As reported at Esquire, Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana trashed the United States Supreme Court in light of its recent decision of American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock:
“And then they say, you know, ‘Free speech. Money is speech,’ ” he continued. “No, money is power. Don’t screw around here. Let’s just tell it the way it is: They’re buying power. You’ll see guys that have a business, and they employ a thousand people and they think they’re pretty big stuff, and they’ll say, ‘Yeah, this ought to be okay, a corporation is a person. We want to function as a full person.’ So they say, ‘Yeah, Citizens United, that’s a good thing.’
” ‘You are a dumbass, sir, and I’ll tell you why you are. Because the pharmaceutical companies and the military-industrial complex, and the insurance companies, they’ll step on you like a big. The $500,000 that you can afford to put into the kitty to induce someone to vote your way? You are a piker.’ That’s the equivalent of buying someone one drink and thinking you’re gonna sleep with them. It doesn’t work that way.”
“We went 100 years thinking that was a pretty good system and now the U.S. Supreme Court says, ‘No, you’ve been breaking the law, breaking the Constitution.’ Silly us. We thought having a democracy was more important than having the most corrupt political system in the world. Now, the United States Supreme Court says, ‘No, we prefer corruption over democracy.’