Last month I used this  space to plead for patience with President Obama’s initial bipartisan caution–but with the explicit expectation that “events on the ground” would present occasions for public pressure to make his administration pursue his promises of change more aggressively.  Such events have now occurred.
Loss of a  Massachusetts Senate seat,  marked by the massive infusion of last minute cash by special interests Obama had previously courted, witnessed major defection of independents and  perhaps some progressives as well.  Then on Thursday, January 21, five members of the Supreme Court combined to turn over our electoral process at all levels  to global corporate wealth and power.   President Obama will now have to clarify whether the change he adopted as a brand in 2008 was electoral rhetoric or a political agenda for whose achievement he will have to pull all stops.    Otherwise “we the people”—“natural-born Americans” in a very literal sense– will be supplanted by artificial “persons” created by governments for commercial purposes and gratuitously given predominance by the same Rule of Five that selected George W. Bush  in 2000.  Hopefully—and restoration of hope is crucial—an Obama-led movement to reverse this constitutional coup will bring independents back into a coalition capable of addressing the continued deterioration of our general economy, something acquiescence in Bush policies has failed to do.
Justice Anthony Kennedy’s logic in Citizens United v. FEC overturns precedents going back to the early history of the Supreme Court.  It makes a mockery of the “originalism,” deference, and modesty proclaimed by those who concurred in his opinion.  Because it extends First Amendment protection to already over-mighty “persons” created by governments, the decision produces a constitutional, not just a political, crisis.  It amounts to a coup because the case could have been decided using far more limited grounds.  Defenders of the decision are downplaying it, as the Ventura County Star did, as a so-so adjustment in campaign finance law.  Or they claim it puts business on an equal footing with labor and opens political space for non-profits, who are also allowed to contribute to independent, partisan causes right down to Election Day.  But given the disparity of economic power that has mushroomed since the “Reagan revolution,” this decision smacks of
legitimizing what Warren Buffet once called the “class war” that “we” –the rich –” have already won.”  It enshrines the radical Republican views of Newt Gingrich and others for whom plutocracy naturally evolves from democracy in a winner-take-all society.
President Obama repudiated this judicial usurpation in his State of the Union speech.  Resistance to it will not be limited to Democrats, though Democratic legislators have the initial burden of curtailing its effect before its full electoral impact is realized.  The only full answer to this decision is a constitutional amendment restricting constitutional personhood to human beings who are actually born, live, and breathe.  To contact one organization already sponsoring such an amendment, visit freespeechforpeople.org.  Acquiescence in the Rule of Five’s dictum repudiates constitutional government as Republicans such as Trust-busting Theodore Roosevelt realized a century ago.   It is time for another popular assault on the tyranny of “trusts” controlling elected officials with the backing of Supreme Court justices who have lost their democratic compass.
Allen Dirrim