High court kills wise Texas law

[white cloud]

Speaking at a Tea Party rally in Pecos Thursday evening, Gov. Rick Perry once again hinted at dreams of secession.

“There they go again,” he said of the federal government. “First they try to force unemployment money down our throats, then it's education money — both times with strings attached that would burden Texas taxpayers.

“Now those pointy-headed guys in Washington think they know better than Texans about how we should regulate campaign finance. For more than a hundred years, after the railroad companies bought most of our politicians — all of whom were Democrats, I should point out — Texans have seen the wisdom of limiting the influence big corporations and big labor unions have in our elections.

“But now five men in robes have wiped out both previous federal law and Texas law. It's one thing after another impinging on states' rights. I'm not calling for secession. I'm just saying, once again, that this is the kind of thing that riles people up and makes them think about seceding.”

I made that up, of course. Perry may not want money pouring in to help students and out-of-work parents, but he has given no hint that he minds unfettered corporate money pouring into politics.

Texans did start limiting the role of corporations (and then unions) in political campaigns in 1903 in response to scandals involving wealthy and powerful railroads.

Power remains
The railroads and other corporations have prospered for more than a century with those restrictions on “their First Amendment rights.”

Banks have somehow been able to express their ideas so clearly to Congress that they managed to get post-Depression restrictions removed, racked up billions in profits with investments that would make a riverboat gambler blush, won hundreds of billions in bailouts when those bets failed, and are still so powerful that President Barack Obama's belated call for reform is unlikely to bear effective fruit on Capitol Hill.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/casey/6833390.html

[sonias]

1. The Texas view (same story)

(snip)Possible impact

Buck Wood, an Austin lawyer specializing in election law who has battled corporate influence for many years, says he doesn't think it will come to that.

"I don't think it will have much impact politically," he said of the Supreme Court decision.

He said most corporations will fear alienating stockholders or customers by taking sides in elections.

And candidates will discourage it because they want to control their message and are not permitted to coordinate with the corporations or unions.

I hope he's right. But Fred Lewis, another Austin attorney who has lobbied for campaign finance reform for years, warned that "this opinion will go down in infamy as one of the rankest examples of judicial activism in history."

I'm on Fred's side of this one. The guys at the top of corporations are the corrupt ones and they will play with the corporation's money trying to get the best deal for their bottom line. The stockholders don't give a shit unless the value of their stock goes down. In the battle of corporations vs citizens the corporations always win.
:(

Sonia