Keith Olbermann devoted his special comment to today's decision by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC. I agreed with Howard Fineman in that for once I felt that his normal hyperbolic schtick didn't do justice to the issue. And considering Olbermann's comment was based upon his comparison of today's decision to the Dred Scott decision that upheld the institution of slavery, Olbermann could have made a much finer point had he noted the irony of corporations achieving their ascendance by appropriating for themselves the very means created to free the slaves - the 14th Amendment.
Led by Justice Roberts and the so-called originalists, the the Supreme Court wrested control of our democracy from the people who created it and vested it in the tools we have created.
It's a plot straight out of Terminator.
Many commentators, especially those who inhabit ivory towers, will tell us that today's decision is "correct." What they'll never mention is that today's decision, while technically correct, is the culmination of the perversion of American Democracy.
Perhaps the Democrats will see the writing on the wall and realize that the only way out of the corner into which they have painted themselves is to break down the walls. Perhaps they will realize that their only hope is a political solution consisting of a Constitutional amendment that explicitly states that corporations are not persons under the Constitution. Let the Republicans vote against that proposition. Make it explicit that the Republicans stand for the interests of corporations over people.
Considering Democrats are just as much the pawns of our corrupt system as the Republicans, I doubt such a strategy will come to pass.
Perhaps some other party will come along to do the same.
Alternatively, perhaps some savvy legal mind will use today's decisions to cut down corporations at their knees by challenging the lifeblood of their very existence - the proposition of limited liability. After all, courts have acknowledged a willingness to find the grant of limited liability to the owners of dramshops or medical practitioners to constitute equal protection violations. Perhaps several generations from now, some court will find persuasive this argument.
Today's decision establishes that corporations and natural persons are indistinguishable. So it follows that any law that affords one a benefit over the other relating to the exercise of a fundamental right ought to constitute an equal process violation.
As I understand it (who really does?), equal protection requires the following logical relationship:
Where C equals the fundamental right of free speech and A equals corporations and B equals natural persons, equal protection mandates that A and B have equal rights to C. In other words, A= B; and if A = C, then B = C.
However, limited liability laws permit the exercise of A's right to C to be more powerful than B's right to C. With the addition of limited liability, today's decision necessitates the following formulas:
A = C+
B = C-
As far as I'm concerned, this formula ought to constitute an equal protection violation.
By granting corporations limited liability, corporations have an enhanced right to free speech not available to natural persons.
If A equaled property owners and B equaled tenants, then certainly granting limited liability to A and not B would constitute an equal protection violation.
What is different about corporations? What is the compelling government interest justifying granting limited liability to corporations in the exercise of constitutional rights? And don't get me started on narrowly tailored.
No one has addressed this issue. Myself, I don't care to write the law review article. I'm happy with my life the way it is. I'll leave it to some eager 2L or perhaps some upstart professor to flesh out the citations. In either case, by the time this equal protection argument has the chance to demonstrate the fallacy committed by Santa Clara that was repeated today in Citizens United v. FEC, I suspect that either I or our republic will have long ceased to exist.
In the shorter term, I see two alternatives that may rescue us natural persons from the domination of our machines.
First, perhaps this decision will awaken us to how our system has been perverted. The persons who seek to advance corporate interests may have finally gone too far. As a functional matter, I doubt this decision is going to change much. If it does, it will only do so by bringing to the surface what has lay beneath - the rotten stench of the decaying corpse of American democracy. Roused by a fresh whiff of this heretofore hidden odor, perhaps folks will finally sit up and realize how much has been taken from us. And perhaps a political solution - an amendment defining persons under the Constitution to exclude corporations? - will be achieved.
Second, even with control of our government, the corporations will not be able to avoid their demise. The perverse system we have operated within has already bled this country dry.
In the absence of corporations possessing full speech rights, Eisenhower warned of a military-industrial complex. Fifty years later, it's not just the military that has captured our government. Each segment of the American economy is defined by some variation of the "military-industrial complex." And each has used political influence to finance short-term profits with debt to be paid for by future generations. Even armed with new speech rights, what more could corporations achieve?
Problem is this debt is now so massive as to call into question not just the ability of future generations to repay it, but their willingness. The tail now chases the dog.
Allegedly smart people once assumed that real estate prices would never go down. The same allegedly smart people now assume that the U.S. will never default on its obligations.
Problem is, people openly discuss the failure of Treasury auctions. And considering all debts are fundamentally a matter of trust, it is no longer a matter of if; it is a matter of when the U.S. will default upon its debt obligations. And when that eventuality becomes clear, capital will be washed away in a storm tide of inflation. Capital will becomes worthless. And corporations, being mere agglomerations of capital, will have sown the seeds of their own destruction.
In any event, I am skeptical to a fault. So despite my personal beliefs, I suspect that they will never come to pass. Our perverse system will continue to exists despite this "correct" result. Because of the threat of both outcomes, corporations and the peeps who love 'em will insure things don't get too far out of hand. Perhaps the evil corporations, cowed by the threat of inflation, will step in and rescue us from ourselves???
Enough of that, what about that whole iTablet thingee?