Of snow and Supreme Court rulings

I’ve been completely buried under something like six feet of snow for the past few days, and have taken the time to catch up on non-bloggy things – like shoveling driveways and testing out the 4WD.  Will be back to blogging in the near future.

For now, some reading pointers on the recent Supreme Court decision scaling back regulations on campaign finance.

Mark Thompson gets to the heart of the matter here.

See Eugene Volokh here and here discussing the court ruling.

See Ilya Somin here and here and here explaining how people organized as corporations are still people.

My take is essentially that the wailing and gnashing of teeth over this ruling is greatly overblown.  No, this is not the end of American democracy as we know it. Yes, this is a victory for free speech.  Big corporations already had the ability to get around the campaign finance regulations we had in place by forming PAC’s among other things. McCain-Feingold did absolutely nothing whatsoever to prevent this.  The SCOTUS basically just removed a huge barrier to entry for smaller businesses and non-profit corporations who were previously regulated out of the system – essentially leveling the playing field in favor of the small guy – indeed, doing just the opposite that so many people seem to suggest.

The simple explanation is often not the correct one, at least in politics.  The knee-jerk, anti-corporate reaction may be justified well enough, but it fails to see how this ruling in fact does the big corporations no favors, and especially changes the game for the mainstream media.

But don’t take my word for it – check out those links for a much better, in-depth analysis.

P.S. – I’d just like to ask those who oppose this ruling which formally assembled groups of people should the federal government protect us from?  If not from the media corporations, than why from the big retailers?  And why exactly do we need this protection in the first place?  And even more importantly, why is that you think the federal government will either do this fairly or successfully?  Why place so much faith in the beneficence of the feds in the first place?