A Huge Step Backward

Groups of people are not individual people.

Makes sense, right? Groups of people are actually many individuals, joined together for some particular purpose or function.

Corporations are not people, either. Right? Corporations--joint stock companies--don't "exist" in nature. They are granted the right to exist by the state, upon submission of articles of incorporation that explain their proposed function (usually some business or social welfare activity); the state maintains the right to revoke their right to exist, should they operate in ways that are outside of that charter and/or are detrimental to the common welfare. Corporations are not people. They are not independent, political agents. They are not even "groups" of people freely associating. They are entities created for a specific purpose, and that purpose alone. They do not have the same rights as do individuals--rights delineated in our culture by the US Constitution.

Either I'm wrong, or five justices of the Supreme Court are. Five conservatives on the Supreme Court today said that, actually, corporations have the same status under the law as people--the same rights, guaranteed by the Constitution--when it comes to exercising free speech and contributing money to campaigns.

This judgment opens the floodgates for corporations (which in our culture have become increasing powerful, rapacious, unaccountable, fraudulent, unpatriotic, greedy, manipulative, tax-evading, labor-and-land-exploiting entities) to have unlimited access to fund candidates in political campaigns. Exxon/Mobil, for example, can use its profits ($40 billion in 2008) to support candidates for, say, the US senate, based on the candidate's commitment to vote for policies that increase company profitability ("drill, baby..." in wildlife refuges).

OK, you say, so what? So they give a lot of money. Are our politicians so crass and insincere that they can be bought by corporate money? Oh, baby, are they ever.

An interesting world is shaping up. Corporations are changing the rules of the game to ensconce themselves as the most powerful entities on the planet. I'm not a conspiracy theorist--just someone who believes, with Reinhold Niebuhr, that the will to power has yet to voluntarily find its own limits.

The result of today ruling is that, if this is not already the lot of American politics, there will be two kinds of politicians emerging: those that are "paid for" and those that are not. I can see divisions emerging in both major parties. The "paid for" politicians will almost always win elections because corporate monies will drag them to victory.

And there are going to be two kinds of voters: those who will allow their votes to be "paid for" by corporate shills acting as public servants, and those who will vote for candidates who choose to receive only public funding. I, for one, will be among the latter.

Today, American politics just went from embarrassingly awful to downright sinister. It is an affront to the Creator who "endowed [individuals--not rapacious corporations] with inalienable rights" and the God of the prophets who abhors injustice. Do you get the sense that I think this is bad? Good.

I feel like I need to do something about this. What can be done? Dear God, what do we do about this one?