USA verkocht aan bedrijfsleven door Supreme Court

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Alles heeft een prijs, ook in de USA.
Dit betekent dat het democratisch gehalte (per definitie bepaald door de
kiezers) fors achteruit gaat.
NIET De Jure, maar WEL De Facto, omdat diezelfde keizer ongelimiteerd
beïnvloed kan, en mag, worden.

Groet / Cees

PS Heeft dit gevolgen voor samenwerking tussen USA en andere staten? You
Bet!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22scotus.html
January 22, 2010
Justices Block Key Part of Campaign Law
By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON — Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling
two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday
ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations
in candidate elections.

The ruling was a vindication, the majority said, of the First
Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has
no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said allowing
corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy.

The 5-to-4 decision was a doctrinal earthquake but also a political and
practical one. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected
the decision, which also applies to labor unions and other
organizations, to reshape the way elections are conducted.

“If the First Amendment has any force,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote
for the majority, which included the four members of its conservative
wing, “it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or
associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”

Justice John Paul Stevens read a long dissent from the bench. He said
the majority had committed a grave error in treating corporate speech
the same as that of human beings. His decision was joined by the other
three members of the court’s liberal wing.

The case had unlikely origins. It involved a documentary called
“Hillary: The Movie,” a 90-minute stew of caustic political commentary
and advocacy journalism. It was produced by Citizens United, a
conservative nonprofit corporation, and was released during the
Democratic presidential primaries in 2008.

Citizens United lost a suit that year against the Federal Election
Commission, and scuttled plans to show the film on a cable
video-on-demand service and to broadcast television advertisements for
it. But the film was shown in theaters in six cities, and it remains
available on DVD and the Internet.

The lower court said the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, usually
called the McCain-Feingold law, prohibited the planned broadcasts. The
law bans the broadcast, cable or satellite transmission of
“electioneering communications” paid for by corporations in the 30 days
before a presidential primary and in the 60 days before the general
election. That leaves out old technologies, like newspapers, and new
ones, like YouTube.

The law, as narrowed by a 2007 Supreme Court decision, applies to
communications “susceptible to no reasonable interpretation other than
as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.” It also
requires spoken and written disclaimers in the film and advertisements
for it, along with the disclosure of contributors’ names.

The lower court said the film was prohibited electioneering
communication with one purpose: “to inform the electorate that Senator
Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous
place in a President Hillary Clinton world and that viewers should vote
against her.”

The McCain-Feingold law does contain an exception for broadcast news
reports, commentaries and editorials.

When the case was first argued last March, it seemed a curiosity likely
to be decided on narrow grounds. The court could have ruled that
Citizens United was not the sort of group to which the McCain-Feingold
law was meant to apply, or that the law did not mean to address
90-minute documentaries, or that video-on-demand technologies were not
regulated by the law. Thursday’s decision rejected those alternatives.

Instead of deciding the case in June, the court set down the case for a
rare re-argument in September. It now asked the parties to address the
much more consequential question of whether the court should overrule a
1990 decision, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which upheld
restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political
candidates, along with part of McConnell v. Federal Election Commission,
the 2003 decision that upheld the central provisions of the
McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

On Thursday, the court answered its own questions with a resounding yes.

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