US: Supreme Court overturns long-standing limits on corporate political campaign spending

See also: Roberts Delivers ‘Jolt’ in Overturning Campaign-Finance Rulings (Bloomberg):

“The 5-4 ruling freed corporations, labor unions and advocacy groups to use general treasury funds to buy advertisements that explicitly try to sway voters. The majority said restrictions on corporate spending violated the Constitution’s free-speech guarantee.”

This has nothing to do with constitutional rights, because the ruling that a corporation is legally a ‘person’ was undermining the constitution earlier and was dead wrong.

No political campaign should be funded by corporations, because of manipulation of public opinion.

(In another case (1980 Diamond v. Chakrabarty) those idiot judges ruled that it is OK to patent life forms, were before life forms were considered a part of nature and were not patentable. This ruling lead to corporations patenting the genes of everything they can think of that could later on bring them profit.)

And look who is shouting the loudest:

Obama slams ‘green light to a new stampede of special interest money’ (?)

“Washington lobbyists haven’t funded my campaign, they won’t run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president.”
– Barack Obama

Really?:

Health Care Statements In Congress Were Ghostwritten By Lobbyists Working For Genentech

The US Government: Bought and Paid For

Monsanto lobbyists to be placed in charge of food safety by Obama

Obama’s Money Cartel

Liar in Chief:

Barack Obama Lies 7 Times In Under 2 Minutes!!!!!

Barack Obama’s Health Care Lies And Reversals

The truth is:

The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: Financial Mafia Controlling US and Wall Street

George Carlin: The American Dream


Obama slams ‘green light to a new stampede of special interest money’

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WASHINGTON – In a landmark ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down laws that banned corporations from using their own money to support or oppose candidates for public office.

By 5-4 vote, the court overturned federal laws, in effect for decades, that prevented corporations from using their profits to buy political campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

It leaves in place a ban prohibiting corporations and unions from directly contributing funds to candidates for any use.

In a statement, President Barack Obama said that the decision gives ‘a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics.’ The president pledged to work with Congress to ‘develop a forceful response’ to the court’s ruling.

Critics of the stricter limits have argued that they amount to an unconstitutional restraint of free speech, and the court majority agreed.

“The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach,” Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion, joined by his four more conservative colleagues.

Strongly disagreeing, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissent, “The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens’ dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

Advocates of strong campaign finance regulations have predicted that a court ruling against the limits would lead to a flood of corporate and union money in federal campaigns as early as November’s congressional elections.

The decision removes limits on independent expenditures that are not coordinated with candidates’ campaigns.

The case does not affect political action committees, which mushroomed after post-Watergate laws set the first limits on contributions by individuals to candidates. Corporations, unions and others may create PACs to contribute directly to candidates, but they must be funded with voluntary contributions from employees, members and other individuals, not by corporate or union treasuries.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined Kennedy to form the majority in the main part of the case.

Roberts, in a separate opinion, said that upholding the limits would have restrained “the vibrant public discourse that is at the foundation of our democracy.”

Stevens complained that those justices overreached by throwing out earlier Supreme Court decisions that had not been at issue when this case first came to the court.

“Essentially, five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law,” Stevens said.

The case began when a conservative group, Citizens United, made a 90-minute movie that was very critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton as she sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Citizens United wanted to air ads for the anti-Clinton movie and distribute it through video-on-demand services on local cable systems during the 2008 Democratic primary campaign.

But federal courts said the movie looked and sounded like a long campaign ad, and therefore should be regulated like one.

The court first heard arguments in March, then asked for another round of arguments about whether corporations and unions should be treated differently from individuals when it comes to campaign spending.

The justices convened in a special argument session in September, Sotomayor’s first. The conservative justices gave every indication then that they were prepared to take the steps they did on Thursday.

The justices, with only Thomas in dissent, did uphold McCain-Feingold requirements that anyone spending money on political ads must disclose the names of contributors.

NBC’s Pete Williams contributed to this report.

NBC News and news services
updated 1:43 p.m. ET Jan. 21, 2010

Source: NBC News

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