A question about the recent SCOTUS decision about corporate spending on campaigns?

Obama has freely accepted millions in "bundled contributions" from the employees of law firms that lobby for Wall Street (which he promised he wouldn't in broad, unmistakable statements) - this and other donations he's accepted through the "bundled employee contributions" method make hypocritical nonsense of his criticisms of the Supreme Court decision. Big corporations (through their bundled employee donations) and unions have owned Barack Hussein Obama since he was a Senator.

And the billion-dollar Obama campaign is strong evidence that if you sling enough of it against the wall, some of it will stick.

My thoughts are that it is a terrible decision. And the consequences will be disastrous to the principles of democracy. If corporations have free reign on how much they can spend on elections than you can only imagine how congress already influenced by lobbyists will suddenly become agents of corporations. If you think about it, senators and members of the house already serve their interests pretty heavily. But now if corporations can fund an entire campaign for republicans or democrats than that corporation will ask for laws that will help that corporation hurting the public. Democracy was already in trouble before this, now it's really going down the hills. I wonder what McCain has to say about this. It seems like the vote was on party lines with conservative majority winning outright.

It all comes down to The People. I forget who said it originally, but it's very true: We get the government we deserve. We have allowed money to become way too important in our electoral politics, and one reason for this is that we don't keep ourselves informed, so the average man on the street knows only what he sees in political ads on TV. In an uncontested election (one where there is no incumbent running for re-election) the candidate who spends the most money wins about 95% of the time. So our election campaigns have become no more than fund-raising contests.

Whoever comes into the race with the biggest bank account is treated by the media as the presumptive winner, and all the others are treated as also-rans from the very start. This didn't happen in 2008, but it's how both GW Bush and Bill Clinton got nominated. They were selected by party leaders who then lined up all the money behind them--their party primaries were only a rubber stamp.

It's always the party out of power who pushes for campaign finance reform. For years that was the Democrats, who of course had less money to spend so they tried to lessen the importance of money. Now it's the Republicans. This is just one more problem with our 'winner take all' system--the rules are made by the winners.

Americans have never been especially politically aware. I think we've had it too good for too long. People get upset, get involved, only when things are bad, and then they vote only for 'change'. From what I hear when I talk to people, I'm appalled at how little most of us really understand about our political system. 8^<

The whole point of this decision is that it breaks up the campaign contribution monopoly of the unions and Obama's other political cronies. Remember that Obama had campaign funds coming from foreign sources, like oil-rich countries, and only returned some of it after the source of the contributions was made public. This means that employees of private sector corporations can pool together and make a mass contribution to running ads supporting candidates in favor of the private sector. This is what's driving Obama and the Democrats crazy, the thought that they will now be up against the group force of powerful private sector corporations instead of individuals. And the corporations can only run ads, they can't contribute cash directly to any candidate. And foreign entities are still barred from contributing or running ads, unlike what Obama The Liar is going around saying.

Unfortunately, most people get their information regarding political candidates from campaign commercials. That's right, political ads. Most people are simply not committed to researching ads and political matters in general. Most of us out there are passive and easily manipulated.

The lawyer that started the litigation that resulted in the Supreme Court decision, James Bopp, is a member of the Republican National Committee. He is quite close to the Republican Senate Minority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell. The next thing they are fighting for is, get this, elimination of the need to disclose who PAID for ads or to maintain public lists of contributions to campaign committees. So, they want Exxon-Mobil or America Power or JP Morgan Chase to fund TV commercials and to be able to do so without revealing who really sponsored or funded the ad because it is 'too onerous' to have to do so. They do NOT want you to be able to follow the money. Why? See article linked below.

I think that Justice Stevens was correct in his dissent where he stated that the corporate person, a creature of statute to begin with, cannot be said to have the same rights to free speech as a natural person. The natural persons that make up the corporate entity already have their own free speech rights which should be virtually unlimited. But a corporation or a union or an association is just not the same as its parts. They have much more economic power. Because of that, time and place restrictions regarding their ability to contribute money and pay for ads just makes sense for the sake of fairness. While the decision does not change things that much because corporate and union and other special interest money has already been a large part of our politics, the decision appears to dash any hope of ever being able to create a statutory scheme by which the impact of such money can be limited. That is why it is significant.

The real problem is that Americans pay attention to political ads.

If Americans were interested in the political process, and took even cursory steps to educate themselves on the candidates and their belief systems, imbecilic political ads would have no effect on them.

Money can only influence an election when uneducated or lazy people are voting.

And the Supreme Court, in my opinion, erred on the side of freedom of speech - as opposed to elitist "protections" by, OF COURSE, totally non-corrupt government officials.

Why do so many people trust the government to be non-corrupt, while believing that business leaders cannot be anything but corrupt? History has repeated shown that corrupt government is far more dangerous.

Let me make this clear,,,,,,,,,,Corporations are people what else could they be?

This whole thing started because the Federal Election Committee denied Citizens United Corporation the right to air their film called "Hillary the Movie" to contradict the Michael Moore films.

Now if Liberal Michael Moore can show politically motivated films but a Conservative Corporation called Citizens United cannot show their politically motivated films, then there is a clear violation of free speech, caused by the Campaign Finance Reform Act.

Corporations have been donating to politicians thru Political Action Committees since General Grant was president, the only difference is now we can actually see how is donating to whom, which is good.

Now don't let obama mis-speak to you,,,,,,,,NO Foreign Corporations can legally donate to politicians.

we are divided country that a president wins an election at most by 10% and many have been less then 1% -- now there is enough uneducated people to change that number by slanderous advertisements

also they are not just after the presidency -- former justice Oconner says that judges will be a big one that corporations and unions buy -- and the implication and the decisions they make are huge -- and most people don't do a lot research on some small offices - so an ad may play a big role

I agree , i only point out that you can just mute commercials with a touch of a button

if people are stupid enough to believe commercials than they already buy what the corporations they claim to hate so much are selling

Now corporations can legally buy politicians and pass the cost on to consumers so that the purchacing of products and services becomes a vote for their candidate whether you like them or not.

Soon, Sarah Palin will be brought to you by Coca-Cola and the only course of action to voice opposition will be through boycott.