Supreme Court Ends Democracy With Single Decision

By on January 21, 2010 in News 23

Frequent disinformation commenter 5by5 wrote to us with thoughts on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision regarding campaign financing:

Just when you thought they couldn’t do anything stupider…..

Critics: ‘Destructive’ Supreme Court decision ‘empowers corruption’

I never thought I’d say this, but man, Roger Ebert of all people, NAILED this one with a single sentence:

“Supreme Court relaxes limits on Satan’s campaign donations.”

Why would Candidate X listen to the people in his district when they can only give $200 each (if that), but the corporation who’s major shareholder is a Saudi billionaire can give the candidate $2,000,000 in order to say…..”encourage” him to remove women’s rights? Or abolish the minimum wage? Or limit religious speech? Or end child labor laws? Or allow toxic waste dumping in the district?

Those corporatist hacks Alito, Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, and the ever incurious Thomas (who has yet to even bother to ask a single question — EVER) basically ruled that money equals speech.

Hey, take a wild guess what that means for poor people?

If you said the Supreme Court should have just stopped wasting time and cut out everyone’s tongues if they make less than $40 million a year, you win today’s prize!

They just threw average people’s rights into Ollie North’s old chipper-shredder. The same people scared out of their minds over an impoverished Mexican illegal immigrant crossing the border, just opened the borders to overwhelming foreign corporate influence over our politics by everyone from the Commie Chinese, to the Islamofascist Iranians, to the Russian Mob.

Now those corporate interests, by “virtue” solely of their wealth, will have more of a voice in the running of your own country than you do. They’ve already got too much influence – just look at the health care mess for proof of that. Now, the floodgates are REALLY open.

MINDBOGGLING.

Buh-bye America. You’re done.

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  • Reuben

    I'm seriously losing my mind. What in the fuck is going on.

    This truly is the end, folks. There's no hope. To call this system “our government” has truly become the most bizarre and shallow of pretense.

  • 5by5

    I mean, it's BIZARRE!

    They were asked to rule on whether a political campaign ad had to reveal who donated to the making of the film, and instead, the corporatists on the Supreme Court decided to overturn LITERALLY 100 years of case law and precedent that restrained the influence of special interests and the monied elites. Seriously. Rulings from like 1907 just got tossed out the window.

    They basically just gave the finger to the American people today. Go read the minority dissents against this ruling. They will break your heart.

    It's NUTS. And I've heard people on BOTH sides of the political spectrum freaking out over this one today.

    • Hypnos!

      They choose the cases that they rule on. This case was hand-picked by the marionettes in the majority so they could make this outlandish ruling. And the public fears activist judges from the left!!

  • 5by5

    I forgot to add that Congressman Alan Grayson is cracking me up right now, because not only is he one of the few people who's been paying attention to this, but he'd already been prepping for another moronic decision from the Supreme Court.

    Back on the 18th, the man put up no less than five bills and/or amendments designed to block this stupidity and lessen the sting. And ya gotta love the names he's given the bills. Like the, “Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act”, or the “Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act”, and my personal fave, the “End Political Kickbacks Act”.

    The man keeps his eye on the ball. I'll give him that, and he calls a criminal, “a criminal”. Which I also respect.

    Inside a Beltway where no one says what they mean, and dissembles/dodges the crap out of everything….. Respect the blunt!

  • Guest

    Let them spend. You're a dumbass if you believe the propaganda anyways.

    • Godozo

      You know how many dumbasses are out there? They'll bypass us and simply appeal to whom they need to appeal to get their way. Remember, nobody's gone broke by overestimating the stupidity of the American people yet.

  • 5by5

    How will you discern which is propaganda, and which is truth? Especially since you also have things like Saudi billionaires buying shares of Fox News? And since media ownership has ALSO been deregulated, so that one corporation can literally own every news outlet in your town – print, radio, and tv station – how will you begin to determine objective truth?

    • Reuben

      the obvious answer, 5by5, is that you can't. you aren't allowed.

  • Hypnos!

    This is so odious! The rotten bastards in the SCOTUS have outdone themselves. They're trying to prove themselves bigger corporate puppets than the congress, and I think they may have just achieved it. Unbelievable.

