I'm Bob Garfield. On the big show this week, we'll be asking questions about the role of money in the primary process.

Specifically, is pack money bad money? What about dark money?

Does accepting billionaire money tarnish your progressive credentials?

What if you are the billionaire?

But no discussion of money in politics is complete without a tip of the hat to Citizens United,

the landmark Supreme Court ruling of 10 years ago that recognized corporations as people and their money as speech.

That ruling was followed a few years ago by the Hobby Lobby decision, giving business owners the right to flout federal law based on their religious beliefs.

To many Americans, particularly on the left, both rulings were bizarre and ominous expansions of corporate rights.

But if you think this is the novel handiwork of a uniquely conservative

Supreme Court, you haven't been paying attention to the past three or four hundred years of

court cases and American history. Adam Winkler, professor of law at UCLA, is the author of Wee,

the Corporations, how American Business won their civil rights.

He told us in 2018 that the principle of corporate rights has been litigated forever

and predates our very founding.

Think of our very origin story,

the pilgrims fleeing here to escape tyranny and religious persecution, right?

Eh, no.

Pilgrims are sort of the perfect embodiment of American values and how we like to see them.

But the first permanent English colony was in Jamestown, and it was a corporate affair run by the Virginia Company of London, and it was

designed to make money not to exercise religious liberty.

All right.

The Republic was born, I've heard rumored, in 1776.

...