Campaign finance reform

Ed Stein's commentary:

The Roberts Court continues its assault on campaign finance sanity, striking down an Arizona law which has worked well over the years to level the playing field, allowing candidates encumbered by the need to raise campaign funds to compete against self-funded multi-millionaires. The Court’s reckless activism is upending decades of legal precedent, and in the process, increasing the pernicious influence of money in the political process. I’m pretty much a free-speech absolutist, but the idea that money is the same as speech, and the notion that corporations, entities that exist only because they are chartered by states, have the same free speech rights as individuals, are frightening concepts. If we don’t have enough evidence already, with the economic meltdown and the oil in the Gulf, of how big money has completely distorted our politics, just wait until this court finishes demolishing any remaining chance we have of controlling the ability of corporations and the very wealthy to stack the deck in their favor.