Supreme Ignorance

A corporation is not a person. It can neither breathe nor can it vote. Common sense tells me this is so. Apparently though the highest court in the land disagrees. According to a recent vote of 5 to 4 a corporate entity has the right to donate large sums of cash to any and all politicians, no matter what office they hold and regardless if they are incumbents or not. This decision by the majority of the nine wise souls in Washington is based upon nothing more than a blind adherence to their political ideology.

I would like to be more optimistic about the judge's motivations but their decision defies all reason in my book. Let me mention the one and only one reason I can see for corporations to be allowed to act as individuals. It is true, of course, that what politicians do may affect, either positively or negatively, corporate profits. This cannot be sufficient cause for the court's ruling. The overwhelming harm that this decision will cause outweighs the one pro argument I mentioned above.

The whole idea behind voting is that each is no more or less important than any other. One person gets one vote. What could be more fair? Even when individuals donate money to various candidates there is a limit to how much and how often. Realistically one citizen cannot sway an election any more than another. The supreme court has radically changed what was, to quote Fox News, a fair and balanced process. Corporate powers may now dip into ever growing war chests to virtually ensure their choices are either elected to or remain in their respective offices.

This goes against everything the founding fathers held sacred. In no way did they intend that just because a company grew so large and employed so many that they would somehow be entitled to a separate set of rights from their own employees. Capitalism is a fine thing which enables much of the higher quality of life we all enjoy. I do not have a problem with any company's growth no matter how large. What I see as so abhorrent is the idea that a company, made up of people, is somehow ascribed rights as if it were a person.

The truth of the matter is that, even when a corporation spends its money, it is only the few at the top who get to decide how it is allocated. It is not as if each employee gets to have a say in the matter. It is quite possible that the people whom a corporation support politically may be detrimental to the very people that helped to create profit in the first place. This is how it has always been. Those at the top of the ladder care about those underneath insofar as they continue to help to keep them at the top. This may seem cynical but I cannot be sanguine toward the issue of more money equals more power. It is from this that inequality is borne.

I truly believe that the majority decision of the court was nothing more than giving the members of the Republican party what they wanted. Little thought was put into the decision as those who put them on the court were appeased. This is political partisanship at its worst. There has been a feeling by many, with various court decisions as evidence, that most of the court's pronouncements are being divided along party lines. It is true that many landmark cases heard by the highest court have helped to right many of society's wrongs. In this case though they have done the opposite by legalizing and legitimizing a new form of inequality.