Supreme Court rules 5-4 to strike down corporate and union campaign finance limits (for their support of TV and print ads at least), basically opening up the flood gates for future elections to surpass even the obscene spending total (over 1.5 billion dollars) of Obama-Clinton-McCain in 2008.
"As long as they do it independently, they can spend whatever they want," notes NPR's Nina Totenberg. "It will undoubtedly help Republican candidates since corporations have generally supported Republican candidates more."
How do you prove independence? Just that they're not officially registered with a campaign? Give me a break. The political parties and industry groups/companies do secret deals on policy-for-donations all the time, even while the campaign finance limits were in effect. And we can kiss any hopes of a third party gaining strength goodbye.
"On its own, [the ruling] will not be responsible to opening the floodgates to corporate money ... because the floodgates were pretty wide open to begin with," [Columbia political science professor N.] Persily says.
And how can we expect the incumbents in government to enact new campaign finance rules, when they are the ones who directly benefit from all the corporate cash to help them stay in office? I suppose the Dems in power would feel more threatened because they are poised to lose seats in November and have (slightly) less corporate support in general.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122805666
Corporate finance timeline: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121293380
100 years ago, it was actually illegal for companies to donate to campaigns.
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