I was at a lunch the other day and was surrounded by three
or four tables of middle-aged to older folks who looked like they could have been
members of the Tea Baggers and I was sure they were all carrying Medicare and
AARP cards. (hey, for that matter, so am I…) So I asked each table what they
thought of the Citizen’s United ruling that the Supreme Court has ruled, yet
again on, making it official that corporations can and do have an unlimited say
and unbridled free speech (again emphasis on unlimited) even in state and local
elections.
There were eleven potential votes,
not counting mine. Unlike the biased phone calls I get from Washington State
asking me to take part in a survey about the horrible way in which America is
being run…(talk about unbiased????) here’s how I phrased my question:
Excuse me.
Are you aware of the Citizen United ruling brought about by the U.S. Supreme
Court? Of the eleven, nine were aware of
it. We will count only their votes. The
others will vote Republican anyway because they are uninformed.
Of the
nine, six said they thought the court had missed the mark. (The scale was 1
strongly disagree with the court to 6 strongly agree with the court’s ruling)
Of the three dissenters, only one agreed with the court. The others were
threes. (Right on the fence in the middle. One guy even said, “I can see it
both ways.”)
I am not a
researcher by trade, but I have spent umpteen years behind the glass in
research focus groups and studying surveys in advertising and marketing, so
even I can see that Six to three – SCOUS loses. (And two of the three were
neutral at best.)
But why? A
ha! Now it gets gritty. Of the six who stood in opposition of the court, five
said that it was because the original intent of the Constitution was to protect
people’s free speech from corporations and monopolies from distorting our free
exchange of ideas. “It is why we fought the revolution against the King in the
first place, “ one old geezer said. (I loved this guy.) “The king, his church,
his buddies were all aligned against the freedom of people to think and speak
their minds. There was no intent of letting giant businesses take over that
role under the constitution.”
I asked who
agreed with James (his name). A show of hands showed that of the nine, five
were backing his argument. The hold out from the original six dissenters was a
woman who thought that the court had given in to Republican pressures and big
money. She sided with the six, but only from a practical aspect. She didn’t
care about the constitutional issue. She saw it as money– big money– trying to
buy the space where citizen’s speech should be. “They are squeezing us out,”
she said. (I loved this woman, too.)
I returned
to the backers of the court. “What do you think of these arguments against
SCOUS rulings?”
One man
snorted and said, “It’s Obama’s damn fault we no longer have freedom of speech.
I want that boy (swear to God he said boy) out of Washington and fast.” I asked
him how the SCOUS decision was related to Obama taking away his freedom of
speech. He shrugged. “You know.” That’s all he would say.
“No I don’t know. I am trying to
find out. What has Obama got to do with the SCOUS ruling that corporations and
big business have unlimited access to our electoral process?”
“They were just trying to protect
us,” he said.
”From whom?” I asked.
“The
Democrats.” This was going nowhere so I turned my attention to the others.
The other two thought the arguments
were good, but felt that corporations and unions should have access to the
playing field, if laws were going to be enacted that affected them. “Good
enough. But unlimited?” I asked. There
was a pause. Even those who had agreed with the court thought that taking the
limits off of corporate spending only made the buying of elections easier and
more dangerous for all Americas. (So you might say it was nine-nill against the
that part of the court’s decision.)
Final question: that being the
case, if SCOUS had ruled that corporations and unions could have a voice in
elections, but it would be limited to, say, the same amount as an one
individual, would you think that was fair?
Get this– all nine agreed that it
would be fair and the right way to do it. Even the three who had no idea what
we were talking about thought it sounded fair. How they came around so fast is
anybody’s wonder.
I thanked them, and with one
exception, the old guy who still wants the “boy” out of the White House, they
all thanked me. Then he (the boy man) asked me “why I was sticking my nose in
this business.” I told him I was interested to see just how off base the SCOUS
has become in interpreting the constitution, based on original intent.
“Why is
original intent so damn important to you, son?” asked the guy who used the
“boy” phrase.
“It is not
to me, sir. But it is to Justice Scalia. He claims it is how he interprets the
Constitution. What were the original framers intent…”
Then that
man asked me, “How did the negro vote?”
“You mean
Clarence Thomas?” He nodded. I said, “Justice Thomas voted with
the court to allow corporations the unlimited freedom to buy a voice in any election
they so desire.”
“Well, hell
if that negro voted for it, I want to change my vote. I am against them, then.”
Yes. I was
in Texas. I had almost forgotten that. So that skews the vote six-nill with two
on the fence. I’d say the United Sates Supreme Court didn’t fair too well in
this exercise….even in Texas.
As I as
about to leave I stopped and aloud asked them, one last question. “Obamacare –
for it or against it? They all booed and hissed and made Bronx cheers. “Good to
see,” I said. “Who at these tables has Medicare?” They all raised their hands.
God Bless America. We get the
government we deserve. We truly do.
John Crawley's latest novel, Stuff is available at Amazon now.
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