Legalized Bribery

I have never given a dime to a candidate running for political office. And I never will.

When I ran for city government I didn't take a dime in donations. I, of course, lost. However, in the race I was in, no amount of money would have made a difference, and I didn't run to win, just to raise awareness of the issues.

The reality is that money corrupts nearly everything, but it holds a special place in its heart for politics. And we can be clear on one thing: from a Constitutional point of view, there is absolutely no doubt that the Framers of the Constitution never intended money to be protected as "speech." Jefferson and Washington would have vehemently - if not violently - opposed such nonsense. Adams and Madison are a little tougher to gauge. Franklin never would have taken a donation, but he certainly wouldn't have opposed someone buying him a drink over which to "discuss" legislation.

From a purely practical point of view, here's a good question: if I can give a candidate $10K and you can give him $10K, and then we can form a "corporation" and give him a million, then how is that not double-dipping and circumventing restrictions in the first place? How can the "corporation" fully represent the views of its employees and its stockholders when there is certain to be disagreements? If you can't give a politician $90K in cash to vote on a bill, but you can give him an equal amount "for his re-election campaign," how have we not completely abandoned rational thought.

Judicial activism or not, money has become "free speech" - irony of ironies - and nothing is going to change that or control that. Thus, it simply becomes more of an imperative for voters to be well informed in the area of policy, as well as argumentative strategies used to manipulate them.

Never gave a dime. Never accepted a dime. Never will. And now I will just continue to vote my conscience.

Corporations are People, Too?

In a sad development for the roots of democratic republics - and a backdoor victory for oligarchy - the The Supreme Court's conservative bloc sounded poised Wednesday to decide, on free-speech grounds, to end the ban on corporations spending large amounts of money to elect or defeat candidates for Congress and the presidency. The "ironic" issue of money as "free" speech has always troubled me, though I understand the reasoning behind it. Of course, it wasn't nearly the problem thirty and eighty years ago before the rise of television, especially cable. Now we have trillions behind spent to promote agendas, and the concept of truth in politics and ideology becomes even more bent.

This development - corporations being freed to use their resources to specifically influence individual political races - is a nail in the coffin to any hope of campaign finance reform. Perhaps the most disturbing concept is the idea that "Corporations are persons entitled to protection under the First Amendment," said Olson, who represented Citizens United. This is an absolute affront to the rights of the individual and democratic republics. A corporation is NOT a person, and that was not the intention of the First Amendment. If individual members of a corporation want to exercise free speech, I support it. If the corporation wants the same right to use its massive funds to override representative voices of individuals, that's a move toward oligarchy.

Thom Hartmann - and I know he's very liberal - first brought this to my attention in his critical book What Would Jefferson Do. Issues like these really do bring Supreme Court appointments into prominence. While I was bothered by the Courts ruling on private property last year, I am equally, if not more, bothered by this one.

Clarence Thomas is Crazy

There are times to stand on principal - and I guess offering the lone dissenting vote poses no danger - and there are times that doing so just makes you look like a complete idiot. Exhibit A for today is the dissenting vote from Clarence Thomas in the decision to rule an Arizona middle school's strip search of a thirteen-year-old girl unconstitutional. According to the Denver Post:

The case, Safford Unified School District #1 vs. Redding, began when another student was found with prescription- strength ibuprofen and said she received it from Redding.

Safford Middle School assistant principal Kerry Wilson pulled the honors student out of class, and she consented in his office to a search of her backpack and outer clothes. When that turned up no pills, he had a school nurse take Redding to her office, where she was told to remove her clothes, shake out her bra and pull her underwear away from her body, exposing her breasts and pelvic area.

No drugs were found, and Redding said she was so humiliated that she never returned to the school. Her mother filed suit against the school district, as well as Wilson.

Justice David Souter rationally argued "there was no indication of any danger to the student from the power or quantity of the drugs, no any reason to suspect [she] was carrying any pills in her underwear." In the dissent, Thomas mindlessly argued "judges are not qualified to second-guess the best manner for maintaining quiet and order in a school environment."

However, judges are allowed to use common sense and rational. Maintaining "quiet"? I've never really thought highly of Thomas' perspectives - this is just reason number 75 why he aligns himself with the crazier side of conservatism.