This news story from the US though leaves me seriously troubled.
WASHINGTON — Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.
The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.
The ruling represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision to reshape the way elections were conducted. Though the decision does not directly address them, its logic also applies to the labor unions that are often at political odds with big business.
Maybe I'm missing the finer detail but it seems to me that corporations in the U.S are now free to spend as much money as they can raise on making sure that the people they like get elected. They can potentially spend billions of dollars if they choose on tv advertising and all the other costs of campaigning - money that they have never before been able to kick in.
The most telling part of this case for me is the almost Orwellian name of the body who brought it to the court - Citizens United. ( funnily enough, one of the anti-internet lobby groups in the GTA universe is Citizens United Negating Technology - although it just doesn't seem so funny any more)
This isn't going to end well.
Update: got some more info that reveals that things could be worse -
"The judges also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, enacted in 2001, which barred union and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.
The court's ruling leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions and did not touch a ban on unlimited donations from corporations and unions to political parties."
(from The Age)
Still, there's a whole lot of wrong about this. Supporters might (disingenuously) argue that this is a matter of free speech but if you have the money to ensure that yours is the only voice heard over and over and over, what does that do to the free speech of everyone else?
How about some fair speech?
