A year ago in a blog post I argued that there should be limits on corporate speech. Events since then convince me that the Supreme Court's January 2010 evisceration of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation is an assault on the foundations of our democracy. If you still have doubts about the damage you need to know how one North Carolina billionaire has bought the North Carolina legislature. See Jane Mayer's article in this week's New Yorker. (And if you missed it, read an article about the Koch brothers by Mayer from August 2010.)
Now fund raising organizations called Super PACs are vacuuming up unlimited contributions to support the campaigns of the Republican presidential candidates and of President Obama. See this recent AP article. The article fails to point out that the first reporting deadline for these Super PACs is January 31, 2012. Only then will concerned citizens be able to see who has given to which candidates, and remember that there is no limit on the amounts. However, more and more states are advancing their primaries into January--so citizens of those states will be in the dark about campaign donor identity when they vote in the early primaries.
Libertarian billionaires such as the Koch brothers and Art Pope (the fellow who owns the North Carolina legislature) often defend their shenanigans with references to philosophers of the British Enlightenment, particularly Jon Locke and Adam Smith. For what Smith really thought about businessmen in government see my post from Christmas last year.
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