Nearly every Supreme Court ruling is 5-4 these days, with the far-right winning over the right. I guess they understand the need to dance with the wealthy corporatists that brung them. And I think they understand that this balance could change next year so they are rushing to establish as many far-right precedents as they can before that happens.
This one today is rich – literally. The Court ruled that allowing candidates to raise extra money if they face a self-financed millionaire violates the self-financed millionaire’s freedom to use money to dominate all speech. Do you think I’m joking?
Supreme Court strikes down part of campaign finance law
The Supreme Court struck down on Thursday part of a U.S. campaign finance law that relaxes contribution limits for candidates facing wealthy, self-funded opponents, a ruling that could affect congressional elections in November.
By a 5-4 vote, the high court declared unconstitutional the provision known as the “millionaire’s amendment” that Congress adopted out of concern that rich, self-financing candidates would have a competitive advantage.
Alito agreed with the arguments by [the rich candidate] that the law violated the constitutional free-speech rights of self-financed candidates, impermissibly burdening [rich candidate’s] rights to spend his own money for campaign speech. [emphasis added]
Enabling the other candidate to raise as much money – from regular people – is “burdening” the rich guy. Wow.