Last week the Supreme Court narrowly voted 5-4 to remove all restrictions on corporations' financial contributions for or against candidates for political office. The majority's ruling on the case, Cititzens United v. Federal Election Commission, argued that the 2002 McCain-Feingold law which it overruled “takes the right to speak from some and gives it to others,” thus despoiling the “disadvantaged person or class the right to use speech … to establish worth, standing, and respect.” This reading of McCain-Feingold is, quite simply, dangerously ironic given the results it will foster; the ruling itself "takes the right to speak" from the average citizen and hands it to the wealthy, and, most specifically, to wealthy corporations.

The "money as political speech" argument utilized by the court in its decision is inherently anti-free speech insomuch as it will minimize the speech of actual citizens by codifying corporations—many of which, we don't want to admit, are owned by foreign interests like Chinese financial conglomerates, oil sheikhs, and EU subsidiaries—as individuals and giving them the ability to drown out those with less money. To this effect President Obama, who despite his campaign rhetoric hasn't been much of a populist ally so far in his tenure as the nation's Chief Executive, remarked the other day that the ruling "opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy [...] It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way – or to punish those who don't. That means that any public servant who has the courage to stand up to the special interests and stand up for the American people can find himself or herself under assault come election time. Even foreign corporations may now get into the act. I can't think of anything more devastating to the public interest.”

Who could have said it better? Obviously, corporations can and will use hundreds of millions (if not billions—is that possible? scary thought) of dollars to influence the results of elections and the policies of candidates and elected officials to their best financial interests. Under this ruling, the least of our worries is the catastrophic risk of elections becoming more of a capitalist industry than they already are; the even more horrific concern is a government full of elected officials financially dependent on, and thus beholden to, corporate interests...in the most literal sense. Are we to become a nation whose Congress is merely another battleground where the PR arms of MNCs, which already have a startling control over citizens' daily lives, contest over the legality, profitability, and actualization of their business interests?

I am at least heartened that Barack Obama, even if his campaign totally exaggerated its dependence on small "micro-donations", has spoken out so strongly against this decision. It proves he has some backbone, at least in this realm of the peoples' interest (Iraq, Afghanistan, equal rights for gays and lesbians, etc., are all other stories, though). But really, what's a $25 micro-donation for your candidate of choice when pitted against a similar micro-donation of $25 Million or even $250 Million by a large corporation? In the media age, where in this equation does your vote matter?

Though it hurts to admit it, most of the American economy isn't even owned by Americans or American corporations anymore. This Supreme Court decision essentially bestows unlimited political speech, not to mention the ability to drown out citizens' political speech, on foreign businessmen....who aren't even constitutionally enfranchised anyway. I'm starting to feel as if we're stuck in a Gilded Age that not even one of the most charismatic, intelligent, and, on this issue at least, publicly-minded Presidents ever can halt.

Motto of the New American Century: For the Corporations, By the Corporations.