'What the Supreme Court Did to America When They Legalized Political Bribery

I took a couple of flights this past weekend that reminded me again of
the damage Republicans on the Supreme Court did to America when they
legalized political bribery.

The good news is that there are numerous things Congress can do to undo
the court’s bizarre doctrine that money is the same thing as free speech
and corporations have Bill of Rights freedoms and protections as “persons.”

Neither of these “rights to bribe” by the morbidly rich and corporations were recognized in the early years of our republic. Even today we’re
unique among advanced democracies in holding these Supreme Court-created doctrines which underpin much if not most of today’s political corruption.'

<https://www.randomlengthsnews.com/archives/2023/02/21/legalized-political-briber/43675>

'With the blessing of the Supreme Court, Billionaire ideologues have
paid off politicians — most Republicans, but a few “Problem Solver” Democratic shills as well — to:

— Gut our public schools to make way for billionaire- and church- funded (mostly all-white) private schools,

— Privatize public electric and water utilities so billionaires can make money on life’s essentials,

— End government subsidies for college to keep education as a bar only wealthy people can easily jump over,

— Keep their own taxes so low that most billionaires pay 3% income taxes
or less,

— Raise the Social Security retirement age to 67 and start privatizing Medicare through the Medicare Advantage scam,

— Sell off public lands for pennies on the dollar to mining and drilling interests,

— Fight efforts to force chemical and fossil fuel companies to clean up
their own toxic dumps,

— Allow banks, airlines, and hospitals (among others) to nickel-and-dime
us to death,

— Ship our factories and jobs overseas,

— Defund the IRS so it can’t afford to audit billionaires,

— Make it harder for low-income workers, folks on Social Security, and students to vote,

— Purge tens of millions of Democratic voters from voting rolls just
before elections (the way Jeb Bush handed Florida to his brother with a
537 vote margin after purging 20,000 African Americans from the rolls in
the months before November, 2000),

— Gerrymander states along racial lines to insure white rule, and

— Make it hard to break up monopolies.

None of these things were supported by a majority of voters; all were
gifts to special interests who’d greased the palms of Congress with
cash, legalized by five Republicans on the US Supreme Court.'

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