Dear 5849376, You and I might think we deserve a country where our elected officials aren't bought and paid for. But apparently Antonin Scalia and four other Supreme Court justices disagree. Today, the United States Supreme Court dealt yet another staggering blow to our democracy by giving the green light for the wealthiest Americans to pour vast sums of money into electing their hand-picked candidates. The is another step down the terrible path the Supreme Court set us on with its Citizens United decision. We think if the Supreme Court is going to consistently side with corporations and the wealthy at the expense of our democracy, they might as well give up their pretense to impartiality. So we're going to send robes with the logos of the big corporations to the "justices" who voted for Citizens United and this new terrible decision. If you want to add your name to the card we deliver along with the robes, click here to automatically add your name. In the Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court turned on the spigot to unlimited sums of corporate cash to flood our electoral system. Since then, CREDO has fought on all fronts to overturn Citizens United and end corporate personhood, with over 500,000 CREDO members signing petitions and making calls. And CREDO has donated over $1 million to other allied groups who are working to expose the negative impacts of Citizens United and working to overturn it. In today's case, McCutcheon vs. FEC, the Supreme Court decided that the wealthiest Americans could give the maximum donation to as many federal candidates, political committees and parties as they wanted. The wealthiest donors tend to support candidates who will promote the pro-corporate agenda that made them wealthy in the first place. And if we don't turn back from this path soon, the U.S. will become a plutocracy governed by the corporations, for the corporations. The Citizens United decision is premised in part by a supposed lack of evidence that campaign contributions can influence a legislator's behavior outside of a direct quid pro quo transaction. Just this spring, CREDO participated in the release of a a randomized, scientific study run by political scientists at Yale and UC Berkeley that empirically shows for the first time what's always been obvious -- that legislators give preferential treatment to donors.1 The majority on the current Supreme Court look at corporations and see a people entitled to First Amendment rights. They won't even acknowledge the appearance of corruption, let alone the presence of corruption, when our election system is awash in campaign cash doled out by a small handful of incredibly wealthy donors and corporations. We know whose side Antonin Scalia and the Citizens United majority of the court are on. So we're sending them a new set of robes. Click here to automatically add your name to the card we'll deliver along with the robes: http://act.credoaction.com/go/3917?t=5&akid=10334.3291973.G6q_vj Thank you for speaking out. Becky Bond, Political Director CREDO Action from Working Assets P.S. There are over 140 emergency rallies planned today across the country. Click here to find one near you. Automatically add your name: Learn more about this campaign 1. "A new experiment shows how money buys access to Congress," Washington Post, March 11, 2014. |