Ten days ago, we reported on the Supreme Court’s impending ruling on how much of an active role corporate entities, unions and activist groups would have on political campaign finance.
Well, today the verdict is in and as a result, corporations can fork over as much as they’d like to support or oppose candidates running for president and Congress. In a move that will probably have significant impact beginning in this year’s mid-term elections and beyond, the Court ruled 5-4 in favor of lifting limits on corporate spending in campaigns. In doing so, they also reversed their own decisions that date back to the 1940’s which prohibited corporations from buying campaign ads from their own treasuries and prevented corporations from explicitly supporting candidates in campaign ads.
While Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion, “The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach,” Senator Chuck Schumer vehemently disagrees with Kennedy and his four conservative colleagues’ decision. He tells the New York Daily News, “Its poisonous to our democracy” and adds that the Supreme Court is now basically saying that “you can mainline money right from the corporate treasury onto the campaign field.”