Sigh!
I guess we really do have to leave it up to the people we elect to make sure any money given to them does not influence them…Im sure there is a joke it that line somewhere.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court threw out a 63-year-old law designed to restrain the influence of big business and unions on elections Thursday, ruling that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress. The decision could drastically alter who gives and gets hundreds of millions of dollars in this year’s crucial midterm elections.
By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned two of its own decisions as well as the decades-old law that said companies and labor unions can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads. The decision threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.
Well I guess the supreme court and congress are not looking out for anyone but themselves.
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 this year’s congressional elections.
”It’s the Super Bowl of bad decisions,” said Common Cause president Bob Edgar, a former congressman from Pennsylvania.
The opinion goes to the heart of laws dating back to the Gilded Age when Congress passed the Tillman Act in 1907 banning corporations from donating money directly to federal candidates. Though that prohibition still stands, the same can’t be said for much of the century-long effort that followed to separate politics from corporate money.
The decision’s most immediate effect is to permit corporate and union-sponsored political ads to run right up to the moment of an election, and to allow them to call for the election or defeat of a candidate. In presidential elections and in highly contested congressional contests, that could mean a dramatic increase in television advertising competing for time and public attention.
Grab some popcorn and watch that special interest money roll in…does that mean now we get an Obama channell everyday of the year instead of just through the election period?