Citizens United has ceded our democracy to our rich oligarchs

By Donald A. Collins | 23 June 2025
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

Since its unfortunate enactment in 2010 Citizens United allowed political candidates to receive unlimited contributions from corporations and individuals which basically took our democracy into the hands of our richest and most powerful citizens.

About that time, my wife and I attended a meeting that we had been told would discuss one of the charitable issues in which we’ve had an interest. When we arrived the then Speaker of the US House John Boehner was presiding. She and I were sitting next to a young man who identified himself as a lobbyist and wondered why we were there since we were probably the only non-lobbyists in the room. That fundraising had been changed profoundly by the new legislation, Citizens United, which allowed unlimited funding by corporations to political candidates.

I have been writing about this unfortunate situation for some time, but of course, now that democracy has been placed fully in the hands of the oligarchs, Citizens United likely will not be possible to eradicate.

This seems to me the present situation is like having two giant Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaurs–one republican and one democrat–fighting each other for advantage without much regard for most of our citizenship.

However some challenging action is afoot as this excellent article tells us.

It begins

For the past decade, ECU has led the charge against the flood of dark money and corruption drowning our democracy. We’ve helped elect a new wave of reformers, exposed Republicans who break campaign finance laws, and built a movement rewriting how campaigns are run. Thanks to our “No Corporate PAC” pledge, nearly a quarter of Democrats in Congress now reject corporate PAC money—including a record 20 U.S. Senators.

In the 2018 midterm elections, ECU helped Democrats flip the House with a clear, urgent message: End the corruption. Voters responded, and Democrats delivered—passing H.R. 1, the For the People Act, a sweeping bill to rein in dark money and expand voting rights. Though Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans ultimately blocked the bill, the foundation was set.

Today, ECU stands as one of the most effective anti-corruption forces in American politics. Powered by over 1.4 million grassroots donors and raised more than $230 million, we’ve helped elect 700 reform champions nationwide. Through relentless investigations, federal complaints, and candidate support, we’re building a people-driven movement that’s pushing back against a broken system and proving real change is possible.

You can read the entire article here.

How the evolution to oligarch control occurred mostly in my 94 year lifetime is beautifully covered in a history by Timothy Noah in the New Republic on June 19. It begins,

For his second term, Trump brought eight fellow billionaires into his administration, including “special government employee” Elon Musk, who is the richest person in the world (net worth as of May 28: $431 billion); Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ($3 billion); Education Secretary Linda McMahon ($3 billion); Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg ($5 billion); Ambassador-at-Large Steve Witkoff ($2 billion); and Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler ($1 billion). Jared Isaacman ($2 billion) was nominated for NASA administrator but later withdrawn. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is often described in news accounts as a billionaire, but his declared net worth is only about half a billion, and Bessent’s name does not appear on billionaire lists compiled and updated meticulously by Forbes and Bloomberg.”

Noah concludes how to fix this situraiton but it is far from easy:

Aristotle, who was no great fan of democracy, nonetheless concluded that it appears to be safer and less liable to revolution than oligarchy. For in oligarchies there is the double danger of the oligarchs falling out among themselves and also with the people…. We may further remark that a government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government.

Amen. But Aristotle offered no guidance on what to do about an oligarchy that acquires power by democratic means. Nor did he reckon that the middle class would dwindle—from 61 percent in 1971, according to a Pew Research Center study, to 51 percent in 2023.

In 1976, J. Paul Getty died the world’s richest man, with $6 billion. Elon Musk has $431 billion. Correcting for inflation, he’s more than 10 times wealthier than the richest man in the world half a century ago.

Aristotle could not possibly conceive the proliferation and growing wealth of the American billionaire. In 1976, Getty died the world’s richest man, with $6 billion. Musk has $431 billion. Correcting for inflation, the richest man in the world today is more than 10 times wealthier than the richest man in the world half a century ago. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are each six times wealthier than Getty was. Larry Ellison and Warren Buffett are five times wealthier. Even the Walmart heiress Alice Walton is three times wealthier than Getty, and that’s after she spent hundreds of millions to build Crystal Bridges, a world-class art museum in Bentonville, Arkansas.

When you possess this much money, buying political influence looks like a bargain. Warren Stephens spent a combined $7 million to purchase his ambassadorship. But that’s nothing compared to the $31 million he paid a decade ago to buy a mansion in Carmel, California. Jeff Bezos spent $250 million to buy The Washington Post a dozen years ago. But he paid twice that to purchase the world’s largest sailing yacht, which clocks in at 417 feet and plies the seven seas with a support vessel that’s 246 feet long and carries additional crew.

I strongly suggest you read this story as it perfectly tells how we gave the oligarchs full power to mould our future.

Read the full story here.

As we move closer to the Trump Kingship despite the massive national No Kings protests, we again are facing the motivational forces fear (by most of us non billionaires) and the greed and power of the oligarchs will keep us from restoring control of democracy to all of us instead of the select few that now control our country.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk”, “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?”, “Trump: Pardon or Punish?: The Nixon Precedence Was Not A Trump Coup Denied!”, and “Common Sense: When will Trump be Impeached, Indicted, and Exited?”.

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