People with disabilities are already at the bottom of the rung in terms of having a voice. Those of us who advocate for their needs know very well that the first services to go are to those to persons with special needs. However will we be able to combat the likes of pharmacy and oil corporations, insurance and union interests? And why will anyone listen to our needs, when we can't offer them tons of money? What kind of a screwed up democracy are we stuck in???
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Outrageous!!!
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned more than half a century of decisions on restricting corporate and union financing of election campaign contributions, essentially opening the floodgates for special interests to pour money into campaigns to persuade officials to vote their way or eliminate those who don't comply. Equating the average citizen's free speech with that of a corporation is almost ludicrous. In fact, when I first heard about this decision, I was on my way to work, and assumed I had misunderstood the radio announcer's words. When I realized I hadn't misunderstood, I can only say I was stunned. Can a corporation vote? Run for public office? No wonder we citizens feel so powerless, and now we will be even more so.
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Hi, Jennifer. I just found your blog and was enjoying some of your other posts (my son is autistic), but this one caught my attention because I'm an attorney and so ... well, I can't say I've read the case and I don't practice in this area, so take what I say with a grain of salt ... but you seem really distraught, so I just wanted to say something about this. I agree with you that we have a serious problem with these giant companies and other institutions drowning out the rest of us. They exist for profit motive and that is a real problem. However, legally, I think it's important to remember that corporations are really just organizations of people (shareholders), and the Constitution gives us all the right of assembly. sometimes we have to band together in order to be heard. I think what we want instinctively to say is that if you are a group of people banding together to express some sort of political opinion (like maybe the ACLU), well then clearly your group and your right to be and act as a group, including to spend money as a group, is Constitutionally protected, but if you are a group of people banding together to make a profit, then you shouldn't have the same rights. The problem, to my mind, is that the Constitution doesn't say that. I doesn't let us make distinctions between classes of groups and decide whether they should be entitled to free speech or not. Well, actually, the Supreme Court has read one in that's not there, and commercial speech does not receive the same level of protection as political speech. I'm not saying there isn't a problem with our system here, there is. Just that it isn't easy to make up rules that always work or do what you want in every instance, or to be a person who has to follow rules the way they are written. And I think given how hard it all really is, most of the time, we not doing so badly. When you think back over most of human history and the kinds of oppression and corruption that plague humanity, because it is our nature to be greedy, to be slothful, to be envious, and all of that ... well, I don't think our democracy is such a bad one. I don't want to downplay your sentiment, I agree with it, except that I want to say ... take heart! We will all get by okay. It helps that people think and care about these things, as you do.
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