Not a real democracy

The Supreme Court recently decided that business corporations are persons entitled to all the free-speech protections of our Constitution. The split 5-4 decision means that corporations can spend unlimited money for or against any candidate for federal office.

There are good reasons for regarding corporations as persons before the law. Like any natural-born person, they must be able to enter contracts and engage in legal actions.

And as business enterprises, corporations have a protected right of commercial speech. This is speech directed to a commercial transaction, and its claims are legally obligated to be factual.

Political speech is different. Honest mistakes and misleading statements in public debate are protected by the First Amendment.

For purposes of political speech, a business corporation has long been entitled to form a political action committee, or PAC. Its funds had to come from the contributions of individual, natural persons, and not from the profits of the corporation itself.

Now the rules are changed. The court has decided a business corporation has the same right of political speech as a natural-born person.

Actually, corporations are not natural persons. They cannot engage in the political act of voting. But they can now engage in political advocacy with all the wealth at their command.

Formerly, the marketplace for business enterprise was embedded within the political order, theoretically and legally. Now the political order is embedded within the marketplace, theoretically and legally.

The political order is the means by which the people, in a democracy, are able to determine, through their elected representatives, the rules that will govern their society. This includes the rules governing the marketplace.

But if business corporations can expend unlimited funds advocating for or against the election of particular representatives, they will be able effectively to choose the people who will determine the regulations that will govern the marketplace.

Government does not have power over the marketplace. The marketplace has power over government.

Business corporations exist to earn a profit for their stockholders. To pursue that profit, they will ship their jobs overseas. They have no allegiance to the people of this nation and no concern for decaying infrastructure they might leave behind.

And now their chosen representatives will have control of our government. They will establish the taxes we have to pay.

So the American people will pay taxes for wars to advance the interests of the "free market." Corporate wealth will pay little or no tax. And then we'll be told that Social Security must be cut.

This is what happens when the right of political speech, constitutionally protected for natural persons who can vote is extended to the legal persons that are business corporations.

A constitutional amendment is being proposed. And Congress must clarify rules identifying ad sponsors and their funding. See www.Open Secrets.org now. Don't vote for any candidate backed heavily by ill-identified advocacy groups.

Of course if you like unending war and decaying infrastructure and the unregulated market for mortgage-backed securities and the market crash and the bail-out for the big banks, then you'll love this decision of the Supreme Court.