“Money is speech”
That phrase is the takeaway of the 1976 Buckley decision that opened the doors to the rampant political destruction that’s ensued. The individual behind it, a tobacco lawyer wrote a memo in 1971 about how billionaires could take over the U.S. President Nixon would appoint that person to the Supreme Court in 1972. It’s safe so say that having become a “Justice” Powell was eager to use his influence and it shows up in Buckley. Two years later Republicans on SCOTUS decided Buckley hadn’t gone far enough and in Boston v Bellotti expanded the concept of “money is speech – and can be used to buy politicians” to corporations as well as billionaires. This time Powell himself wrote the majority opinion.
“Originalists” which so many SCOTUS conservatives have claimed to be in my lifetime claimed their rulings were based in our founder’s thinking. Nothing could be further from the truth. In our first 200 years the legislative and judicial branches had never given any suggestion of what the Justices were claiming. In fact, no less than Jefferson wrote:
“Those seeking profits, were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government.”
However in the 1970s “Justices” decided to create their own version of what the founders thought even though there was nothing to back up their claim, and even evidence (Jefferson was but one of our founders to voice concerns about corruption) to the contrary. My point is that more recent cases from the Federalist Society approved appointees that began infecting SCOTUS decades ago didn’t start this kind of crap. They’ve merely gotten license through increased numbers to make a problem worse. Citizen’s United and the dark money it’s unleashed springs from a long and sordid history of conservative, corporate SCOTUS picks rewriting history to rewrite the law on campaign finance and with it breathtaking political corruption. Starting back in the latter half of the 1970s.
Then Reagan came along and things really started getting out of hand. Coincidence? Of course not. Even before Citizen’s United there were sometimes cracks about how politicians, especially many on Capitol Hill should wear sponsor logos like NASCAR drivers. But for a long time the buying of politicians, the corruption seemed mostly limited to Congress/elected officials. We now know better.
Conservative “Justices” clearly are as open to being bribed as Congress Critters. If, as has become the case money is speech some have enough money to buy up all the speech. You know the saying “some people are more equal than others” and that’s especially true of the billionaire class. They can afford so much “speech” that no one but they get heard in the halls of power. Including the Supreme Court. What’s happened since Buckley is, as the title pic says proof that speech is no longer free. With people who possess the power to affect the entire country, and sometimes even more a handful of people can buy up all the speech they need to stack things in their favor.
There’s a long but worthy of every minute it takes to read article by Raw Story that shows just how widespread the corruption has gotten, and how pervasive the negative effects for those who aren’t filthy rich truly are. There’s a saying “Only in America” which I’ve heard sometimes in my life, almost always in a context of something good that is possible here that isn’t in other countries. That’s no longer true – the part about the phrase being applied to good. On the contrary. Now there’s a long list of appalling things that are “only in America. The linked article (please read it!) list is long and sickening and with each issue, from kids throughout the country practicing active shooter drills to people no longer being able to afford housing and food at the same time, or the soaring costs of education, or health care that doesn’t force countless people to cut prescription meds in half or skip doses because even if they have health care their co-pays are too high. And after each issue that’s described comes the same variation of “only in America” repeatedly noting that SCOTUS legalized political bribery and politicians are on the take. Not all, but far more than enough to ensure the system is corrupt. Rotten to the core.
What we didn’t know at the time of the Citizen’s United ruling was that this corruption had taken firm hold on SCOTUS itself. But we know it now and it’s a safe bet there is plenty more that has so far remained hidden. Billionaires no doubt HATE the thought, but the Federalist Society F**wads on SCOTUS are terrified of the prospect of, as should be the case Sheldon Whitehouse replacing Dick Durbin as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Frankly, I have my concerns about Durbin! Whitehouse has spent years doing tough, grinding work seeking out the entire conservative scheme and connecting all the dots. If he were Chairing Judiciary in a Democratically controlled Senate the explosions he’d unleash with the kinds of hearings he’d hold would be epic. And he WOULD do it which to be completely honest some Democrats might not want to have happen.
But in the end when you look at SCOTUS “shine new Ethics Code” it’s nothing but a PR ploy. Too many if not all the Republican appointees are bought and paid for. Just because from the moment Roberts unveiled it the Ethics Code has come under withering criticism and for good reason. However, absent some serious Congressional action (and as I said there might well be some bi-partisanship in wanting to avoid it) nothing is going to change.
The one hope is that Democrats have been gaining progressive influence via small donor funded campaigns. It will take time given how Congress Critters so seldom leave their positions but one day we might get to a critical mass that will provide the votes to expand SCOTUS. In the shorter term, getting a good, solid Democratic majority in the Senate can ensure a new breed of Justice makes it onto the Court. No one lives forever and both Thomas and Alito are getting up there in age. If in the next 5-10 years we flip the balance and Roberts sees the handwriting on the wall his lust for a favorable mention in the history books might just prompt him to go along with undoing some of the damage.
