Supreme Court decision makes mockery of democratic process

Editor,

In case you missed it, the framers of the Constitution of these here United States turned over in their collective graves last Thursday, Jan. 21. A partisan majority of the Supreme Court threw out a 63-year-old law designed to restrain the influence of big business and unions on elections, ruling that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress.

Essentially, they deemed that corporations — as “people” — have the right to free speech just like, you know, real flesh-and-blood people and big money can now throw their influence around even more than they already do in order to ensure that the little person in the USA is not heard. I don’t believe the framers had anything like this in mind when they wrote the Constitution, but you know, who cares about that? Essentially, if followed, all presidential and congressional seats will go to the highest bidder, since the American people tend to know who got voted off the island or American Idol, but have no clue about the pabulum that passes for campaign ads. Remember the swift boat campaign? Now there was a non-partisan beacon!
Anyway, Justice John Paul Stevens stated in his dissent, “The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined in Stevens’ dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom. The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union/corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined Senator Ted Kennedy to form the majority in the main part of the case. Roberts, in a separate opinion, said that upholding the limits would have restrained “the vibrant public discourse that is at the foundation of our democracy.” And, of course, in English that means upholding limits that would have prevented big money from purchasing the presidency and seats in Congress since the one with the most money usually wins.

In my humble opinion, we the people own the airwaves and we should be able to “give” the same amount of time to each and every major candidate in major elections so that they all get the same amount of time. Gratis! Free! Candidates would get no more and no less time than that provided time allotment. Corporations and other interests would get none. They can’t even buy it. I mean, if corporations are living entities entitled to free speech, then don’t the people behind them in essence get more than one vote? They get their own vote at the polls and they get to unduly interfere and influence the system, which has to be considered another vote or else why would they even engage in such behavior?

I find it appalling that 5 of 9 justices threw out earlier Supreme Court decisions that weren’t even at issue when the case came before them. Justice Stevens: “Essentially, five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.”

So I learned a lot last Thursday. I learned that the Supreme Court is a laughingstock partisan arm of the right and the criminal acts of these five Republican-appointed jokesters is going to be making a mockery of the highest court in the land and doing an immense amount of damage for a long time to come. It makes me wonder how much “legal free speech/financial donation” will end up in these five justices’ retirement funds, “donated” by corporations and unions looking to swing a particular court case their way.

Beats the heck out of me how financial donation and influence is in any way an example of protected or free speech. I can’t find anywhere in the Constitution where the framers equate money with speech. Can anybody point me to that section? Where is the “equal distribution of wealth” section so that we all can have equal speech? I mean, it would have to be in there somewhere for the highest court in the land to manufacture this mockery of a decision, right?

Karen Sanchez
UNM Administrative Assistant/Legal