And giving the rich more speech than other citizens would be tantamount to giving them more votes in an election. But a democracy is based on the concept of one man/one vote, where every man's vote is equal to every other man's vote. And speech should work the same way -- where every man has the right to free speech, and the rich have no more right to free speech than anyone else.
The truth is that giving the rich the right to more speech than other Americans, because he/she has more money, is a democracy killer. It just means the rich will dictate who gets elected, who makes the laws, and what kind of laws will be made -- and you can bet those laws will give all the advantages to the rich, and leave the other 99% of Americans fighting for the scraps. And sadly, we are already well on our way toward forfeiting our democracy for rule by the rich.
That's because 5 of our 9 Supreme Court justices have been bamboozled by the right (who were bamboozled by the rich) into thinking that money equals speech, and restricting the amount of money that can be spent in electoral politics is tantamount to restricting free speech. They started this with the Citizens United decision, which gave rich individuals and corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (secretly) through super-PACs to help elect the candidate of their choice. Now that same court has made another terrible decision based on the same "money equals speech" argument.
The new case is McCutcheon v. FEC. In another 5 to 4 decision, the court ruled that campaign laws can't limit the amount of money anyone can give in an election. The law had limited donations to $123,200 for any two-year election cycle, but the Supreme Court says now that limits the "speech" of a wealthy person -- and that they should be able to give as much money as they want to give.
The ruling didn't do away with the $5200 limit for a single candidate ($2600 for the primary and $2600 for the general election), but you can bet that'll be next on the docket for the rich right-wingers. If "money equals speech" can be be used to strike down the overall limits on campaign donations, then there is no reason to think that same argument can't be used to strike down limits on the amount that can be given to an individual candidate. And when this last vestige of electoral fairness is eliminated, the conversion of our democracy into a plutocracy will be completed.
Money is NOT speech. Money is a way to limit the speech of others. It is also the tool being used to kill our democracy. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) puts it well when he says:
“Freedom of speech, in my view, does not mean the freedom to buy the United States government. What world are the five conservative Supreme Court justices living in? To equate the ability of billionaires to buy elections with ‘freedom of speech’ is totally absurd. The Supreme Court is paving the way toward an oligarchic form of society in which a handful of billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson will control our political process.”
So no more big union contributions, then!
ReplyDeleteYour comments make it sound like the unions give as much or more than corporate and Wall Street bigwigs give to campaigns -- and that is not even remotely true. But I would happily give up the union contributions if we could go to a fair system (like publicly funded elections).
ReplyDeleteWHAT?!!!!! Pay the rascals out of taxation? Nonsense, if they want to run the country let them do it on their own dollar!
ReplyDeleteThat just guarantees that only the rich can afford to run for office (or someone who has already sold out to the rich).
DeleteDear Mr McLaughlin,
ReplyDeleteMaybe my recollection of history is wrong, but I vaguely remember learning that many of our forefathers risked everything to leave Europe on a perilous voyage across the Atlantic and an uncertain future in the Americas simply to escape a social structure that had relegated their voices to the ranks of peasants who were powerless to influence the direction of their society or change their lot in life.
I also vaguely remember learning something about an American Dream in which everyone's opinions mattered, and a letter to your representatives in Washington D.C. counted for something.
I don't think that this Supreme Court decision revokes my right to free speech, but I do note that we are heading in a direction where (1) the rich already have an uber-megaphone with which to help members of Congress "re-align" their views to make them more eligible for campaign donations, and (2) the Supreme Court just ruled that there should be no limit on the size of the megaphone the uber-rich are allowed to use in persuading our public representatives in Congress.
So, the uber-rich and average Americans all have free speech, but the megaphones of the uber-rich make the voices of average Americans largely irrelevant.......which seems sort of similar to what drove many of our forefathers to leave Europe 300-odd years ago for a shot at a better life elsewhere.
Seems odd that the Republicans in Congress often cite the virtues of the Constitution and the principles upon which the U.S. was founded, but then seem to spend much of their time (1) courting the money of a few uber-rich Americans and/or (2) discounting / equating 47% of the American people with pond scum who should not have the right to vote.
Not sure how we got from "Of the people, by the people, for the people" to where we are today......."Me, me, mine."
- Bill Halford
I agree that your right to free speech (and mine) has not been revoked by this decision -- but it certainly has been diminished (a lot)!
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