came to acquire the same rights as natural citizens with few, if any of the same responsibilities is pretty chilling. I read about it a couple of years ago and was struck by how capricious the clerk was … and saddened by the complete failure of any subsequent Court or Administration to reconsider letting it continue. And so here we are, in the Corporate States of America.