Reader QUIKWRIT warns that the United States may no longer be a democracy, because of Supreme Court decisions that favor economic elites.
ALREADY AN OLIGARCHY
After researching government laws passed since Citizens United, Princeton University researcher Martin Gilens and Northwestern University researcher Benjamin Page documented that the U.S. is no longer a representative republic because the government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country’s citizens, but is instead ruled by the rich and powerful. The researchers analyzed 1,800 U.S. policies enacted over a period of two decades and compared the laws and regulations that were passed to those favored by average Americans to those favored by wealthy Americans and corporations, and here’s what the research revealed: “EVEN WHEN A MAJORITY OF CITIZENS DISAGREES WITH ECONOMIC ELITES OR WITH ORGANIZED SPECIAL INTERESTS, ORDINARY CITIZENS GENERALLY LOSE.”
America has become an oligarchy because of the Supreme Court. Today’s Roberts Court will live in the same odious infamy as the Taney Court whose 1857 Dred Scott ruling declared that human beings are mere property, which lit the fuse to the ruinous Civil War from which America has yet to recover. In its 2010 Citizens United ruling, the infamous odious Roberts Court ruled that mere property is equal to a human being, leading to corporations being given the “human right” to pour unlimited dollars into America’s political system, putting government up for sale to the highest bidder and corrupting the system to the extent that our nation has become an oligarchy.
Today, America has the best government that money can buy and has become an oligarchy, serving the interests of corporations and billionaires, thanks to the corrupt, infamous, odious Roberts Court.
LOOPHOLE IN CITIZENS UNITED
The U.S. Supreme Court left open a loophole in its Citizens United decision: The Court’s ruling says that if a significant risk of quid pro quo corruption can be shown to exist because of allowing corporations and wealthy individuals to contribute unlimited amounts of money to a super PAC , regulations can be instituted to limit the amount of money that corporations and the wealthy can contribute to super PACs.
With this loophole in mind, in the upcoming November elections there is an initiative on the ballot in Maine that, if passed, will limit to $5,000 the amount of money that can be contributed to super PACs because the evidence that has accumulated since the 2010 SpeechNow ruling clearly shows that allowing corporations and wealthy individuals to contribute unlimited amounts of money to super PACs has led to quid pro quo legislation and regulatory changes. SpeechNow is the March 26, 2010, DC Circuit Court ruling which applied Citizens United to super PACs, allowing unlimited contributions to super PACs.
While limiting super PAC contributions by corporations and wealthy people to $5,000, the Maine initiative sets no limits on how much money a super PAC can accept overall.
But by limiting the contributions from just one or a few super wealthy contributors and spreading the contributions out among the general populace, the risk is greatly reduced that politicians receiving money from a super PAC would be likely to engage in quid pro quo actions that serve only one or a few contributors to the super PAC because the contributions would reflect the interests of a wide range of individual contributors.
The Maine initiative is being bitterly opposed by corporations and the wealthy because it greatly reduces their ability to buy politicians, legislation, and regulatory escape.
If the Maine initiative survives the attacks from the Special Interest groups and is approved by Maine voters, the initiative will immediately be challenged in court — but the challenge will go to a new court: The Court of Appeals.
The Court of Appeals can agree with the evidence from the Maine Initiative and can rule that the unlimited contributions to super PACs by corporations and the wealthy has demonstrably caused quid pro quo lawmaking and regulatory changes.
The case would then proceed up to the U.S. Supreme Court where the Justices would be able to rule that risk of quid pro quo is such that contributions to super PACs can be limited by the Maine initiative. Such a ruling would trigger nationwide challenges to unlimited super PAC contributions, as well as triggering similar initiatives and laws in many states.
Unfortunately, even though the Maine initiative could begin the process that restores the core of our nation’s republic, the Democratic Party has its attention focused elsewhere and on other issues. Yet, the voices that typically champion such issues as the Maine initiative don’t even seem to be aware of the initiative. Why is that?
Passage of the Maine initiative can be the beginning of the end of super PACS buying legislators and laws. I hope that the voters of Maine pass this important initiative.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Because the Republicans had manipulated the judiciary (with the majority of Supreme Court justices, leaning toward the conservative side), they also kidnapped the legislative, by voting against all the bills proposed by the Democrats, because the bills were proposed by their opposition, now, they’re manipulating the voters, inciting anger, swaying those who are “undecided” to vote Republican, to win the presidency, with Trump, best in, inciting anger, spreading ignorance, in the masses, making U.S. no longer a democracy.
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Let’s put it this way: if Trump wins, autocratic oligarchy has won. The patient long game of 53 years, since Lewis Powell’s August 1971 clarion-call-to-arms memo for Big Business to “save” the American Free Enterprise system. Jane Mayer, Kurt Andersen, Thom Hartmann, et al, have done a thorough job in documenting our history since that August of 1971 all the way through Obama of how fundamentalist capitalism has infected every aspect of our lives just shy of destroying us completely.
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The Supreme Court may be the most direct oligarchic expression in our government. However, fifty years of neoliberal economic policies supported by both parties have given corporations and the wealthy an advantage in creating public policy. We now have over 800 billionaires and a struggling middle class. The Citizens United decision may have been the “coup de grâce,” but the middle class has been on the losing end of most legislation since the 1980s. “In 1970, adults in middle–income households accounted for 62% of aggregate income, a share that fell to 42% in 2020.”https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/
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I’d call it a Kleptocratic Oligarchy….but some economist probably has another spiffy name for it. The amount of $$$ pumped into political elections just blows my mind! Imagine what real good could be done with all of that money….M4A, funding SS, fully funding K-12 education etc. It’s disgusting how much money and time is spent on “king making” in this country.
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Agreed. It’s obscene.
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This is not the end of the matter. Let us recall that the US before 1870 was essentially the oligarchy we now deplore. There was collective pressure during the later 1800s to create a professional government service, limit rampant buying of political power, and creating a framework of honest government. Arguably, governmental reforms during that era led to a much better 20th century now longed for by almost everyone on either side of our fractious debate. That we must do this on an ongoing basis should not surprise anyone.
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Yep. Ever since the Powell Memo in 1971 energized the 1%ers, followed by the Reagan years of tax breaks for the rich, attacks on unions which helped weaken the Middle Class, and the Republicans’ marriage to the Religious Right, we’ve been on the path to Oligarchy. In recent times with the internet & social media controlled by new oligarchs, they have a perfect tool for keeping the masses distracted & arguing amongst themselves so they don’t unite against those oligarchs. The Powers-that-be just give us the illusion of freedom & democracy. Yes, there is MSNBC and to a lesser extent, CNN as networks that espouse liberal stances, but we need to remember that all American media is controlled by basically six corporations, all which have nothing more in mind than making money for themselves & their shareholders.
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Faced with corruption stemming from railroad and mining interests, Montana enacted a law that a “corporation may not make … an expenditure in connection with a candidate or a political committee that supports or opposes a candidate or a political party.”
This law stood for decades. In American Tradition Partnership Inc., vs Bullock, SCOTUS said that state law was unconstitutional.
Expect them to do the same with the Maine law.
According to the “originalists” Federalist Society camp, the founders foresaw the need to grant corporations full 1st Amendment rights, including, most incredulously to me, freedom of religion. Corporate freedom to buy elections is a close second.
The Roberts court is the same one that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, substituting for the judgement of Congress in its own judgement that no state, county, city, or other district could possibly be denying citizens their voting rights, so no one needs to oversee them.
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Are America’s Richest Families Republicans or Democrats? (forbes.com)
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