The Supremes Drop The Campaign Money Bomb

As widely expected, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a 5-4 decision basically overturning campaign finance limitations by corporations and unions.

The ruling was a defeat for the Obama administration and the campaign finance law's supporters who said that ending the limits would unleash a flood of corporate money into the political system to promote or defeat candidates.

The ruling transformed the political landscape and the rules on how money can be spent in future presidential and congressional elections, which already have broken new spending records with each political cycle.

The justices overturned Supreme Court precedents from 2003 and 1990 that upheld federal and state limits on independent expenditures by corporate treasuries to support or oppose candidates.

This is pretty brutal.  The 2010 campaign is now going to be a storm of unlimited cash from companies basically buying candidates.  It also means that corporate advocacy for specific candidates is not only possible but the norm.

SCOTUS Blog has the decision here.  The fifth vote along with Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia was Anthony Kennedy, who writing the decision voiced:

"Our nation's speech dynamic is changing, and informative voices should not have to circumvent onerous restrictions to exercise their First Amendment rights"

Because being able to buy candidates is the American way, dammit.  Stopping corporations for directly funding candidates is "onerous".

Yep, we're screwed.

More on this as the full impact is explored.


[UPDATE 11:03 AM] Zack Roth at TPM has more on Kennedy's decision:

Distinguishing wealthy individuals from corporations based on the latter's special advantages of e.g., limited liability, does not suffice to allow laws prohibiting speech.  It is irrelevant for First Amendment purposes that corporate funds may "have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas." Austin, supra, at 660.  All speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech.

In other words, the corporate citizen has unlimited access to the political process, even though the public can vote and the corporation cannot.  But the corporation can now influence millions of voters through direct campaign advertising.

Democracy just took a body blow.