On the recordSeptember 22, 2010
I rise today to speak about a type of corruption in the political arena. I am talking about the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate forum and that have little or no correlation to the public support for the corporation's political ideas, wealth that can unfairly influence elections when it is deployed in the form of independent expenditures. Sounds like tough talk to call that a type of corruption in the political arena and describe it in those terms. But those are not my words. Whose words are they? Those are the words of the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court said: State law grants corporations special advantages--such as limited liability, perpetual life, and favorable treatment of the accumulation and distribution of assets--that enhance their ability to attract capital and to deploy their resources in ways that maximize the return on their shareholders' investments.
