Think reading about the latest Supreme Court decision is scary, just wait until you see the movie
I want to call the latest Supreme Court decision lifting overall limits on campaign contributions something like “Citizens United Part II: Nightmare at 1 First St. NE”
Or, “Attack of the Killer Donations.” “Brotherhood of the Kochs.” “The Kochs Have Eyes.” “Invasion of the Election Snatchers.” Return of the Living Kochs. “Cannibalistic Blood-Sucking Kochs of Wichita.” I’m not too picky. Anything but McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. Who are they again?
When I mentioned to a friend that I wanted to write about this subject, he (predictably) asked, “What could you possibly add to the discussion about it that hasn’t already been said?” He has always had the idea that my job here is to present news. We don’t present news: We lay it out and roll all over it, sometimes while giggling hysterically, sometimes while crying.
There’s something a little terrifying about this decision, something ominous, something that seems to have been left out of the reporting on it. Are Citizen’s United Part I and Part II combinable? Is that settled? Or will there need to be a Citizen’s United Part III, where the same five mind-blowingly bad Supreme Court justices lead the court in deciding that corporations, being people, can also fund any number of campaigns to the max, with no overall limit?
If that is settled or becomes settled, and the American people don’t rebel against it in significant numbers, it’s going to be lipstick and high-heels time all the time. Arch your back and try to get used to it.
The limit an individual can donate per federal candidate is a mere $2,600. But now there’s no limit on the number of elections in which you can contribute that amount. If, in addition to that, corporations can do the same as individuals, corporations could easily clone themselves, creating spin-off corporations, for the purpose of multiplying allowed contributions. But even without the cloning, you can expect an increase in contributions by the oligarchy by at least one order of magnitude.
It gets worse. It isn’t clear how this ruling applies to state primaries. Before, the limit applied to all the primaries your candidate ran in put together. Do those count now as separate elections? If not, why not? The reasoning of the court in this case should also apply to that. If the government has no legitimate interest in preventing you from donating to the max in all 435 congressional races and all 33 or 34 senate races every two years, plus the presidential race if there is one, why should the government fuss over contributions to multiple primaries?
At least some of the 1 percent’s wealth will get back into circulation.
I hope the five justices responsible for this decision can get some kickbacks. I’d hate to think they’d do this believing that the Constitution demanded they decide this way. I’d like to think our system still works and promotes smart, corrupt people to the top, instead of incompetents.
After all, if you’re in the hands of conniving cutthroat geniuses, you have at least the comfort that they won’t do anything that ruins their gravy train. But if your life is controlled by mere idiots, they could even decide to run themselves into a wall and all of us with them, because they think it’s a pretty wall.
Meanwhile we’ve learned prison terms constitute cruel and unusual punishment for rapists of 3-year-old girls, when said rapists are Du Pont heirs living off a trust fund sufficient to get themselves into a $1.8 million, 5,800-square foot home without working. That was decided by no Supreme Court justice, just an allegedly “normally tough” Delaware Superior judge.
He might be raped by other prisoners. We can’t have that. Rapes only go one direction in this country.