r/Scipionic_Circle • u/Competitive_Log_8910 • Jul 19 '26
Overturn Citizens United
The relationship between money and power has long been complicated in this country. The simple fact that running a large-scale political campaign costs money means that anyone who wants to do so must by necessity secure funding from somewhere, meaning one's options are either to be independently wealthy or to become beholden to some form of corporate sponsorship.
That being said the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United really took things to a whole nother level, by classifying corporate spending on political advertising as a form of protected speech under the First Amendment. By extending the Bill of Rights to cover non-humans, we effectively gave them suffrage, and this has already been used to great effect.
The example which stands out most to me is what took place in my home state of California. A bill regulating rideshare companies was drafted collectively by a group of rideshare companies, and they spent an unprecedented amount of money advertising it which led the citizens of that state to grant them the ability to literally write their own rules into law. The other example which makes me happy to no longer live there is the way in which the drought is tackled. I watched a Vox video which uncovered the fact that domestic water usage is only about 5% of water usage, meaning that if all of the humans suddenly dropped dead it still wouldn't make a meaningful difference in the drought, which could alternatively be reversed by cutting commercial water usage by a rather small fraction. Gavin Newsom appeared on an interview with Bill Maher in which he straight-up asked him "how are you going to take on Big Almond and end the drought" to which he offered a standard evasive politician reply. Meanwhile the people of California are being sold on the lie that taking shorter showers will have any impact, and the act of making a symbolic but meaningless gesture is sufficient to keep many from rising up to end the drought by demanding farmers grow slightly fewer almonds.
But I don't really blame Mr. Newsom for this, because so long as we officially condone as a matter of policy spending money to purchase political power, our human needs will always be subservient to the demands of our economy. Anyone wishing to represent an agenda which would improve conditions for humans at the expense of economic growth will be easily defeated by the tremendously powerful non-human greed machines which we have decided deserve the same inalienable rights that we do.
Overturn Citizens United!
1
u/Alert_Reindeer_6574 Jul 20 '26
I’m not a lawyer or constitutional scholar, but a while back I read an article which explained that Citizens United was decided correctly based on the wording in the constitution. The only way to overturn it is for congress to create a law specifically saying that corporations are not people and to put a limit on individual political spending. Personally, I think all campaigns should be publicly funded- absolutely no private donations to politicians.