Jim Hightower

Let us now praise the Supreme Five!

I refer to the five Supreme Court justices who looked all around our land to find the one issue of injustice that cried out most for their judicial compassion. And, lo, it was this: Corporations do not have enough power over our government.

Thus, the five ruled that not only can corporate executives dump millions of their own corrupting dollars into our elections, but, henceforth, the trillions of dollars held by the corporate entities themselves can also be poured into political campaigns. Every corporate power – from Wall Street to Wal-Mart – now has permission to open the spigots of their vast corporate treasuries and unleash unlimited sums of corporate money on our elections. It's their wildest wet dream come true.

Never mind that this is a black-robed coup against our democracy – the five usurpers assert that they've merely extended "free speech rights" to corporations. This is perverse in two ways. First, the judges have equated the freedom to spend money on elections with the freedom of speech – which means that those with the most money get the most speech. That's plutocracy, not democracy, and it enthrones corporations over The People.

Second, corporations cannot speak. They have no lips, tongues, breath, or brains. A corporation is nothing but a piece of paper, a legal construct created by the state. The actual people who give life to a corporation (such as shareholders, executives, workers, and retirees) already speak politically, voicing the many divergent viewpoints within these structures. The inanimate corporate entity itself is no more deserving of human rights than a trash can would be.

The free speech ruling of the Supreme Five is oxymoronic, for they have declared that speech is not free – it's very pricey indeed.