A Blow to the Democratic Process
Posted on 02. Feb, 2010 by Luke Niforatos in Featured, Op-Ed
Destroying democracy isn’t as hard as it used to be. With the January 21, 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling 5-4 in favor of unlimited political campaign donations, it seems as though all one must do to corrode the very values this nation was founded upon is dress up the travesty in the façade of progressivism.
Why is this court ruling so abhorrent? First, with this ruling any corporation or pharmaceutical company will be able to use its vast wealth to support candidates who will make their lives easier and increase their profits. Second, it creates an imbalance in the political process. Not only will candidates who support coddling large corporations have an unfair advantage, they will be able to essentially weight the elections. Third and finally, corporations are one giant step closer to being legally treated as, literally, a single person.
The theory of corporate personhood, to which the majority of the Supreme Court justices quite obviously subscribe, is a shameful fallacy. Corporate personhood is essentially the idea that an entire corporation may be regarded as a single individual unit, or person. If one were to follow this line of reasoning, then the government would have to throw every single person working for Enron in jail for fraud. That is no exaggeration. If the corporation is to be treated as an individual entity, then every individual working for the corporation— every CEO, secretary, janitor and cleaner— will have to pay for the actions of one or two corporate executives. After all, they are deemed parts of the whole ‘person’ in accordance with this theory. Obviously, the idea of corporate personhood makes no sense.
The first priority and the very definition of a corporation is to generate maximum profits for its shareholders. There is nothing wrong with this, it is simply the way America’s economy and businesses must be conducted in order to generate jobs and succeed. However, the job of obtaining profit in the market should be as far as a corporation is allowed to go. Personhood and unlimited campaign donations cross the line.
When corporations are allowed to get involved in political realms, as they have been and are now increasingly doing, they are still only focused on doing one thing: generating profit. That means that no matter how unethical, awful, and unpatriotic the candidate is, if that candidate supports the best interests of the company (i.e. profit) then he or she will receive the complete backing of the corporation’s extensive wealth.
To put it lightly, this is a huge problem.
As a result, things in Washington, D.C. are heating up. During his 2010 State of the Union Address, President Obama admonished the Supreme Court for the ruling in a rare moment of Presidential anger (which many believe to be an insult directed at the constitutional balance of powers).
Who can blame him?
It is truly a disappointment to see this decision in favor of corporate pandering, especially with the supposed new movement in politics under the Obama administration. President Obama had just recently selected Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the hailed progressive judge, to the Supreme Court. Now, shortly afterward, the cause takes a saddening step backwards.
It is obvious, now, that the people need to demand far more transparency than ever before when deciding the upcoming elections. Checking where the money is coming from and how each candidate conducts his or her business is now, more than ever, the burden of the people.
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