Citizens United: Nightmare vs Reality
Conn Carroll /
When the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not ban books in order to protect incumbents from critical speech, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann compared the decision to Dredd Scott, warning that after Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission:
It is almost literally true that any political science fiction nightmare you can now dream up, no matter whether you are conservative or liberal, it is now legal. Because the people who can make it legal, can now be entirely bought and sold, no actual citizens required in the campaign-fund-raising process.
It has only been six months since the decision, but as Mother Jones reports today we can already see if Olbermann’s nightmare is coming true:
Just as predicted, campaign ads that would previously have been illegal are now airing in key midterm election races. But the players funding those ads aren’t the ones you might expect. It turns out that some of the first groups to exploit Citizens United aren’t corporations, but labor unions.