    I wonder how far the ultra-wealthy in this country will push this agenda. How much more open and obvious could they be at this point? How stupid is this country that we allow this to happen?

    • Reuben

      “We” didn't allow this to happen. “We” were powerless to stop it.

      This is a watershed moment. The curtains have fully been pulled back, and the real machine of global power is front and center for us all to see. There is no need for it to “hide” any longer. This is raw power, this is the global plantation, and we are all house niggers.

      • Reuben

        “we” as in those of us fortunate enough (?? debatable) to have Internet access and believe we have some kind of leverage or participation in this system.

        • Hypnos!

          If you live in the country you should write your congressional representatives and tell them you are outraged and ask them to co-sponsor and vote on Rep. Grayson's Save Democracy bills. They are HR 4431 – 4435.

          And we've got mid-term elections this year, what timing. This is just as infuriating and dangerous as the bank bailouts!

          • Reuben

            Sorry for breaking this to you, but WTF do you think “my congressional representatives” (or any of ours) are going to be able to do about this. It's a constitutional amendment that overrides a SCOTUS decision.

            This is in no uncertain terms the “shot over the bow” from the global corporate power structure. This is them telling us that our government is nothing more than a little play put on for our amusement and engrossment. Go on and call your congressmen, vote your cute little hearts out: This is the real world.

          • Hypnos!

            Read the bills I mentioned. They're good. They would make a significant difference. And your congressional representatives, in theory, can make constitutional amendments as well. The SCOTUS is but one of three supposedly equal branches.

            You're not breaking any news to me. I understand that, by and large, our representatives already respond to their monied interests 99 times out of 100 over their constituents interests. Its just that I haven't completely given up yet.

          • Hypnos!

            And if EVERYONE started calling their reps. Started fucking paying attention. Started demanding justice from their elected officials. Voted the bastards out when they failed to live up to promises. If we all started doing this instead of complaining on online forums, or tuning out and escaping into american idol, the elite would be fucking scared. Things would change.

            So yeah, its probably a hopeless thing to wish for, but I'll keep trying. What else is there to do aside from getting a shotgun and heading to the hills?

  • RONIN

    These days this is all anyone needs to know – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWhRt4RcODA

    And perhaps this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9rZpFyhNW0

    RIP George

    How many times do our governmental, monetary, judicial, social etc. systems have to be shown to have failed us? Historically, and presently. Even this young nation, once thought of as the land of the free; home of the brave. Founded on aboriginal genocide and slavery. How long does our faith in our established institutions have to go unrewarded before we simply (although, at this point it would not be so simple) cast them aside?

    Or is it that the ultimate fate of humanity has always been to place itself under subjugation by allowing those inclined to implement it, to do so? Be it actively or through inaction.

  • sapphi10489

    This is very sickening. I thought docmentatirs like From Freedom to Fascism where just over-exaggerating. But they were right. US is becoming fascist. Mussolini would be proud.

  • 5by5

    Another interview I'd like to hear Raymond and Joe do is with Jordan Maxwell on the subject of our financial system.

    (And please do it old school “Out There” style too, not this half hour stuff like the Disinfo Podcasts. I love that, but give me an hour at least so you boys can get into some depth like you used to. This is my humble, whiny request. :-)

    Coincidentally, last night in my typical insomnia, I was listening to an L.A.-based show called, “What's Happening with Roy of Hollywood”.

    I know, it couldn't be a worse show title, but the dude's apparently been on the air doing this show since dinosaurs walked the Earth, and basically it's just this guy with next to no radio skills, playing random, sometimes really radical, or just plain challenging material, sometimes spiritual stuff, sometimes old radio show from the 1940's, or he'll play like the entire lecture from Naomi Klein or Howard Zinn or something, for the most part uninterrupted — but it's on at the ass crack of dawn, when like three people, myself included, are actually awake.

    The other night, he played a repeat of this other KPFK show called “Radio Alchemy”. And on that show the wonderfully granola host interviewed Jordan Maxwell about symbology, and the differences between Maritime Law and “the Law of the Land”, and he went into really cool etymology of certain words we use commonly, and how all of it relates to the financial system we have now – it frickin' blew my mind. I'm more that reasonably educated, but I'd heard none of that, despite having jumped into 400-level law classes at university and blowing the bell curve just for sport.

