Grantham remarks on Supreme Court

… and the Bad News
Supremely Extreme: Another “Day That Will Live in
Infamy”
Five Supreme Court justices today announced that not only
are corporations people and that their money is free speech
– this is old hat and a very ugly hat at that – but now, there
should be no limit to the money they spend to infl uence
political outcomes. This would be one thing if corporations
really were “democratic associations” of humans that the
Founding Fathers may have wanted to protect. They are,
instead, small oligarchies of top management. Thus, the
top management of major oil and coal companies can
decide what political outcomes they want to promote,
say, unlimited production of carbon dioxide (none of their
CEOs apparently has grandchildren!), utterly without
any approval of their decisions by the millions of actual
owners. The fi nancial power of corporations was already
in danger of overwhelming the democratic process in
Congress and this makes the damage potentially unlimited
and puts the Court’s seal of approval on it. So let’s do it in
style and have a name change. The U.C.A. has a familiar
look: The United Corporations of America!