We need grassroots support for a constitutional amendment. Groups supporting this include Public Citizen [ http://www.citizen.org/ ], Voter Action [ http://www.voteraction.org/ ], and the Campaign to Legalize Democracy [ http://www.movetoamend.org/ ]

Gary

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
-- John Stuart Mill

>>Bizarrely, the five court corporatists seemed to think that their sneak attack on America's democratic ideals was so cleverly done that it would be meekly accepted by the public and even widely applauded. Hardly. The ink of their signatures on this absurd opinion wasn't dry before the justices were pelted with ridicule.

The bloggers will vent, the ridicule will be heaped and then we'll meekly accept it. That's the way things work in modern America. Someone needs to clue Mr. Hightower in on this ugly reality.

-'Sure enough, Schumer has started by declaring that he wants a reform that can get "bipartisan support" in the Senate"

The Democrats will do nothing. And even if they reversed this latest court decision, The US congress was already hugely corrupt at that point, how do you think those corporate supreme court judges got confirmed in the first place?

This is probably the best heeled Congress ever. With so much money pouring in one hardly knows which bandwagon to get on first..Tons of money from Wall Street, from the military complex, from insurance companies. It must be hard to keep it all sorted out, difficult to remember which bill to vote for or against, but, Hey, its a blitz and everyone is doing it and if they do not get reelected, so what, they will be rewarded by any one of the 'donors' they have serviced.

Another step towards Fascism?

When the mountain crumbles, those at the top have the farthest to fall.

It will be interesting to see if any of them can walk on air.

Pity the rich and powerful. Their descent will not be slow.

Bipartisan, yes I am sssooo glad our politicians have heard our repeated vociferous pleas for BIPARTISANSHIP.

Thousands have marched to the gates of our ever so sensitive President crying Bipartisanship, risking prison and beatings.

Thank the Goddess we have politicians who heed our pleas.

Perhaps if someone would bother to chant end the endless wars, or single payer, or jobs now, or save our homes. or tax the rich Obomber would respond with the same elegant sensitivity to the peoples wishes as he does to the mass populist movement demanding bipartisanship. Snark!

Anyone who thinks there is hope in the Democratic Party, there's money waiting for you in a Nigerian Bank.

Would it help if we were to provide that corporate money spent on broadcasting propaganda, i.e. any communication that is not a commercial, be disallowed as a business expense? Such a provision could be established by administrative rule making without new legislation, could it not? IRS already has the authority to define what expenses are deductible.

One could argue that it would not violate the First Amendment, since it does not regulate speech directly; it just says if you want to propagandize you must do so with your own money. After all, we real people must do it that way.

I was arguing online with a pro-abortionist last night, and he kept maintaining that a fetus is NOT a human being.

Meanwhile, General Motors is.

I think there are many problems with letting money control education.

Votaire once said something to the effect of "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Why is everyone so up in arms about the Citizens United ruling? Does anyone think corporations were not involved in our politics before this ruling?

We live under corporate rule and will continue to do so until we stop listening to what they say. The answer is to stop listening, not to try to get them to stop talking. Trying to get them to stop talking by taking away their right to speak hasn't worked in the past and it won't work in the future regardless if Citizens United is overturned or not.

"Trying to get them to stop talking by taking away their right to speak hasn't worked in the past and it won't work in the future regardless if Citizens United is overturned or not."

When Voltaire spoke the words that you quote, he was defending the rights of individual people to express distasteful and anti-social opinions. He was NOT defending large corporations use of mass media pulpits to manipulate public opinion through mass brainwashing - which is what we have now.

That the Supreme Court defends mass brainwashing means that the US needs a new constitution if it wishes its citizens to avoid Modern slavery. Though - considering that the US was created as a slave-supporting entity - perhaps the enslavement of Americans by media isn't such an aberration in the end.

Corporations where granted "personhood" in 1886, not 2010; the column makes it sound like this is a brand new problem...

This is just a small part of the problem. A plutorcacy is defined as the rule of the wealthy - and the USA is a form of elected plutocracy. We "elect" people who are pre-selected and vetted by the very wealthy.

When access to power, the legal process and the democratic process is made to be so expensive that only the very wealthy have access, as we have had in the USA since the beginning, how can we call this society a democracy with a straight face in the first place?

