Oh, goody! Corporations are "People"! Fascism in America?

I'm not usually an alarmist, but the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court yesterday (January 20)  may well be the mark of our eventual slide into a corporate dominated fascism the likes of which has never before been seen. If you like (or even know of) the amount of "astroturf" funding of supposedly not-for-profit "public interest" groups (which really AREN'T) then you're going to love the degree to which corporate interests can now pour advertising dollars into campaigns for just about anything or anyone under the sun.

At a time when we should be revising out campaign finance rules to shed more sunlight on who is supporting whom, this decision will obfuscate and allow massive campaigns to put forth the agenda of whatever corporation or alliance--OPEC, the American Petroleum Institute for two examples--wants to get their message out. All while not being required to clearly announce where the funding is coming from. (Remember "Harry and Louise" during the Clinton Health Care reform?) Campaigns which obfuscate and have the largesse of enormous corporate and trade-association funds can totally stream-roller any effort that truly grass-roots donors fund. Could MoveOn match the $50 million that big oil might spend on defeating clean air or carbon tax measures?

And that's just issues. This decision also opens the way for corporations to "flood federal elections and buy government influence:. (Fred Wertheimer, an advocate of campaign finance reform in a Huffington Post article on the Supremes decision. In that same article, Melanie Sloan (director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) stated :"We are moving to an age where we won't have the senator from Arkansas or the congressman from North Carolina, but the senator from Wal-Mart and the congressman from Bank of America." 


Big business is well-represented in our government processes now and this decision tips the balance. This lawsuit carries the title "Citizens United v. FEC". Do you KNOW any of the "citizens" who participated in pushing this case? What do you think the chances are that ANY of them are folks like you and I? Yeah, that's what I thought. What right-thinking person would open the doors to the sort of money-dominated influence that is likely to come from this decision? I'm guessing you don't know any that support this view. I know I don't.


Stay plugged-in. Watch Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. Expose yourselves to the truths and dangers that this death spiral into fascism will lead. Be an antidote to the KoolAid-drinking "tea baggers" and use your own brain and speak out.