I’ve really gotta stop reading the HuffPo.  Did anyone else see “Supreme Court to Hand Government to Republicans, Again: This Time, Forever.” by Paul Abrams today?  Man, does that piece ever make your blood boil, or what?

Here’s the opening, from the article:

In Bush v Gore, the United States Supreme Court, in an unprecedented ruling that proclaimed it should not be used as precedent, decided the 2000 presidential election by a 5-4 decision. Bush v Gore stands as one of the most legally dishonest and the most politically partisan opinion ever issued by the Court.

That is, until the Court hands down its decision in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, involving a ruling by the FEC that barred a rightwing hit group, partially financed by a corporation, from running a hatchet-job film about Hillary Clinton in the days prior to an election in violation of the McCain-Feingold law.

I’ve been following Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission over on http://reason.com/ for a while now (reason is my home page), so I’m not entirely unfamiliar with the case.  I’m amazed that anyone would think that removing the freedom of speech, even if for only a limited time right before an election, is a good thing.  I have trouble believing that any American fails to realize that once the government gets its foot in the door that it won’t stop there!

In government, your bureau or department must spend all of the money in its budget, or it won’t get as much budget money next year.  It’s actually preferable to spend more money than you have in your budget so that you may argue for a bigger budget next year.  To a government agency, operating in a rationally structured organization, you are either growing, or you’re dying.  Hence the axiom that “Government never gets smaller.”

If you give them power to restrict one group of people’s freedom of speech, your freedom will soon be in their cross-hairs too.  A government agency tasked with something like “eliminating freedom of speech” has a lot of room to grow, ya know?

I mean, come on Mr. Abrams, how much do you know about the case?

You claim:

… Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, involving a ruling by the FEC that barred a rightwing hit group, partially financed by a corporation, from running a hatchet-job film about Hillary Clinton…

Reality, a la the Washington Post :

The law’s requirement that ads clearly state the name of the group paying for them made Citizens United’s planned 10-second media ads unworkable, the group said.

As a practical matter, that meant Citizens United could show “H:TM” in theaters and sell it on DVDs, but promoting it through its planned advertising campaign was restricted. And the prohibitions on broadcast just before an election doomed the group’s hope of paying $1.2 million to have the movie available on cable systems around the country via video-on-demand services.

Did you catch that Mr. Abrams?  They weren’t running the movie on basic cable.  Oprah wasn’t getting bumped from the line up so this movie could be shown.  They were prohibited the freedom to advertise and play a movie that you would have had to pay to watch.

And why?  It was deemed a:

” 90-minute campaign ad “susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her.”

But hey, they certainly let advertisements run about the Oliver Stone movie “W.” the weekend before the election…

But that’s neither here, nor there.  Mr. Abrams certainly didn’t desire to talk about the case, oh no…

Let me hit ya with some quotes from the rest of the article.  You’ll see…

By another 5-4 decision the Supreme Court will effectively turn the United States government over to corporations, i.e., back to the Republican Party, this time for keeps.

The hits just keep on coming:

The (bogus) rationale will be that a private corporation is ‘merely’ an association of people and it already has the status of a legal person.

Ummmm…  but this is true, Mr. Abrams.  They do already have the status of a legal person because they’re comprised of people…  No different than a union.  Continuing:

Nor are corporations ‘merely’ an association of natural persons Rather, they are commercial enterprises whose purpose is to make profits.

Wow.  Thank you Captain Obvious.  Corporations exist to make money.  Why, you might even go so far as to think that corporations are associations of natural persons, brought together by the common interest of making money…  Oh, my goddess!  People getting together, and they’re trying to make money!  What a world, what a world, what a world…

Why do unions exist?  Don’t they try to help their members make more money?

He then proceeds to lay every evil thing, done any where in the world, at the feet of American corporations…

And he mentions George Bush no less than five times.  Yeah, the guy was a crappy President.  But he’s no longer the President. Your grand-kids are really going to get tired of you yapping about GWB, ya know?

<sigh>

Sometimes, I just feel such despair over the state of our country.  I love the fact that this guy is free to believe what ever he wants to believe.  I love that fact that he’s free to share his opinions.  But it kills me that someone so blinded by hate and vitriol cancels out my vote.

You know, he wouldn’t have been able to post this garbage if it wasn’t for the corporation that made his computer, provided him with Internet service, put together his furniture, so on and so forth…

Mr. Abrams, can I ask one final question?

Have you seen the list of top political donors for Obama’s campaign?  Here are the Top 10 from opensecrets.org:

University of California $1,591,395  
Goldman Sachs $994,795
Harvard University $854,747
Microsoft Corp $833,617
Google Inc $803,436
Citigroup Inc $701,290
JPMorgan Chase & Co $695,132
Time Warner $590,084
Sidley Austin LLP $588,598
Stanford University $586,557

I mean, it’s like a who’s who of little guys, isn’t it?

Blood boiling. 

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