Supreme Court Republicans rule in favor of political corruption

Using the excuse of free speech, the court decided to allow corrupt use of campaign finance finds for political purposes. Ted Cruz had challenged the campaign finance law and won. The Republicans argued the law “burdens core political speech without proper justification,” which the said violated the First Amendment. The Democrats’ dissent explained why the law was passed in the first place. The New York Times writes:

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the law was squarely aimed at preventing corruption.

“Repaying a candidate’s loan after he has won election,” she wrote, “cannot serve the usual purposes of a contribution: The money comes too late to aid in any of his campaign activities. All the money does is enrich the candidate personally at a time when he can return the favor — by a vote, a contract, an appointment. It takes no political genius to see the heightened risk of corruption.”

The basic dispute was whether contributions to winning candidates to repay personal loans to their campaigns were a form of political speech or a kind of gift with the potential to corrupt.

The challenged law placed a $250,000 cap on the repayment of personal loans from candidates to campaigns using money from postelection donations. Seeking to test the constitutionality of the law, Mr. Cruz lent $260,000 to his 2018 re-election campaign.

A related regulation allows repayment of loans of more than $250,000 so long as campaigns use pre-election donations and repay the money within 20 days of the election. But the campaign did not repay Mr. Cruz by that deadline, so he stood to lose $10,000.

Chief Justice Roberts, noting that the 2018 Senate race in Texas was at the time the most expensive in history, wrote that it was undisputed under the court’s precedents that candidates can spend their own money without limitation on their own campaigns.

The challenged law, he wrote, “inhibits candidates from loaning money to their campaigns in the first place, burdening core speech.”

Once again, the Republican Party stands on the side of wealth and power for elites. They stand for corrupt government. That law prevented no speech by average voters. The only affected people are rich people. Ted Cruz is not going to give access to wealth to a voter who donates $200 or $800 to his campaign. 

The burden on speech for everyone was completely non-existent if one does not consider spending money in politics to be protected free speech, which I do not. I consider it to be legalized corruption. That money is usually dark. There is no accountability for that corruption.

Once again, we clearly see how Republican Party dogma supports flows of power to elite and powerful people, with no benefits for average people. The Democrats on the court dissented here, not the Republicans. In fact, average people and the public interest are usually harmed, as is the case here. Exerting political power in setting policy is a rich person's game, not an average voter's game. The only game the average voters get to play are voting, with all of smoke, mirrors, lies, deceit, slanders and crackpottery that game is shrouded in and corrupted by.

Simply put, political corruption by rich real people and people called corporations is legal in America. Republican Party elites are fully on board with corruption as their preferred means of exercising and keeping power for the benefit of the powerful, corrupt special interest called the Republican Party. This is how neo-fascism plays politics and power. It is not how democracy is supposed to play it.