Supreme Court rules in favor of corporations "influencing elections"

The Supreme Court ruled today that corporations in the United States have the right to free speech, including the right to spend millions on campaign commercials for candidates they support.

The ruling derives from the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which actually had nothing to do with the ruling that corporations have the right to fund campaign ads - for the last 100 years corporations have been deemed citizens and therefore forbidden to spend millions - possibly even billions - of dollars to influence campaigns thanks to an earlier ruling by the Supreme Court.

Citizens United originally brought the suite before the Supreme Court to rule that its anti-Hillary Clinton movie, called "Hillary: The Movie," was not considered political speech under the law and thus didn't need to end its television advertisements for the film with disclosures that they had funded the film. In the ruling, the Supreme Court rejected Citizens United's arguments that groups need not disclose who funds such propaganda (yes, only right-wing organizations like Citizens United would try to hide who funded a movie so they are not responsible for the lies conveyed in such a film), ruling that such disclosures were required for organizations like Citizens United under the constitution. It's now apparent that Citizens United never had any interest in obtaining such a ruling, but rather wanted to open up the doors for corporations to flood the airwaves with multi-million dollar campaigns ads for candidates.

The decision, however, will now allow corporations to run their own advertisements for or against political candidates, as long as they are branded by the corporation and the candidates themselves.

The big question right now is, 'what is to stop Exxon from spending millions of their billion dollars yearly profits on commercials for pro-drilling candidates'? Or Pepsi or Coke from supporting candidates who don't support a new tax on soda products? This is a truly disappointing decision out of the Supreme Court, even if it has a majority of conservative judges. Not that it won't benefit liberals as much as it will benefit conservatives in the end, but it is just another way for these billion dollar corporations to influence our lives through money - as if years of lobbying has not cost us enough as citizens already - can you say "death to affordable health care for all". And as if the media doesn't already have enough influence on the outcome of elections in the first place.

The good news is that some members of Congress are already calling for a changing of the constitution in order to overthrow the Supreme Court's decision. Either way, corporations still may be reluctant to finance such commercials for candidates they support - or those who support their agenda - because of the possibility that if per say Exxon was to support someone like Sarah Palin for president in an election, people on the left might actually begin to boycott their products. And if that is the case, you will never see this guy paying for gas produced or sold by Exxon again - not that I try not to purchase products from them in the first place, but I will make it a point to end such practice once and for all. If the decision stands without Congress getting involved, corporations will not only be corrupting our politicians, but they also will be corrupting us citizens as well.