Monday, January 25, 2010

Corporations aren't people

I'm depressed about the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations have free speech rights. It seems blindingly obvious to me that corporations have a disproportionate amount of power in this country, and that when they are allowed free reign in the political arena their voice drowns out reasonable, factual discourse. We've seen it in Oregon where there's no limits on campaign contributions, and tobacco companies and other interests win battles through lies. (The fact that you can't ban lying in political speech is another thing that frustrates me, but I can accept that.)

But the fact is that "one person, one vote" isn't the way things are. It's "one dollar, one vote". And huge multinational corporations have most of the dollars. It was unethical that rich people had more say than other people. It's a crime that their companies are being allowed to vote now.

I hope Congress can do something to fix this - some sort of law or even a constitutional amendment limiting the freedom of corporations. Because the free market does a crappy job of keeping poop out of our food, lead out of our toys, and lies out of our politics. We need some reasonable amount of regulation, and if the Supreme Court says the current Constitution doesn't allow that, then the Constitution needs to change.

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