The Five Most Corrupt Political Actors on the D.C. Stage

The five most corrupt political actors on the D.C. Stage -- Supreme Court justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito -- just delivered a decision earlier this week, in the case of McCutcheon v. FEC, that clearly shows the depth of their corruption. Their decision will effectively remove the limits on how many members of Congress their Richy Rich friends can buy, and they made sure to hand it down early enough in the year to make a difference in November.

During the oral arguments for this case, Unjustice Scalia remarked that "Three and a half million dollars isn't a heck of a lot of money." To completely understand the context of Scalia's remark, add the phrase for one person to spend on political campaigns in a single election cycle to the end of it. This should give you a clearer idea of who Mr. Scalia works for, and who his friends are. Even for someone making a salary of $10 million/year, spending over a third of that salary on a single election cycle would amount to a heck of a lot of money, so Mr. Scalia's friends, and the people who he wants to please with his decisions, are not mere millionaires with small 9-figure net worths -- they are Billionaires, with a very big B.

Side note to New Hampshire residents: Remember that, when asked, Scott Brown initially named Scalia as his favorite SCOTUS judge, but quickly amended that statement following the gasps of shock coming from the live audience. You might want to take that into consideration when you think about who to vote for in your U.S. Senate election this coming November.

Of course, McCutcheon is only the latest in a series of corrupted decisions designed to please their rich friends, and it is Part 2 of their continuing efforts to dismantle a federal election system that would limit how much those rich friends can spend to buy members of Congress and influence Presidential choices. They began this systematic disassembly with the Citizens United decision in January of 2010, and no doubt they will continue taking apart federal election spending restrictions when and where they have the chance to do so. 

Only someone swimming in a sea of corruption could write, as Unjustice Kennedy did in the Citizens United decision, that money given to national political campaigns does not even present the appearance of corruption. Anyone aware of the corrupting influence of money on politicians would not write such an obvious lie into a legal record and expect it to be taken seriously, so the fact that Kennedy did so, and spoke for his four colleagues when doing so, tells us just how corrupt to the core they are.

In the Citizens United case the corrupt five also made clear their contempt for American democratic traditions, and the very concept of the will of the people, when they equated money with free speech. Anyone who says money equals free speech is saying, in effect, that the more money someone has, the more influence they should have over public policy. From that point of view, the will of the majority only matters if it can be bought and paid for -- the rich should rule, according to these corrupt five, and the more they have their way, the more the rich will rule.