Buying the U.S. Government

Abby Zimet
RINF Alternative News

Today’s devastating Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon v. FEC, aka Citizens United Round 2, further cements our plutocracy, thus “opening the floodgates for the nation’s wealthiest few to drown out the voices of the rest of us.”

It features some truly mind-twisting arguments by John Roberts, who supports regulations that “target ‘quid pro quo’ corruption or its appearance” but not “the general gratitude a candidate may feel toward those who support him or his allies” and the reality that “candidates who are elected can be expected to be responsive to (their) concerns,” which sure sounds a whole lot like quid pro quo to us, but of course we don’t speak Supreme Court-ese so we could be wrong, thought, actually, we don’t think we are. What a crock. What a travesty.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: “Freedom of speech, in my view, does not mean the freedom to buy the United States government…What world are the five conservative Supreme Court justices living in? To equate the ability of billionaires to buy elections with ‘freedom of speech’ is totally absurd. The Supreme Court is paving the way toward an oligarchic form of society in which a handful of billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson will control our political process.”

Abby Zimet writes for Common Dreams