What can we do? Right now? Raise hell and demand Democrats in Congress and yes, the WH do so too. In particular light up Schumer and Durbin to demand a Select Committee on SCOTUS reform – headed by Sheldon Whitehouse.
This is a great essay. Money has always been an obvious benefit in politics and law. But to enshrine the idea that money = speech as bedrock constitutional law is so utterly wrong, repulsive, and destructive of our legal system, it make my blood boil every time I think about it.
Exactly. Freedumb of speech; if you can afford it. If you can’t, you’re ignored. Since Citizens United, it’s gotten perverted. “Buying speech” wasn’t what the Framers envisioned.
Maybe if the framers hadn’t initially limited the vote to white men who owned property, we wouldn’t now be facing mass extinction. There’s a trillion dollars of fossil fuels still in the ground. I’m sure they’ll just leave it there in the interest of humanity. If they aren’t stopped at the ballot box…we’re back to a bullet don’t lie…the Republicans do.
To be fair, to whom else should the right to vote have been extended in 1787? If you actually go to the Constitution, there is NO mention of a right to vote until the 15th Amendment extends the right to people without regard to “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” The right to vote had been deliberately left to the states to determine but that right was still conditional based on the elections.
For instance, some states (and territories) had extended the right to vote to women long before the 19th Amendment’s ratification in 1920 BUT that right did NOT extend to women trying to vote in “national” elections (such as US House, Senate or President). Even when the Constitution was initially ratified in 1789, some of the states allowed women the right to vote but within some 30 years or so, that right had been removed because, again, it had been an issue for the states (and, at that period in history, the US Constitution had not determined to “override” state constitutions when issues conflicted–that only happened with the 14th, ratified just a year and a half before the 15th).
Currently, we rage at the idea that “stupid” people get to vote and their vote counts. In the late 1780s, the overwhelming majority of Americans (male and female, black and white) were functionally illiterate. And most of those people were far more religious than they are today so guess who’d be VERY influential in how those people would be voting?
The “framers” you blame were themselves divided on the very issue of who should have the right to vote. They deliberately chose the term “republic” when establishing the direction for the country’s government as, at the time, “democracy” held a far more sinister connotation (the Greek word “demos” held a broader meaning of “people in general,” even a sense of “mob”) and even the classical Greek “democracy” of Athens was more “republican” in how it operated than “democratic” (i.e., only the eligible members of Athenian society could participate, not “the people” and I’ll give you three guesses as to what one major requirement, beside age, to vote in Athens was). When the “great American experiment” began, there were very few examples to emulate–most, of course, were the great societies of antiquity although there were “republics” that had emerged in the Middle Ages but their structures still held a very limited populace that actually participated in the political process and the majority were of what we would consider the “upper class” (if not the 1% then definitely the 10%) and, definitely, among only the “free men” of the society.
As to race in the early US, well, most of the states did allow free Blacks to participate (even in the slave states) but, in the North, they made up such a small percentage of the population that they were fairly irrelevant and, in the South, they were also a small percentage of the population (especially compared to the slave population). And, since the states determined voter eligibility (and, to some extent, they still do–they can throw up whatever hurdles they want as long as race, gender and age are not blatantly involved which is why it’s so tough to prove those hurdles violate voting rights that the US Constitution protects), when or if the state chose to restrict suffrage, they had that right–until 1870.
Thanks for the info. The point was this country has been set up and run by rich white men from the jump and STILL is run by rich white men like the Koch brothers. Jefferson for all his insight, keep his slave, and the MOTHER of his children, in bondage even AFTER he died. Washington kept his slave cook in bondage by moving him around. John Adams, one of the founders, ended rights after being threatened with a small rebellion. Our expectations for the nobler aspects of humanity always fall by the wayside once power and money get involved. No surprise we are where we are. In The Year Of Living Dangerously…Billy, seeing the corruption and poverty of the people, kept asking ‘what must we do?’. Great question. The answer is a mystery. Clearly voting hasn’t fixed anything with fascism on our doorstep. Oh, and although a person may be illiterate, they may have more morality than someone with a high level of education. Goebbels had a PhD and Cornell West is helping bring fascism to power. Just saying. But your info and details are good to know. History is complex.
s.c. “justices” can be impeached and removed from the bench. If ever there was a really, really, excellent reason to put super majorities of democrats into both chambers of congress, that’d be the one.
We have a saying here in Illinois.
Dick Durbin, before Durbin dicks you.
The Supreme Court, really NOT so supreme, has turned the Court into a paper tiger. It is comprised, mostly, of men who are fallow, shallow and hollow. How appropriate they would create an “ethics” document that has no meat to it and is wholly unenforceable. Anyone with half a brain knew this was coming. Free-wheeling jurists with no real allegiance to the rule of law when that law might apply to them results in precisely what we have: A Supreme Coiurt that is hollow to its core. The money that has changed hands to judicially reward the benefactors is nothing short of criminal.