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So, yesterday, Thursday Jan 21st 2010, a decision was made by the Supreme court that, IMHO, is a devastating blow to democracy.
That basic upshot is that the court have given corporations and unions that freedom of speech rights on campaign funding. I know the people who read this part of the Costa forums are intelligent enough to understand that, but just in case I will go into more details.
There has been nearly 100 yrs of rulings, and laws put in place to try to prevent/limit corruption and the buying of politicians. With this decision, corporations with lots of money (Big Old, Medical industries, insurances and banks etc) will be able to buy politicians. They will be about to drop ungodly amounts of money into the campaigns of the people they want voted in. Do you think they will be doing this for the best interest of you or themselves? Do you think X politician will care more about you or the company that gave him/her $10 million to win X seat?
"But Taz, people are smart, they get to make the final decision, they get to cast the votes!"
So. There has been study after study that people are sheep. Each time these studies show 70-80% of the people are sheep (AKA Sheeple), and though most of the people who will read this fall into the remaining 20-30%, we are in the minority. Peoples votes are easily swayed with the right advertising. If they weren't, they would not spend so much on ads due to them not working.... but they do.
American politics has always been heavily influenced by who can spend the most money to win. That money though has always been watched and limited to a certain degree. Now that limit has gone.
What happens when big oil starts charging high prices again like they did a few years ago, and the people were starting to say "Hey, they got record profits, investigate em Washington!". There will be no investigations because they will own enough people in the House/Senate/Local Governments.
What about Presidential elections. McCain ran on $84 million, Obama ran on $500 or so million. That money was a big contributing factor. So what happens if Big Oil say "Hey, Palin wants to allow us to drill in all these nature places, lets give her hundreds of millions", and a knucklehead like her gets voted in, in 2012. Some may say thats unlikely, but it can now be a strong possibility.
Not other Supreme Court decision in our live times will have as great an impact as this one. You might not see it right away, or notice how it works, but it will still be there. This is a very big nail in the coffin we call Democracy.
Discuss.
TLDR - Politicians can now be bought out right by the vast wealth of corporate American, so F U democracy.
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