The Colbert Report on Corporate Control of the Government
Colbert had Jeffrey Toobin (one of the country’s top legal journalists, writer for The New Yorker, and legal analyst for CNN) on to talk about the expected SCOTUS ruling on corporate donations to political campaigns we mentioned earlier.
Here’s a portion of the transcript:
COLBERT: If this goes through, if they decide in favor of the corporations here, what’s going to happen to elections?
TOOBIN: Well, they will be essentially deregulated. Corporations will be allowed to give money, corporations will be allowed to broadcast programs that are in favor of one side or another, it’ll basically be no more rules about what corporations can do in political campaigns.
COLBERT: Now when I ran for President in 2008, as the Hail to the Cheese Doritos Stephen Colbert campaign for President, I was told that I actually couldn’t do that, that I was breaking federal election law by being sponsored by that corporation. But if this goes through, if this court case, if they win, does that mean that I retroactively won the election?
TOOBIN: I don’t think it means that.
COLBERT: But could you do that? Could I actually just wear a NASCAR suit and just have logos all over me and run for President as the sort of Gatorade Thirst for Justice campaign for President?
TOOBIN: You definitely could. No question.
COLBERT: What does it mean to individual donation? A corporation, as a person, gets to give any amount of money, but I as a person can give only $2,500.
TOOBIN: That’s what’s potentially the next legal challenge. Because if giving money is a form of speech, as the Court has held at various times, you can’t prohibit a company from giving money. And then presumably the next step would be that you couldn’t have limits on how much individuals could give either. That’s the potential implication of this decision.
COLBERT: So right now, corporations would actually have more power as people than people, until people catch up with corporations.
(via CrooksAndLiars.com)
Read the rest of the Crooks And Liars article linked above for more…
