In a 5-4 ruling today, the U.S. Supreme Court “OKs unlimited corporate spending on elections” (I’m using the LA Times’ verbiage here because it’s just plain and simple. The subhead reads: “The justices overturn a century of U.S. electoral law by a 5-4 vote. Millions of extra dollars are expected to start flowing from big business to Republican candidates.”)

If the money were going to run to Democrats, it would still be a validation of money over votes… and we’ve seen that battle fought time and again. But this changes the spectacularly in favor of corporations.

In 2004, in a book called Trust, I wrote about the volatile mix of money and party politics, and the way that voters with less money and education were often literally disenfranchised or given little actual choice at the polls (for example, in areas where one party effectively won the election by winning the primary).

I put Trust online for free using a Creative Commons License.

You can read TRUST here.

As I say, “In order to win and keep winning, politicians have to get paid not only by us, the taxpayers who provide their salaries, but by the corporations and rich donors who fund their campaign.”

I do have some very specific suggestions in the book about how we can change things. But it first helps to understand how we got here. It’s a very weird and fascinating history.

Tags: campaign finance, corporations, First Amendment, Supreme Court, Trust