We know from the movie Cabaret that money makes the world go around. Randy Newman has told us that it's money that matters (in the U.S.A.). Recent events make it clear that money, also, makes words go away.
In particular, it does so with respect to words which the First Felon finds offensive. By withholding federal funds, or threatening to do so, he compels institutions of higher learning to make certain that certain words won't be used by their students or faculty or on their campuses. By "soliciting" huge donations from large law firms by use of threats to diminish or eliminate their access to government contracts and information, he in effect pardons them for conduct and expression contrary to his pursuits and induces them to agree not to express positions he dislikes in the future. Through the efforts of his plutocrat ally or perhaps crush, money is to be paid to those who agree to sign a petition which discourages voting for a particular candidate for a position on a state supreme court.
As a result, the government of a nation supposedly devoted to freedom of speech devolves into a racket for spending and being paid money in order to limit speech. It's appropriate that our nation's government acts to limit our freedom in such a crude fashion, through racketeering, as crudity is characteristic of this regime and its facilitators and lackeys.
Our Great Republic's increasingly suspect Supreme Court facilitated, if it didn't cause, this kind of corruption when it equated the use of money to influence voting and government policy to speech protected by the First Amenment in the Citizens United case. That decision virtually assured that our government would be corrupted by money. Our plutoctacy may owe its existence to the Justices of the Supreme Court, some of whom have revealed themselves to be unusually venal.
What hope is there that such a court will prohibit the use of money to limit free speech when it already has decided the use of money is itself a form of protected speech?
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