With this SCotUS, it will not be long before there is a ruling demonstrating that a person's constitutional rights may not be allowed to interfere with the privileges of a corporation.
Well we're already pretty much there with the godforsaken gun lobby, forever still wrapping "privilege" in the gown of a constitutionally guaranteed right, And corporations in whose interests eminent domain seizure is deployed by government might still have to work harder than the gun lobby does any more to prove that their gig is also (if incidentally) in the public interest, but somehow it still does happen.
But sure, we're almost there also via a vocal and well funded minority of citizens practicing other special interest advocacy, e.g. those now clamoring for the overthrow of Roe v Wade. That's louder even since the 5-4 lean of the court today regarding the Texas SB-8 case. Chief Justice Roberts has again tried to slow down somewhat an actual overturn of Roe v Wade, but Trump's newer appointees aren't going along with him. The court today declined even to ditch the absurd private-citizen aspect of the Texas law's enforcement provision, although it didn't close the door on the plaintiff's right to try again to make the case to the state. It did narrow the options in terms of targets who could be sued.
As far as how corporate money fits into this: some of the right wing money behind the push to overturn Roe is interested primarily not in the abortion issue per se, but simply in keeping those particular one-issue voters electing Republicans to office.
This tactic works to advance the donors' own interests, which can then continue to reside off radar of both press and public, not out there on hot-button protest lines. It's still respectable to donate money to the anti-choice cause, because it is still carefully called Pro Life by the right.
Pro Life... has a nice ring to it, yes? This tag has stuck, regardless of the facts and figures about rising maternal mortality rates due to lack of prenatal care at women's health clinics now shuttered, and the irrefutable fact that Republicans' protective interest in the life, health and development of a child born to a single mother wanes rapidly, and in direct proportion to the advancing age of the child.
And... it's not like some of the big money behind political candidates sworn to work at overturning Roe v Wade would hesitate to procure an individual's abortion when it might seem medically necessary or even expedient --either a legal procedure or otherwise, at a convenient location or half a world away. These guys are essentially libertarians, not "conservatives" in the traditional sense. But hypocrisy counts for nothing.
Their corporate interests are just as single-minded as those of the wedges of the American electorate to which the campaigns they fund are meant to appeal. But for them it's simply about deterring impediments to regulation and taxation of industrial revenues. In the USA, it still takes votes to put lawmakers into office. So investing in political campaigns is seen as a reasonable investment. Buy all the votes you can... on either side of the aisle or both sides of the aisle, what the hey.
Does anyone sit around in a CFO's office adding up the special interests being supported in that manner and go "wait a mo, aren't we just more or less buying gridlock here?"
Sure, but gridlock has its appeal to corporations. They know where they stand and are likely to stay. They might like things to be different but they can work around what they know: there's always the annual appropriations bill to sneak a couple lines of de-reg into here and there.
www.npr.org
www.huffpost.com
www.cnn.com
www.theatlantic.com
