As a person who does not almost ever side with the idea that those with large pools of money should get greater political benefits than those without, and as a person who almost never believes that corporations should be able to run our political system, I am extremely dismayed by the Supreme Court's recent backpeddling on a campaign finance decision: whether or not corporations can fund ads in the days before an election.

Attorney John Bonifaz of Voter Action comments on the recent activity and "says that in granting corporations the First Amendment rights of individuals, the Supreme Court is undermining the election process". He also explains why saying that money is equal to free speech is a farce of an idea.

"The Supreme Court has dealt a blow to campaign finance reform by throwing out part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that placed restrictions on corporations and unions from buying television ads close to elections."

"The court continues to equate money with speech in the political process. But beyond that, it gives First Amendment rights to corporations. And these artificial entities don’t have the same, obviously, qualities as you and I do as breathing human beings, and they should not be given those kind of First Amendment protections.

The fact is, is that we need to protect the electoral process and to protect our democracy. And we should not have big money corporate interests drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. The court does not weigh in any way whatsoever the First Amendment rights and the equal protection rights of voters, of people who do not have access to wealth, but yet under our Constitution and our promise of democracy have an equal right to participate. And that continues to be a problem with the court’s jurisprudence in this area....

the whole equation of money equaling speech is skewed, number one. And number two, there’s no balancing. Even if one assumes that there are political speech rights on the side of corporations, there’s no balancing whatsoever of the political speech and equal protection rights of those who do not have access to wealth, who do not own corporations, who do not have unlimited general treasuries."

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