Reply #27: The point that you are missing

[skepticscott]

is that the right to raise and spend money is inexorably linked to the ability to disseminate political messages. Like it or not, that's a fact and always has been. A restriction on one is a restriction on the other, as everyone who criticizes this decision understands implicitly, but refuses to acknowledge.

And how exactly does this ruling prevent people from voting for the candidate of their choice on election day? Whose right to vote has been taken away as a sole result of Citizens United? This ruling will indeed tend to increase the amount of political speech that is disseminated, but why would anyone have a problem with that notion on its face? They don't...what the decision's critics have a problem with is that they see it increasing political speech that they don't like, in favor of candidates that they don't like. But the First Amendment is intended to give no favor to one political point of view or one ideology over another. And if candidates you don't like get elected, it's because more people voted for them (thinking that they DID represent them and their interests) than for the candidates you do like...sorta the way things should work. That they voted the way they did because of what you consider to be right-wing/corporate propaganda is pretty much irrelevant. They are as entitled to base their voting decisions on that as you are entitled to base your voting decisions on what they would consider to be left-wing, socialist propaganda. That's the "free" part in "It's a Free Country".