Groan on the Supreme Court and Corporate/Union Election Money

Today the US Supreme Court overturned prior rulings and laws going back to 1907.   They ruled that Congress could not prohibit corporations or unions from using their own funds to campaign directly for electoral candidates as well as the McCaibn-Feingold law that prohibited issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

These quotes tell most of the story (NYTimes)
''The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach,'' Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion, joined by his four more conservative colleagues.

Strongly disagreeing, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissent, ''The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.''

''It's going to be the Wild Wild West,'' said Ben Ginsberg, a Republican attorney who has represented several GOP presidential campaigns. ''If corporations and unions can give unlimited amounts ... it means that the public debate is significantly changed with a lot more voices and it means that the loudest voices are going to be corporations and unions.'"
''It's the Super Bowl of bad decisions,'' said Common Cause president Bob Edgar, a former congressman from Pennsylvania.

“With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics,” Mr. Obama said. “It is 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.”
Courts are often placed in the position of balancing interests.   In this case it free speech (corporations are legal enetities equivalent to persons) vrs the basic democratic voting principal of one person one vote.   In this case it looks like this was not a matter of law for the conservative justices to side with "free speech" but actually a matter of their pro corporation ideology.

This decision will give additional power to corporations to do what they seem to have done to Health Care Reform.....turn it into a profit center.