Yesterday’s US Supreme Court ruling which removed donation limits to political campaigns is the end of what was left of an already broken American political system and the full scale implementation of the corporatocracy. I just wanted to pull some excerpts from a great Washington Post article to demonstrate why:

In a 5 to 4 decision, the majority cast its ruling as a spirited defense of the First Amendment, concluding that corporations have the same rights as individuals when it comes to political speech.

If you aren’t sure why this is a problem, watch Joel Bakan’s The Corporation. In this documentary, Joel explores the implications of corporate personhood and reveals that if the corporation is a person, it acts like a psychopath.

Which party stands to benefit from this ruling? Whichever party upholds corporate values. The Republicans won this thing a long time ago. They are still the bastion of corporate policy but because the methods they used got Clinton and Obama into office as well, even a reformer is trapped within the system. However, that doesn’t mean that original US political party of corporatism won’t benefit the most,

Republican leaders, still celebrating Tuesday’s Senate upset in Massachusetts, cheered the ruling as a victory for free speech and predicted a surge in corporate support for GOP candidates in November’s midterm elections.

Even worse,

It also overturns laws in two dozen states limiting corporate expenditures in local races.

Meaning that if you don’t want fracking in New York State and a corporation does, they ensure their guy gets the most funding in the local races.

Robin Hanson brings up a good counterargument, mainly that currently pundits have undue power and that this new ruling will help to counter it. However, this paraphrase of the original 1990 Supreme Court ruling on the matter said it best,

Because of their “immense aggregations of wealth,” [corporations] possessed a unique ability to drown out the voices of individuals in the nation’s political conversation.

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini