Most news agencies are abuzz over this news already, but it bears repeating – while some on the right is busy claiming that this is a “victory for free speech,” by which they mean a victory for their deep-pocketed special interests, a large swath of the left and the right are already considering new legislation to keep this Supreme Court ruling from becoming effective in time for the 2010 election cycle.

The gist of the ruling, which goes drastically against previous court precedent, essentially states that corporations can spend money from their own coffers to support or detract any political candidate or cause they choose. The point is that it effectively drives forward the notion of “corporate personhood,” where corporations have the same rights as individuals without the responsibilities.

Joshua Holland has a few words to say about corporate personhood, and how important it is that we put a nail in its coffin once and for all – every couple of years the idea pops up to terorrize our political system, and just when you think you have it in check, the companies who would benefit most from being able to spend their own millions on a crusade to sway the American vote bring it back up again. I’m not a fan of the term “judicial activism,” because it’s all too often used against any court that rules in favor of someone that one part or another doesn’t like, but it may be justified in this case:

In addition to the idea in [Buckley v Valeo] that “money equals speech,” we’ve been saddled with the Orwellian concept of “corporate personhood.”

“Corporate personhood” gives corporations — entirely artificial entities created by the state — the same individual rights that the framers fought and died to secure for flesh-and-blood citizens (or at least for white male property holders, but you get the idea). The doctrine started in England reasonably enough; it was only by considering corporations “persons” that they could be taken to court and sued. But during the 19th century, the Robber Barons and a few corrupt jurists deep in their pockets took the concept to a whole new level. After the Civil War, while many of those same interests were fighting to keep African-Americans from being enfranchised, the doctrine took on new weight — the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment was extended to corporations, and Thomas Jefferson slowly rolled over in his grave. The trend of granting more and more rights to corporations continues today.

As long as these ideas are embedded in our legal system, talk of cleaning up government — of campaign finance and lobby reform — are just that: talk. On these fundamental issues of democratic participation, incremental reform is a road leading nowhere.

Which is why we need bold, populist ideas for real structural reform. I say let’s rip a page from Karl Rove’s Scorched-Earth Politics for Dummies and offer a progressive constitutional amendment that would end this madness once and for all.

That could be as simple as a one-line amendment that rolls back Buckley by explicitly stating that regulating the amount of money donated to campaigns or setting limits on what candidates spend on advertising isn’t the same as putting limits on political speech.

But I think something even bolder is in order. I think it’s time for a Defense of Human Citizenship Amendment — language that would strip the “personhood” from corporations and give reformers a fighting chance to establish a true democracy in the United States.

I’m on board, Holland.

[ Really Simple: We Need to Get Rid of the Perverse Notion of Corporate Personhood ]
Source: AlterNet

But Holland isn’t the only person who’s appalled at the ruling. Here’s some stronger language:

Indeed, in a momentous 5 to 4 decision the New York Times called a “doctrinal earthquake,” the U.S. Supreme Court handed down an unprecedented ruling today that gives new significance to the phrase “corporate personhood.” In it, the Roberts court overturned the federal ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns, ruling that forbidding corporations from spending money to support or undermine political candidates amounts to censorship. Corporations, the court ruled, should enjoy the same First Amendment rights as individuals.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the Supreme Court rejects “the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not ‘natural persons.’”

In other words, as Stephen Colbert put it last year, “Corporations are people too.”

On a conference call with reporters following the decision, critics could not overemphasize the enormity of the ruling, whose implications will be visible as early as the upcoming midterm elections. Bob Edgar, head of the watchdog group Common Cause, called it “the Superbowl of really bad decisions.” Nick Nyhart of Public Campaign called it an “immoral decision” that will make an already untenable mix of money and politics even worse.

“This is the most radical and destructive campaign finance decision in the history of the Supreme Court,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21. “With a stroke of the pen, five justices wiped out a century of American history devoted to preventing corporate corruption of our democracy.”

Writing about the ruling, Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy described it as “a revolution in the law,” one that has been in the works for years thanks to conservative activism.

“Today’s decision is a huge gift to corporations from a Supreme Court that has been radicalized by right-wing ideology, whose political agenda was made obvious in the Bush v. Gore case and whose very political decision today only makes things worse.”

I really don’t think it’s possible to grasp the enormity of the situation. But then, if nothing changes, I think we’ll really start to see it as soon as the election cycle heats up. If you don’t make an active effort to tune out political advertisement, you’ll be saddled with it – and you may even be surprised to find out that the company you work for or patronize is throwing several times your salary behind a political candidate you’d never support.

[ Supreme Court's 'Radical and Destructive' Decision Hands Over Democracy to the Corporations ]
Source: AlterNet