Citizens United and the White decision

The Citizens United decision this week by the US Supreme Court is troubling enough on its face, but gets even more troubling when you think about all the different types of elections. It's bad to think about senate and congressional races being heavily influenced by un-restricted corporate money, but what about local races? What about judicial races. I read a what-if that described a city council race where one candidate wanted to approve a Wal Mart supercenter (or hog lot, or factory, or whatever)and one didn't. Wal-mart, the livestock company, the whatever can now directly spend to advertise against opposition candidates. And local, small-donation campaigns are supposed to be able to come up with the money to fight that?

Think about this, though: The White decision essentially enabled active campaigning by judicial candidates. John Grisham had one scary what-if in his book The Appeal (I read it on a beach in Mexico, so maybe I remember it more fondly because of that). How about this one, though: candidate for judge (local, state supreme court, whatever) states he'd support a law that would help Company A. Company A finances direct mail piece targeting judge that wouldn't be as friendly. Company A wins their case, essentially having bought a ruling.

Thanks, Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy. This one's on you.