First, I think that the ruling is a disaster for democracy. It's not like we didn't have significant issues with campaign finance before this, but this makes that orders of magnitude worse than it was.

As for your specific point on transparency, do you believe that a company, say Bank of America, is going to directly spend on political ads and the like? They almost certainly wouldn't; that'd be silly of them to put their fingerprints on such things. They'd band with other corps with similar interests, charter a company/group "Citizens for Awesome Banking" and funnel their money through that.

I mean, really, these are the same people who thought the state had a legitimate reason to ban "bong hits 4 jesus."

But yes, transparency would be good.  I don't understand why we bother with the current method of disclosure, where you report your contributions and expenditures. 

Why not require that contributors give their money to the FEC who will then disburse it to the designated candidate for a designated reason?  It would eliminate the dependency on candidates to disclose honestly - good for us - and eliminate the need for them to track their contributions / expenditures - good for them.

By September thousands of corporations will be spending tens, if not millions, of dollars on TV ads for their candidates.  First, do you really believe these corporations care that their customers know whom they are supporting?  Second, do you really believe most of their customers care whom the corporations are supporting (case in point - Walmart)?

You write:

I also doubt it's worth all the effort going to reverse the ruling.

Jerome, that is too, too funny.  You would rather have us spend thousands and thousands of hours in additional fundraising each election cycle to then have a slim chance of competing with these corporations than have our Congress simply kill the filibuster, (temporarily if necessary),create two new Supreme Court seats, bring a similar case to trial, and have the new SCOTUS reverse the decision?

It doesn't sound like you value our democracy very much.

Can you please give me an example where disclosure of a donor or donors has effected a campaign. There have been embarrassments but nothing that would equal the power of the money itself. 

We tried restricting free speech to decrease government corruption, but it hasn't worked. They still wield power with this law in place.

Outside of that, do we really want the government controlling speech? During the arguements, the justices asked if it the video in question (about HRC) had been a book, would it have been okay? They said no, it was the content that was the problem.

in essence, they were arguing that the government should be able to ban books that are critical of government. Is this what we want?

I agree with Jerome that there are better ways to decrease the influence of special interests. Along with his thoughts, how about electing politicians that represent the people instead of their corporate masters?

The laws that were in place seemed effective for getting more Democrats elected in 2004-2008, it also managed to get more people out on the streets and making small contributions themselves, but where were these Democrats when we needed them (Iraq, FISA, EFCA, Health CARE Reform, Global Climate Change Legislation).  In the end it seems that still none of the Democrats we worked so hard to get elected bothered to stand up to the corporate interests behind every single one of the examples I listed (MIC, Telecoms, Banks and Large Corporations, Pharmaceuticals and Insurance, Oil and Coal respectively).

There are a few major steps that, in conjunction with Jerome's point about disclosure, might help change the process.

1) Time and place restrictions on free speech effectively limited many protests and other political demonstrations by groups of individuals to times and places where their impact was minimized or even totally overlooked.  What if we put a new law in place that if you were a corporation (non-profit or otherwise) your free speech was limited to a few late night cable channels, myspace video, and the local library only.  Sort of like how you can't show boobs on HBO until after 9 or 10pm or whenever.  Then they can spend as much money as they want on political messages but no one will be around to hear them.

2) One-hundred percent publicly funded elections.  In addition maybe if an individual or a corporation wants to contribute more than X dollars toward political advertisements or contributions to any given candidate -- lets say $5000 -- then they have to also contribute half again as much ($2500) to a general election fund that goes equally to all parties that have decided to use public funding.

3) Wait for it... revoke the status of corporations as "people" or "human beings."  They don't die so they can't be a person.  This also means that they don't have all the rights that people do.

That's alls I gots folks.

sent me an email which reads, in part:

"One message I heard loud and clear in Panama City was opposition to the federal government's effort to take over the entire college student loan program. Such a move would eliminate good paying private sector jobs across the nation, including more than 700 at the Sallie Mae facility in Panama City. The federal government should not take over where the private sector is already succeeding in providing a good service."

Get it?

Maybe you have more faith in the American people than I do. I see most of the people in this country as willfully ignorant. Most people don't care to look for information that is readily available. Transparency should be a good thing, yes. But to see an upside to this decision, I think you are assuming that the average voter A) cares enough to find out which corporations are funding which candidates, and B) has the brains to understand the implications of that funding. It doesn't matter that the information is out there -- people are going to be stupid and think what they want regardless. Even our members of Congress are stupid. Should Joe Wilson already have known that HCR efforts would not provide for illegal immigrants? Yeah, the information was available. But the stupid ass decided what he thought, didn't bother to look, and hollered "You Lie" at the president. And wingnuts around the country agreed with him and applauded. You think those same dumbasses -- or even average moderates -- are going to do any research or critical thinking? Nah. Math is hard. So are words. Down with the socialists and brown people!

I understand what you are saying -- and in theory, yeah, people ought to be able to look at who's being bought and sold and wise up. But in practice, expecting people to do their homework and make the right connections is probably asking too much.