I had a hunch that the United States had been dumbed down right after “we” elected George W. Bush to the White House.  After all, anyone who was really paying attention could tell this man was half-moron?  I’m not sure about the other half, but it still isn’t bristling with any form of intelligence.

Then “we” reelected the addlepate in 2004 after witnessing four straight years of ineptness.

As if that wasn’t enough, during the 2008 elections, people embraced Sarah Palin and Sammy “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, two of the most inane publicity hounds I’ve ever witnessed.  She didn’t realize Africa was a continent and Wurzelbacher ended up not even having a license to be a plumber in the state of Ohio.

Then there are the residents of Minnesota’s 6th Congressional district.  How much of an idiot do you have to be to keep electing someone like Michelle Bachmann.

But I digress.  Today I want to talk about the sheer stupidity of the Conservative majority in SCOTUS.  They have effectively ruled that US corporations, companies, and special interest groups are citizens of the United States.  Now while they haven’t been given the right to vote – yet – they have granted them the right to free speech.  What it really boils down to is the people with money will have even more influence on issues and elections.  The court says there should be no limits on the amount of money corporations and special interest groups can spend during an election cycle.  This means if Exxon wants to spend a billion dollars to back a candidate, then they’ll make hard use of every cent.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, said, “Government may not suppress political speech on the basis of the speaker’s corporate identity.  No sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on the political speech of nonprofit or for-profit corporations“.

Justice John Paul Stevens

A much smarter man, Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the opinion of the dissenting justices succinctly related the problem with the ruling.  “While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.  The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation“.

But Robert, you may ask, how does this ruling endanger the planet?

Chris Shultz, writing for the Energy Collective said it a lot better than I could:

Health care firms were already spending an average of $1.4 million a day, yes, a single day, to defeat health care legislation. Now that the SCOTUS has made a ruling that will remove the restrictions that force corporations to use PACs for federal campaign contributions, one could argue that any legislator who supports a bill that hurts corporate profits will now be under fire from those same corporations and industry groups. Besides health care, the climate change legislation comes to mind as the most critical legislation that is now under threat of being derailed thanks to this ruling. The utility industry groups have already been sending out letters to their customers, telling them that climate change legislation would lead to higher rates or a tax on the utility customer. The SCOTUS ruling will open up a floodgate of more mailings, more commercials, and much more money being spent to defeat any legislators who support cap and trade or cap and dividend legislation.

Chris also mentioned, by way of a word plus definition, that this is tantamount to turning this country into a true Plutocracy.

plu·toc·ra·cy (plōō-tŏk’rə-sē)
n. pl. plu·toc·ra·cies

1.  Government by the wealthy.
2.  A wealthy class that controls a government.
3.  A government or state in which the wealthy rule.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, the richest companies tend to be the most Conservative (read: greedy) and they’re probably very happy to kick sand in the rest of our faces.

Dicks!