3 ms·

Citizens United, a monumental betrayal of every citizen.

• Y_Y 10mo ago
  > The provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 restricting unions, corporations, and profitable organizations from independent political spending and prohibiting the broadcasting of political media funded by them within sixty days of general elections or thirty days of primary elections violate the freedom of speech that is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. United States District Court for the District of Columbia reversed. I'm sure we're on the same side, but I want to point out that that case didn't make a huge difference. By that I mean it removed a ban on political broadcasts near elections, most of the "money is speech, super pacs can do anything at all" stuff was already legal.
  • red-iron-pine 10mo ago
    > it removed a ban on political broadcasts near elections, Propaganda works, and this was a BIG change, as it now let unlimited shady corpo money spam agit-prop with no consequence. this was step 1 on living in a post-truth world.
  • BobaFloutist 10mo ago
    Right, but if you try to make a gentle, common-sense, broad consensus law and the Supreme Court squashes it as violating the constitution, that also prevents any potential future more stringent regulation.
• danaris 10mo ago
  While this is true, the first such betrayal came in 1976, with Buckley v Valeo. This was (AIUI) the US Supreme Court decision that established the precedent that money counts as protected speech. So much of the rot that has occurred since then can be traced back to this.
  • dredmorbius 10mo ago
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo>