The Court has now decided that states can stop judges but only judges from personally asking for campaign contributions. It left all the rest of its protections of economic privilege in place.[1] Corporations can use treasury funds to flood the airwaves with political ads. Donors can hide their contributions behind a variety of specialized corporate entities. The one-tenth of one percent of the wealthiest Americans can dominate American politics directly and through their domination of corporate treasuries.
As I explained last week, inequality in the United States is making democracy increasingly unsustainable. When the wealthy and powerful take control of the whole shebang – political money, jobs, the media – the mass of the public is left with few resources to control their government, while the wealthy and powerful have enormous resources at their disposal to control the people.
In addition, democracy is fairly explicitly under attack. Conservatives attack the voting rights of any who might vote against them. Corporations use arbitration clauses in consumer contracts and international treaties to sidestep democratic decisions and make it easier for them to tear down environmental, labor and any other regulation that the people want but the corporations dislike. Their argument against regulation of markets is a euphemism for rules that favor whatever they want to do. But their point is that democracy has no right to interfere. And they hide their contempt for democracy behind Reagan’s claim that government, democratic government, is the problem.
Both these direct attacks and the distortions of wealth on the political process create a real threat that this government of, by and for the people could perish from the earth, undermined by control over speech, press and politics and squeezed out by untouchable markets and the exclusion of democratic decision-making from anything corporations care about.
Only the Tea Party seems prepared to rebel and their exclusionary politics adds to the problem. The gun rights folk will, if anything, protect the current distribution of wealth, enforcing their prejudices. Liberals – race liberals, economic liberals, big money liberals – are hardly united.
Under domination from powerful corporate interests, we could hope at best for the crumbs off their tables. Welcome to the many so-called democracies in Central and South America, Asia and Africa, where hirelings and sycophants help control the public for the benefit of their wealthy patrons.
We could try to pull the Supreme Court off the ramparts of privilege and regain control over the use of money in politics. We could fight back by supporting independent radio stations like WAMC. Or we could hope for the best ‘til Brutus assassinates Caesar – though that could lead to the consolidation of tyranny as it did for the Romans and is now doing in the Middle East.
Can we rally to save the planet and save democracy before we have lost them both? As we used to say in Brooklyn, before the Dodgers finally won the Series, “yagotta b’lieve.”
Next week, the primaries.
Steve Gottlieb is Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School and author of Morality Imposed: The Rehnquist Court and Liberty in America. He has served on the Board of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and in the US Peace Corps in Iran.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
[1] Williams-Yulee v. Fla. Bar, 2015 U.S. LEXIS 2983 (U.S. Apr. 29, 2015).