Free Speech Really Free Only for the Wealthy

The wealthy and the powerful don't need a guarantee of free speech: their money and power give them that.

Free speech is for everyone else, and especially the impoverished, the despised, the maginalized.

It's also for human beings. Not fish, not flowers, not mountain buttes. And not corporations.

No surprise that one of the most corrupt and despicable repug lawyers of a time overpopulated with corrupt and despicable repug lawyers doesn't get that.

From wealthy corporations to strict religious groups, society’s “disfavored” figures must still be afforded the right of free speech and religion, former Clinton-era Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr said Monday.

During a lecture at the University of Louisville law school, Starr cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision allowing corporations to spend unrestricted amounts on political commercials, arguing to do otherwise would violate their free speech rights.

Critics of the January ruling, which stemmed from a legal fight over an anti-Hillary Clinton film, worry it will allow rich corporations to swamp elections. But Starr said the U.S. shouldn’t restrict speech based on which group or person is making it, arguing that such policies lead to censorship.

Starr also cited a case to be heard next month by the high court over whether Hastings College in San Francisco can refuse to recognize and fund a Christian student group because it excludes gays, lesbians and non-Christians. The college has a policy requiring that all students groups must be open to all students.

Starr's a wingnut freakazoid who's perfectly fine with giant corporations turning this country into a nation of blindly obedient and dependent drones.

He and his CEO buddies are hoping you don't figure out that corporate money in elections is the single greatest threat to American democracy, as Bill Moyers made clear in his piece a few weeks ago on Money and Politics.

Heather at Crooks and Liars:

Bill Moyers thinks we're aren't going to know what hit us with this recent Supreme Court ruling and our money in politics, and sadly I agree with him. It has been the corporate takever of our democracy.

BILL MOYERS: Over the course of a long career in journalism, I've covered this story of money in politics more than any other. From time to time, I've been hopeful about a change for the better, but truth is, it just keeps getting uglier every year.
Those who write the checks keep buying the results they want at the expense of the public. As a reputedly self-governing democracy, we desperately need to address the problems that we‘ve created for ourselves, but money makes impossible the reforms that might save us.

Nothing in this country seems to be working to anyone's satisfaction except the wealth machine that rewards those who game the system. Unless we break their grip on our political institution, their power to buy the agenda they want no matter the cost to everyone else, we're finished as a functioning democracy.

In this I am sympathetic to the people who show up at tea party rallies asking what happened to their jobs, their pensions, their security — the America they believed in. What's happened, says the political scientist Sheldon Wolin, is the increasing cohabitation of state and corporate power.

This is why I find the supreme court ruling so preposterous and ominous. Five radical judges have taken a giant step toward legitimating the corporate takeover of democracy. "One person, one vote" — stop kidding yourself. As I once heard a very rich oilman tell congress after he paid $300,000 to the democratic party to get a moment of President Clinton's ear, "Money is a bit more than a vote." The huge sums of money that already flood our elections will now be multiplied many times over, most likely in secret.

Just this week, that indispensable journalistic website Talking Points Memo.com reported that an influential Washington lobbying firm is alerting corporate clients on how to use trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce as pass-throughs to dump unlimited amounts of cash directly into elections. They can specifically advocate or oppose a candidate — right up to election day — while keeping a low profile to prevent "public scrutiny" and negative press coverage. We'll never know what hit us, and like the titanic, we'll go down but with even fewer lifeboats.

Texas gadfly Jim Hightower has been exposing the destructive effects of money in politics for decades. The latest issue of the Hightower Lowdown is devoted to how We the People can fight and overturn the Citizens United decision.

It's subscription only, but online it's only $10 per year and worth ten times that. If you wonder where the spirit of Molly Ivins came to rest, it's at the Lowdown.