10 June 2016
Cuomo v. Citizens United
It is a shame that political action committees and other big private and corporate spenders can have as much a determinative effect on the behavior of American voters as the Supreme Court has allowed them. The confusion of campaign (mostly media) spending with free speech is not as distorting of our constitutional values as the reliance of a large portion of the public on a third-party advertising production instead of their own analysis. The republic was founded on the belief that the common citizen was committed to the goals of the union and would set the direction of government policy based on his judgment of what would best achieve them, not on what the most well-funded advertising campaign told him
.
The pervasiveness of mass media exposure in Western countries has robbed their residents of autonomous personal thinking. This is not the fault of the media; it speaks of societal laziness in an era of prosperity-mentality, regardless of the Great Recession. If New York Governor Cuomo intends to reverse the consequences of the Citizens United decision, he must mount a national program of incentives to motivate voters to reduce their dependence on Madison Avenue-packaged political information.
It is a shame that political action committees and other big private and corporate spenders can have as much a determinative effect on the behavior of American voters as the Supreme Court has allowed them. The confusion of campaign (mostly media) spending with free speech is not as distorting of our constitutional values as the reliance of a large portion of the public on a third-party advertising production instead of their own analysis. The republic was founded on the belief that the common citizen was committed to the goals of the union and would set the direction of government policy based on his judgment of what would best achieve them, not on what the most well-funded advertising campaign told him
.
The pervasiveness of mass media exposure in Western countries has robbed their residents of autonomous personal thinking. This is not the fault of the media; it speaks of societal laziness in an era of prosperity-mentality, regardless of the Great Recession. If New York Governor Cuomo intends to reverse the consequences of the Citizens United decision, he must mount a national program of incentives to motivate voters to reduce their dependence on Madison Avenue-packaged political information.
