Maybe I am off my meds today, but I am not so optimistic as you. I don’t think we’ll be able to turn this back. We’ll just have to sit back and see how it shakes out. How will the corps handle this new responsibility of choosing our candidates and running the country? Be careful what you ask for. I have no hope that the “average American,” whoever that is, can think past the mountain of spin that is about to be poured out for the November elections. So far they have swallowed all of the shrill screaming about the health care bill. At least one survey found when you sit down with survey groups and explain what is actually in the bill, they like it. But, the Dems have done such a dreadful job of advertising the bill, the average Joe just swallows what is offered up by the talk show guys and the news outlets, who love controversy and have to time for educating.

It does NOT have to be doomsday, however. The people and the independent press do have the tremendous potential for power in this country. Not enough people take advantage of it.

Curiously, does it occur to anyone else to ask, where do those supposedly revolutionary tea baggers stand on this? Mutely silent, of course. It is a fake anti-government movement paid for by, you guessed it, big corporations, especially insurance companies as a way to fight national health care reform.

Watch for more money to flow their way now. We can stop them, but it will require a massive counter demonstration effort — and funding the alternative, independent Web Press where real investigative reporters can expose the bastards. We can do it for far less than they have, but it does require resources.

We have a problem when we have a majority of constitutional literalists on the Supreme Court bench. Our constitution is a broad and very terse document deliberately intended to be interpreted in the context of contemporary times. When we have literalists like Scalia who want to try and impose their own literal interpretation to the scant words in the document and apply them to contemporary times, we are in deep trouble. The kind of constitution Scalia would be comfortable with is one like our current Alabama constitution where the citizens vote on EVERYTHING that is in the constitution. We know how functional this approach is. This largely negates the need for the legislative bodies of government.

This decision will change the landscape of the U.S. forever. It is not clear what will happen as the large corporations crowd out the voices of the smaller entities … the unions (which, btw, Yana, have a tiny fraction of the funds corporations have), small business, and the smaller institutions who will not have the money to make their voices heard. It is now clearly a rule by money. It’s a shame. Just as we were seeing the rise of individual contributions to campaigns, this will be essentially snuffed out by the tsunami of dollars that will flow from the large companies.

Something nobody is mentioning bothers me greatly. The largest companies are all multinational now. This means our politics in the U.S. will now be significantly influenced by foreign interests, more than ever in the past. And, as for looking forward to the day when the court will swing back, forget about it. Once the large corporations have control, they will ensure that their control in made permanent. Given the current party makeup, we are seeing the last Democratic administration for the foreseeable future … ever.

Europeans must think we have all gone nuts over here. They have very tight controls on how both corporate and individual contributions are made in their elections. They hold their national elections at a tiny fraction of the obscene amounts that flow into ours.

Political action committees, or PACs, on the other hand can lobby Congress, but contributions made to them are not tax-deductible. Some 501(c)3s have closely-allied PACs that lobby on isssues for them, thereby avoiding losing tax-exempt status for the parent organization. And of course there are hundreds of trade organizations and special interest groups that lobby directly. Many special interests hired Washington lawyers (sometimes known as “little Satans”) to lobby for them. They mostly live on K street.

So far as I know, there is no legal limit on the amount of money corporations or unions may use to lobby Congress.

The Supreme Court ruling does not affect contributions to parties, candidates or PACs. The ruling merely allows corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts *running their own advertising* for or against specific candidates. The candidates get no control over that category of money and do not get to keep any surplus in a campaign committee bank account, as they do now.

Evil in Washington is done, and has been done for decades, by lobbyists, against whom very little if any effective legislation has been enacted. Restricting amounts that corporations and unions may spend on advertising, while it is a great “feel good” measure, would do zero to change the lobbying environment in Washington. In other words, it would do zero to change “business as usual” in the Capitol.

One thing the government could do, that would likely pass constitutional muster, is to require a “no campaign advertising” clause be added to all contracts with private companies. That is, making it a contractual requirement that the company engage in no campaign advertising as a condition of getting and keeping the contract.

That alone would eliminate practically all of the Fortune 500 companies, and would not be a blanket statutory denial of first amendment rights, which is what the Supreme Court ruling was all about.

I predict that within the next election cycle, leftists and progressives will be making use of this ruling for their own political campaigns and will be glad it was made, even if they don’t admit it in public.

This is a disaster that I am not sure this country will survive. I foresee a situation that will force many of us in this country to walk a mile in the shoes of our immigrant ancestors as they looked out at the shores of their homeland with tears in their eyes realizing that they were leaving the land of their fathers for distant shores of a new world. We will be forced to choose to return to those shores because the great experiment of our fathers who sought freedom has failed. I know that if the situation in the government of this country continues the way it is now that I will be one of those that returns to the homeland of my French Huguenot ancestors with tears in my eyes about the vast failure this great social experiment here has become. Selling out to corporate interests and special interests groups means the demise of democracy if it ever really existed in this country.