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Supremely blind justice

By Todd Seabrook

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court matched wits with most other government branches in dividing the country with a no-win situation. In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court made it legal for corporations to contribute indirectly to political campaigns, a ruling that some people like Rep. Alan Grayson, Fla., are deeming the end of American democracy.

In many senses, Grayson is right. Five of our Supreme Court judges declared a corporation as indistinguishable from a person, and therefore should be awarded the right to free speech, which is the worst reasoning I've heard since I listened to anything Glenn Beck has ever said or ever will say.

Because I know they are all reading this obscure column in this OSU off-campus newspaper, I will throw out a few differences between a corporation and an individual to see if anything catches on their velour robes.

1). A corporation does not have to eat, drink, sleep, or breathe, which means they do not have the same vested interest as a person does in healthy air, clean water, nutritious food, environmental concerns, or anything that keeps people alive instead of dead. If a person succeeds in ruining the air, that person will die, and therefore it is in a person's interest to protect the environment. If a corporation is successful in polluting the oceans, the corporation thrives, while the people around it die.

2). Corporations are immortal, at least in theory, and I have never met an immortal individual, not even in theory.

3). A corporation can be in more than one place at one time, while a single person cannot. Imagine playing a game of freeze tag with one team having a single person and the other team having 5,000. One team is always going to lose. Our Supreme Court couldn't figure out which. Can you?

4). Corporations have no nationality. This is a big one. A lot of the really big businesses, especially the oil corporations, are foreign owned. They do not pay taxes, they cannot vote and they do not necessarily put money back into our economy. Yet, they could back someone who wants to tax us like Prince John, but who is easy on foreign policy.

With that being said, it is important to note that the Supreme Court made the only decision it could have, given the precedent. The application of the First Amendment is a bad one, but the Supreme Court upheld it because it is technically constitutional. While I just outlined the ridiculousness of the majority rule given by Justice Roberts, Justice Stevens' dissenting view is (almost) equally as ridiculous.

Stevens cited that this ruling will leave elections open to potential corruption, a notion with which a lot of people seem to agree. But how do you cut off anything that has the "potential" for corruption. Hell, that can be anything, and it certainly doesn't hold a candle to the overwhelming force of the First Amendment.

Obama, Grayson and lots of others are already backlashing against this ruling, setting up restrictions and deterrents so that corporations don't run us out of our own country. Oh sure, we are still going to have elections. Even Stalin had elections. And your vote will count as much as it ever did, despite whatever the Nietzsche-reading hipster tells you at the bus stop.

But it is obvious that campaigns will be different from now on. After witnessing the billion-dollar dog-and-pony-shows every four years, I am all in favor of campaign finance reform, but this is not at all what I had in mind.

Originally Published: January 27, 2010

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