President Obama and his supporters seem to have their knickers all twisted over the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing corporate (as well as union) campaign contributions in elections.
Presumably the concern relates to the large sums of money that such organizations might bring to bear to influence elections in self-serving ways. That is of course a hazard, but one that is not well solved by denial of the right of any individual, group or entity to spend its own money in its own behalf.
The real underlying rationale of many seems to be that corporations are evil entities not to be trusted — akin with the caricature of the bulbous gentleman in the waistcoat with a gold watch chain and drool running down his chin.
If you’re in that group, there is a little something you ought to recognize. Virtually everything you use and need in your everyday life has been created and produced by one corporation or another, and if it weren’t for the synergy of talent, effort, equipment and capital facilitated and brought together under corporate umbrellas, you would be walking around in thongs and trying to kill bears with a stick. I suggest that we therefore recognize that there is nothing inherently “evil” about corporations.
As an aside and as a matter of fact, if you stop and think about it, the funds available to a corporation for its campaign contributions or any of its other activities come voluntarily from those who wanted/needed the products or services offered by that corporation. Contrast that, for example, with the unions’ source of funds, which are dues assessed against a working man’s wages as the price of membership in a union to which the worker was commonly pressured, if not downright forced, to join as a condition of his employment.
If you must characterize one of those sources of funds as “evil,” which strikes you as most apt?
Granted there are a few corporations that could be considered as having acted with “evil” intent (Enron for one). There are also a few individuals who fall in that category (Bernie Madoff for one), and heaven knows the union skirts are anything but pristine on that score.
Nonetheless, let’s get off this kick of painting all corporations (or unions, or individuals) with the same brush. To do so is simply infantile. And to deny a major slice of our economy with a right to a voice because of the potential for misconduct by a few is to toss the baby out with the bathwater.
Leland Browne lives in Joplin.
