Supreme Court ruling has many wondering what judges were thinking

It’s hard to imagine what good can come of last week’s decision by the United States Supreme Court ruling that gives corporations and unions a blank check to create advertising for or against a candidate or issue in an election.

Those entities are still restricted by how much they can directly donate to a campaign, but there’s no limit to how many commercials they can run right up to Election Day.

There is one beneficiary: Television stations all over the country. The New York Times reported television ad revenue will go up by $300 million during the 2010 election as a result of the ruling.

Without this ruling it was bad enough. It seemed like it was one political ad after another during the election season. We didn’t think it could get worse, but now it will.

The 5-4 to vote overturned the law that had been in existence for more than 60 years.

If you want to get a taste of what’s to come, think about the advertising blitz over Pebble Mine. It’s attack and counter-attack on a seemingly endless cycle. The issue is so contentious, it’s divided the Native communities.

The main sticking point is that this appears to many people that companies and unions will try to buy election results in their favor. Before this ruling, it was always interesting to see which candidate had the most money in their war chest during an election, because it happens a lot that the deeper the pockets the more likely the victor. They buy ad space so they can get that constant face time and constant reinforcement of their message. If Big Oil decides Jane Doe is their candidate, she’ll be there smiling at you almost every time you turn on the set.

Optimists say people are smart enough to see through a barrage of advertising. Let’s hope that’s true. But history tells us that incumbents have an edge because their names are known and they are familiar faces. That’s the edge this ruling gives preferred candidates.

One of the reasons the court ruled as broadly as it did was for sake of free speech. Pity the politician who can’t afford as much free speech as his opponent who has a mega corporation on his or her side.

There could be one other beneficiary in all this: Electronics companies that sell devices that let viewers skip past TV commercials.