It seems quite a few people that post here claim to admire the likes of: Zinn, Chomsky, Hedges, Hill, Wolin, Parenti, and others. At the same time many of these folks still maintain the assumption that there is democratic accountability and genuine democratic choice. I find this irrational and I simply cannot understand it.

The Thirteenth Amendment does not explicitly prohibit the buying and selling of human beings. It does prohibit slavery, however, slavery in legal precedent pertains not to the contracts of buying and selling, but to the involuntary restraint upon the enslaved person. (This was the substance of the 1772 Somerset ruling by Lord Fairfax banning slavery in England and leading American slaveowners to head the cause for American independence, an issue that had been an unthinkable dead letter for a hundred years and would have never come to anything without their commitment.) That an exception was made for convicts indicates clearly that the involuntary restraint issue was primary to the drafting of the amendment. Corporate "persons" would be under voluntary restraint, and thus would allow themselves to be bought and sold, except in the case of the "hostile" takeover.

Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations said "joint stock companies," or corporations, are inherently irresponsible, and that he could only think of a small number of commercial initiatives that justified their existence. He also wrote that, where these irresponsible enterprises could be justified, they should be subject to careful public oversight and government control.

Tick, tick, tick goes the Amurkan economic and political time bomb.

A lot of the smartest members of the American Left are over-the-hill, tired old men and women of the Old Left who've given up pushing for revolution and are just waiting for the whole Machine to implode--hoping against hope that globo-capitalism won't destroy so much of the planet by then that human beings can't survive in what's left it.

America destroys creativity here and resists it abroad. We need more people to think outside our capitalist manufactured, poultry processing plant writ global consensus. The central problem of our time as progressives in America is getting ideas from outside the corporatist box to enough of the masses to stimulate their creativity and desire for something morally and ecologically better.

I still think one of the best options to do this is for as many non-profit progressive, socialist, parecon groups as possible to obtain low power FM radio station licenses and blanket medium and large markets to compete in potential audience size with the corporate media. I've worked in TV, radio and film production and radio is by far the most fun media to work in. We need the equivalent of a new and more politically scathing and informative Firesign Theater, Colbert Report, Jon Stewart Show, Monty Python, etc., all over the airwaves coming in ten thousand different colors of the Left.

No matter whether your message is for people to grow and buy food locally, become energy self-sufficient, convert their old diesel to bio-diesel, organize local protests around key local issues or help organize a new umbrella progressive movement or Party I think low power FM is a great way to go.

It may be one of the only methods to get out our message to enough people because American capitalism has become so treacherous and is becoming so totalitarian that it is shutting windows of opportunity down faster and faster.

"With a cry of "Shazam!" the court ruled that, henceforth, every corporation — from Wal-Mart to Wall Street — is entitled to "speak" by spending unlimited sums from their treasuries to elect or defeat candidates for any and all public offices in our land, from city council to the presidency."

Which means that the CEOs and boards of directors who "speak" for this mindless construct are essentially telling it how its money will be used, which candidates should get elected and which ones should be defeated.

Wouldn't this be a form of coercion or perhaps criminal coercion via "impairing" the repuatation of the mindless corporation it speaks for? Is it also possible that there's a case for extortion here?

How are we to know that these humans are acting in the interest of "corporate personhood's" shareholders and not their own self-interest?

"So, with eight of 10 Americans decrying the decree and nearly as many demanding that it be reversed, we can expect swift and decisive action from Congress. Right?

Uh ... no. First, Republican leaders (who've consistently proven to be tail-wagging kowtowers to corporate power) flatly say they will oppose any legislation to restrict the ruling. Second, Democrats have designated Sen. Schumer to lead their effort to undo the decision. Schumer is a notorious CEO-hugging Democrat who serves as the party's chief shaker of the corporate money tree, so sending him into this battle is like going lion hunting with a flyswatter."

One wonders whether the politicians are terminally stupid, or just terminally corrupt. Probably both.

Time to get into the streets in nonviolent protests. It may take a few months, but I think we'll see mass protests by the autumn. I'm looking for groups willing to march, and trying to contact them. So far the response is slow, but it should pick up soon. Anybody finding such groups, please post them here ...

Why is anyone surprised at this court ruling?

You were warned with the election of Ronald Reagan. Remember he was the celebrity from Death Valley Days. He broke the unions, changed SS taxation, made tax cuts for the rich respectable, and fought illegal wars.

How can anyone be surprised?

Our liberal tolerance is the weakness conservatives exploit.