Supreme Court Votes Again To Favor The Rich

Since the administration of Ronald Reagan the Republican Party has made a concerted effort to favor the rich and the corporate interests over all others in this country. They have done this through their "trickle-down" economic policy that basically says if we give the rich enough money they'll eventually share some of it with the rest of America. But instead of enriching everyone, this policy has just made the rich substantially richer while actually decreasing the buying power of everyone else.

This has resulted in a vast and ever increasing gulf between the super rich and ordinary Americans. And since money equals political power in the United States, this increasing ability of the rich to own most of the country's wealth and income has significantly moved this country away from democracy and toward plutocracy (rule by the wealthy class). But there is an American institution that has done even more than the Congress to turn this country into a plutocracy -- the Supreme Court.

It all started when the Supreme Court gave corporations the same rights as individual American citizens. Then the court decided that money was the same as speech. This culminated in a decision (in United Citizens vs. FEC) where the court said Congress couldn't limit the amount of money organizations could spend in elections. This gave the corporations and the wealthiest Americans a distinct advantage in elections, especially national elections, where a huge advantage in funding can turn an election.

Now the Supreme Court has gone even further in giving the richest Americans an electoral advantage. Arizona had a law that would give candidates who opted to take public campaign financing a little extra money when they faced a super-rich candidate who was self-financing (or being financed by private organizations like corporations). This was a good law since it would allow candidates who weren't rich to compete on a more equal footing with rich candidates.

But the Supreme Court decided the law wasn't fair to the rich candidates. They decided in a 5 to 4 decision that the rich had a right to outspend their poorer opponents -- a right that couldn't be abridged by the state trying to equalize funding and give poorer candidates an equal electoral chance. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, said the Arizona law was unconstitutional because it "imposes a substantial burden on the speech of privately financed candidates and independent expenditure groups. . .'Leveling the playing field' can sound like a good thing. But in a democracy, campaigning for office is not a game. It is a critically important form of speech."

In other words, free speech is money and the Arizona law infringed on the right of the rich to free speech -- the right to outspend their opponent. This is another shockingly bad Supreme Court decision, which gives the rich and candidates supported by huge corporate donations an unfair advantage in electoral politics. It shoves the country a lot further down the road to plutocracy, or rule by the wealthy class of the country (just like third-world countries).

The four justices who voted for democracy (Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor) were all appointed by Democratic presidents. The five who voted for plutocracy (Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Alito, Kennedy) were all appointed by Republican presidents.

This should end any discussion of how important it is for a party to hold the White House when a new justice must be appointed -- it is critical. It should also remove any doubt that the Republicans favor the rich.