American government incorporated
We all know that America is currently in the depths of an economic crisis, drowning in debt, and our currency our constantly losing value.
This archived article was written by: Cassidy Scovill
We all know that America is currently in the depths of an economic crisis, drowning in debt, and our currency our constantly losing value.
Now normally that would be enough to get me to realize that America has a lot of problems, and not only are these problems not being solved, but more problems are being stacked on top. We face a constantly growing pile of problems that threatens to overwhelm us as a country. Now I should be telling you that it isn’t all bad, that there really is light at the end of the tunnel but, I’m not going to lie. Instead I’m going to give you another problem, people need to know about.
U.S. Supreme Court, the deciders of our laws and court of our courts, have overthrown an ancient law. That law prevented major corporations from donating unlimited sums to politicians and running ads against political candidates.
How did this happen? It all began in 1886 when corporations were considered people and allowed to lobby government. Throughout the following, years more and more laws began to limit the many different ways corporations can influence the politicians. The last notable law passed to prevent corporations was the McCain-Feingold act in 1997, which prevented corporations from using corporate money from purchasing advertise against or for any politician. These laws kept organizations with almost unlimited resources from completely controlling our political system.
The split ruling (5-4) of the Case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has almost demolished the rules and regulations that we built up for an entire century. The case deemed that if we consider a corporation a “person” that these laws impede their free speech.
Now a century ago, the people that made our laws probably had no idea how massive these corporations could hold. These corporations now can persuade all facets of our political system to come to their line of thinking. How can people compete against a entity that can essential give a politician all they need to be elected if they vote the way the corporations tell them? It isn’t even limited to American corporations.
We are handing our country over to corporations whose only goals are to promote their own agenda. It takes huge amounts of money for a politician to run without being absolutely overshadowed by those with money. With money being such a huge part of being elected and corporations have so much of it, means they will effectively control decisions country.
The only solution is if our average citizen looks beyond those ads, and educate themselves about what they’re voting for, to research their candidates and vote based on the facts. Without research, we hand over our country and our freedom to the Corporations all over the world.
