Supreme CourtaEUR(TM)s five dwarfs

Then, several days later, the five intellectually dwarfed conservative majority in the Supreme Court of the United States issued a devastating blow to the American electoral system. They granting total free speech benefits to inanimate, humanly bloodless, artificially created legal entities called corporations, and like the Scarecrow in the "Wizard of Oz,” without a human brain of its own.

In no way are they "human” citizens with First Amendment "freedom of speech” rights. Or, if they really are "persons” as the Supreme Court allows, can we try, imprison or execute them or sue them, personally, for slander or libel?

If it had human brains, if it had human blood coursing through its veins and could speak, I would nominate the incredibly profitable Wal-mart Corporation to be president of the United States. This could, also, be an inroad into our democracy by nations which have large holdings in American corporations and there are a lot of those, especially China.

This is a national disaster. If Tom Campbell — by far with the most office holding-based experience and formal education of the three Republican candidates — is unable to compete financially with two local billionaires, how can any candidate prevail against money poured into campaigns by multi-multi billionaire corporations?

For those who believe this is great for conservatives in the general elections, contemplate how that money is, also, capable of directing which candidates prevail in the primaries and, as former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has pointed out, they also have the financial resources to direct who will win national, state and local elective judicial offices.

The conservatives normally rail about such decisions as "judicial activism or legislating” but never if the court becomes just another "political body” in which the benefits fall mostly in their direction, as in the 2000 presidential election.

With one blow, the Supreme Court of the United States negated the constitutions and laws of 22 states in the land, mostly those small ones who were protecting themselves from corporations within their own states that were buying elections with their wealth.

Of course the counterargument is that this also frees up campaign funds from unions, but what an absurdity! One could tote up all such funds available in all the unions in the United States and that wouldn’t even meet such resources available to the Exxon Corporation, alone.

It negates the bipartisan McCain-Feingold Act that sought to limit the special interests, their lobbyists and the cash available immediately before elections. It grants new leverage for huge corporations with the power to reward public servants to whom they contribute and punish those who do not do their bidding and gives the health insurance industry more ammunition to fight the desperately needed reforms.

Of course, it, also, strikes a devastating blow at the efforts of Republican President Theodore Roosevelt who, 100 ago, sought to contain the "Robber Barons” of the 19th century, the corporate political interests of the "Golden Age,” the newly enriched buccaneers from railroad, shipping, oil, financial corporations and trusts who saw themselves equal to the sovereignty of the people’s government.

How even that has been undercut with the "laissez-faire” deregulation developments beginning with the Reagan era, when even one of Franklin Roosevelt’s achievements, the creation of the S.E.C. (The Security and Exchange Commission), shocked the multibillion dollar swindler Bernie Madoff into wondering why it hadn’t discovered his activities 10 years before. Thanks to wonders of deregulation and fear of interfering in financial market activities, actually, it never did. It was his sons who turned him in. Sorry, Teddy and Franklin, you certainly tried in your days.

Vast corporate wealth has altered the equation of equality of citizens from the days of our Founding Fathers. They certainly never contemplated that some, so-called, "free speech persons” created by fiat and brought to life like a Frankenstein monster by the Supreme Court in our day, would be capable of overwhelming the entire process with unlimited, unrestrained financial resources that could dwarf the resources of those individual citizens seeking public office.

The effects of this decision will, likely, not be felt for a few election cycles and then it will become devastating.

Keith Kreitman has been a Foster City resident for 24 years. He is retired with degrees in political science and journalism and advanced studies in law. He is the host of "Focus on the Arts” on Peninsula TV, Channel 26. His column appears in the weekend edition.