Court rejects corporate campaign spending limits

[Darrell]

The Supreme Court on Monday reaffirmed its 2-year-old decision allowing corporations to spend freely to influence elections. The justices struck down a Montana law limiting corporate campaign spending.

By a 5-4 vote, the court's conservative justices said the decision in the Citizens United case in 2010 applies to state campaign finance laws and guarantees corporate and labor union interests the right to spend freely to advocate for or against candidates for state and local offices.

The majority turned away pleas from the court's liberal justices to give a full hearing to the case because massive campaign spending since the January 2010 ruling has called into question some of its underpinnings.

The same five justices said in 2010 that corporations have a constitutional right to be heard in election campaigns. The decision paved the way for unlimited spending by corporations and labor unions in elections for Congress and the president, as long as the dollars are independent of the campaigns they are intended to help. The decision, grounded in the freedom of speech, appeared to apply equally to state contests.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/U...5-10-07-37

[bean]

I read Brian Schweitzer's letter Saturday. This saddens me.
Montana's law is over 100 years old and it was put in place to stop a copper mine magnate from buying state legislators, 10 grand at a time. It has been very effective but now as Schweitzer said the stink from DC will enter Montana too.
Let's just give it all to the corporations. Why not. They're people too.

Money needs to leave our political system. Fast. We are on pace to have the wealthiest corporations buy every election, legislator, rule maker, what have you.

But I didn't expect much better from this court. Truly a friend of the 1% crowd...

[bean]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/04/opinio...itics.html