MY MOTHER, THE CORPORATION

Like people, the nation is capable of making a wrong turn.
We do have some safeguards against one persisting, but they are spotty, and they are slow. A Presidential Executive Order can be reversed simply by electing a new President who issues a new one. It may take four years, if the electorate feels strongly enough about the issue to vote in a candidate determined to do so. 

Now, when Congress screws up, it takes a lot longer to reverse it.  Congress, of course could pass a new law, repealing the first, but has been historically reticent to admit it's errors, and the same interests that lobbied for the old law are still paying for the committee chairman's lunch... 

Otherwise, first, someone has to violate the new law, either be convicted and lose each appeal all the way to the Supreme Court,  or be exonerated and the prosecutor looses each appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. If it chooses to hear the case. and agrees with the defendant that the law allegedly broken is unconstitutional, it will so rule. We are talking here about more than a decade from the first charges, minimum. 

But when the Supreme Court screws up, it takes far, far longer to correct it. 

Plessy v. Furguson (163 US 357, 16 S.Ct. 1138 41 L. Ed. 256) (which codified racial segregation with it's "separate but equal" ruling) of 1896 was only reversed in Brown v. Board of Education (347 US 483 and 349 US 294) FIFTY-NINE YEARS later. In sum, a screwup by the Supreme Court is the hardest to reverse, and the most consequential because it is the slowest to reverse, and may well drag it's consequence and effects down the generations while the wheel creaks.

What makes this important NOW is that the court has just invited the camel into the tent. On January 21, 2010 the Supreme Court endowed Corporations with more of the same inalienable rights that God gave the rest of us. See  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission ( 130 S.Ct. 876 )  Corporations now have 1st Amendment rights, which means they can contribute directly to political campaigns. Thereby the electoral and legislative impact of the 1st Amendment exercises of living breathing people is diluted, if not dwarfed. 

Living breathing people disclose their names when they make campaign contributions, The investors directing a corporation's donations do not. 

Talk about Judicial Activism. 

Big dollar mischief is afoot, and once it is apparent to all, it will take decades (at best) to reverse it. 

Maybe in fifty years a better-qualified Court can choose to revisit the wisdom of taking the government of the people away from them and giving it to those controlling corporation political contributions. Lest you are worried  about Rupert Murdoch, Steve Forbes or George Soros,  these are small fry.  The threat is much bigger, for to fully flex this new muscle, I predict a slew of new straw corporations and corporations being taken private by Sovereign funded foreign equity in syndicate with a Wall Street concerned with naught but commissions. Buying an American Election anonymously might look pretty attractive to Iran, or to China, no? Even impoverished North Korea and dysfunctional Yemen can afford a small cap or two. 

Has anyone thought this through? It's the Manchurian Candidate all over again with a twist: the Manchurian Board of Directors. 

And with their new corporations new 1st Amendment rights, there's not much we can do about it.