It's hard to overstate how much damage these corrupt rulings by Republicans on the Court — from Buckley and Bellotti in 1976/1978 to Citizens United in 2010 — have done to American democracy.
I took a couple of flights this past weekend that reminded me again of the damage Republicans on the Supreme Court did to America when they legalized political bribery.
The good news is that there are numerous things Congress can do to undo the Court's bizarre doctrine that money is the same thing as free speech and corporations have Bill of Rights freedoms and protections as "persons."
Neither of these "rights to bribe" by the morbidly rich and corporations were recognized in the early years of our republic. Even today we're unique among advanced democracies in holding these Supreme Court-created doctrines which underpin much if not most of today's political corruption.
Congress has never, in the history of the United States, passed a law saying rich people buying politicians is the same thing as free speech or that corporations have a right to bribe politicians and lie to the public. To the contrary, Congress has passed hundreds of laws — which were overturned by these three Supreme Court decisions — regulating money in politics and criminalizing political corruption.
The Court's inventing these twin doctrines have even corrupted the other two branches of government, leading today to legislative paralysis, an erosion of civil and voting rights, and widespread public cynicism. Read more at
HartmannReport.com.
-Thom
