The supreme court ended limits on corporate spending for US political campaigns on Thursday, a ruling which will effect this year's congressional races and the 2012 presidential contest.
Who wants to buy an election?
Al Jezeera is the only one with decent coverage of it.
"Life is what happens while you're making plans for later."
Midnyte_Ragebringer wrote:Not surprising the Dems would change the rules to give them an edge. Hilarious.
Corporations can spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, a landmark decision denounced by President Barack Obama for giving special interests more power.
Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele praised the ruling and said, "Free speech strengths our democracy."
I've got 99 problems and I'm not dealing with any of them - Lay-Z
President Obama called it “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”
Yeah.. Those "dems" really pushed it through. After all that time gone you'd think you'd have evolved past the retard stage. Nope.
Yeah this is absurd... I can't believe it's actually happened.
Pretty sad they are able to sneak it in under the radar being as people are preoccupied with who Tiger Woods is fucking and what some Republican no one has heard of says about his dirty little slut daughters.
The decision's impact will be felt most immediately in the upcoming midterm elections, especially because it comes just two days after Democrats lost a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. But it does leave in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions, and it doesn't touch the ban on unlimited corporate and union donations to political parties.
Didn't they just essentially say that the First Amendment Right to free speech by the corporations and unions was being violated? They didn't open campaigns up for corporate donors, but they do negate laws keeping corps/unions from advertising or promoting a candidate directly.
Aabidano wrote:Al Jezeera is the only one with decent coverage of it.
Now I didn't search all over... But the NY Times had "coverage of it". Decent or not depends on the individual however.
When I heard of it on radio (Pacifica news) I couldn't find it anyplace but there via google, it popped up on MSNBC later and got shuffled off to small print. Whatevah.
Still isn't on Fox, way down in teh small print on CNN.
"Life is what happens while you're making plans for later."
Everyone will be reaping massive profits from this. Last I checked, the dems had huge support in Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Last I checked, those pockets rivaled oil, healthcare and pharmacieuticals..
Aab, your problem is that you're looking at Fox News, MSNBC and CNN. Coverage of this has been all over the political news. It was the top headline on Politico for awhile, and you can find plenty of coverage on The New Republic or the Weekly Standard. It is also, of course, the top news on most legal sites. If you're interested, you can check out SCOTUSBlog (just the facts), Volokh Conspiracy (libertarian-conservative-leaning) Concurring Opinions (liberal leaning) or ACSBlog (liberal leaning). I haven't checked out NRO lately, but I'm sure it's heavily covered at The Corner (right wing).
Frankly, anyone who thinks that this opinion came out of nowhere has nobody but themselves to blame. This case has been the most heavily discussed of the Supreme Court term; it's been debated and covered on a routine basis since July. I can forgive y'all for not closely following legal blogs, but had you been following outlets that provide good coverage of political news, you would have heard about this by now. If you want to be informed about important political issues, take some time to read political news. Every major daily newspaper with good political coverage has published multiple articles about this case, starting in September at the latest. Stop watching cable news.
As to the actual case:
I read the opinion; it's absurd. Justice Kennedy-- one of the two or three weakest judges on the Court, as far as tight reasoning and lucid opinion-writing is concerned-- writes the majority opinion. Justice Stevens-- without a doubt one of the two top judges on the Court-- writes the dissent. So Kennedy's opinion gets BLASTED. It's not a fair fight; they should have assigned Scalia to write the majority.
Justice Thomas writes a wholly nonsensical separate opinion in which he opines that it's illegal to even require funding disclosures (an issue that wasn't even before the Court) on the basis of alleged harassment of Prop 8 opponents in California (a situation that wasn't before the Court, and based on facts that are not in the Court's record).
This is not necessarily a liberal/conservative issue. Depending on how you see it, the case can be framed one of two ways: as striking down government regulation of speech, or as the court allowing corporations to drastically increase their power over politics. Liberals have thus far been united in opposition (no surprise) while conservatives have been split (among others, Olympia Snowe and John McCain have criticized the decision).
The sentiment that Animalor expresses-- that this won't benefit either party more than the other-- is straight-up wrong. In terms of pure electoral positioning, this is a HUGE win for Republicans. That's not really a point that's subject to serious disagreement.
Sueven wrote:The sentiment that Animalor expresses-- that this won't benefit either party more than the other-- is straight-up wrong. In terms of pure electoral positioning, this is a HUGE win for Republicans. That's not really a point that's subject to serious disagreement.
Not surprising the Repubs would change the rules to give them an edge. Hilarious.
Maybe. Part of Obama's advantage was his innovative and successful fundraising given the existing regulatory infrastructure, and who knows how it would have shaken out with a different set of rules. It would have made some things easier on McCain. But, considering the margin of Obama's win and the dynamics of the election, I doubt it would have had much of an impact on the result.
Wasn't this about the McCain-Feingold Act? I guess it could have helped him since groups would have been able to advertise for him and against Obama, but I don't see him wanting them after he co-wrote the bill against it.
This was a challenge to a provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, aka McCain-Feingold. The vehicle for challenging BCRA was an appeal of the Federal Election Commission's ruling that Hillary: The Movie was a campaign advertisement masquerading as a film, and thus subject to the provision of BCRA that prohibited corporate entities from unfettered campaign spending during election cycles. The legal brouhaha regarding Hillary: The Movie was sent up specifically to challenge this BCRA provision, so yes, it stemmed from that anti-Hillary documentary, but that was just the club used to kill a spending restriction reviled by big-money corporatist scum.
"When I was a kid, my father told me, 'Never hit anyone in anger, unless you're absolutely sure you can get away with it.'" - Russel Ziskey