    Now I don't know much else about the dude, and chances are, I'm probably not going to agree with some of the conclusions he's drawn about what he's found, but some of the stuff he brought up about WHY we use certain terminology in business and law was flat-out fascinating.

    You can listen to a repeat of the KPFK show (which is huge, so you're gonna have to sift through some other stuff in order to get to it, but still) in their archives at this link:

    http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/

    Something's Happening with Roy of Hollywood Part A – Thursday, January 21, 2010 12:01 am
    Something's Happening with Roy of Hollywood Part B – Thursday, January 21, 2010 2:30 am

    (It's split between the two parts, and there's some other stuff in there that's pretty cool too on MLK and how the FBI surveilled him back in the day).

    Another interesting lecture on this from the British perspective is by John Harris:

    http://www.bbc5.tv/eyeplayer/video/john-harris-…

    Trippy, especially in light of the most recent crappy decision by the Supreme Court. There's a REASON why they don't teach Latin in school anymore. If you understood the Latin root of most of the words you use every day? You'd see the world totally differently, and you'd be able to recognize where the problem lies.

  • tonyviner

    America was done a long time ago, it has just been stalling, holding out for something. But what?

    “I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well-administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well-administered for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” – Benjamin Franklin

  • Robert p.

    Where our retarded politicians get their campaign money from means nothing really.
    WE THE PEOPLE still vote these retards back into office.

    You wanna see things change? Then get together and make sure that not a single politician in office at this time gets re-elected when his time comes, no matter how good he may have been. Until WE THE PEOPLE send them the message that we do actually care nothing will change. And no people, complaining about what they do doesn't count, not even a little.

    You want change then start or join a rally for whichever is the new candidate. The real status quo is that the people mostly elect whoever is already in office during an election. In-so doing we enable, or even cause the status quo that the elected officials adhere to. Change the status quo of keeping the current idiot in office a few times and their status quo WILL change.

    Being an elected official was NEVER meant to be a long term career, but WE THE PEOPLE have turned it into just that. So don't blame them for doing what they do. All they know is that they do this crap and we re-elect them. Can you blame them for continuing to do it? Just because they don't have term limits like the president doesn't mean they have to be re-elected 50 times.

    Whatever they do in their first term is their fault. Whatever they do in their subsequent terms is OUR fault. Make them all one term candidates and you WILL see change.

    If you want to see change then make change.

  • GoodDoktorBad

    Politics is such a game for losers (ie. the “average citizen”), unless of course you play for the house. Now the “private sector” and the government are one in the same and “out of the closet”. More crime in plain site -made normal by law(lessness).
    This is another straw soon to break the camels back. The courts, “corporate interests”, powerful religious entities and other forms of arbitrary authority are filling the balloon to critical pressure. People are pissed and getting more and more pissed and who can blame them? We are being squeezed. When will we pop? ….and what will be the result of said juicing?
    The term “eat the rich” comes to mind…

  • Outrider420

    I came up with this same realization. How can speech remain ‘free’ if those with more money have more ‘speech’? In fact, Marshall McLuhan said that money was speech, calling it ‘the poor man’s credit card’. Money has become a commodity itself, much the way tobacco was in 17th c. Virginia, with the result being increased production, and with money, this leads to inflation/collapse of economies, the ‘cyclical nature of capitalism’ that no one can adequately explain. The court ruling only establishes what we’ve all known: money buys justice, access to power and power itself. I think it’s a First Amendment case, actually.

  • Outrider420

    I came up with this same realization. How can speech remain 'free' if those with more money have more 'speech'? In fact, Marshall McLuhan said that money was speech, calling it 'the poor man's credit card'. Money has become a commodity itself, much the way tobacco was in 17th c. Virginia, with the result being increased production, and with money, this leads to inflation/collapse of economies, the 'cyclical nature of capitalism' that no one can adequately explain. The court ruling only establishes what we've all known: money buys justice, access to power and power itself. I think it's a First Amendment case, actually.