This is the Tom Hartman Program.

Our book today in the Tom Hartman Book Club is The Hidden History of American Allegarchy,

reclaiming our democracy from the ruling class by me. This is from the

chapter title the Supreme Court sets up American oligarchy on page 99.

If you were looking for a date when our modern American oligarchy started,

it would be January 30th, 1976.

It was a clear day in Washington, D.C. the temperature well above freezing with a light

wind, and the Supreme Court handed down their decision in the case of Buckley versus

Vallejo, the New York Times noted in a front page article, quote, campaign finance law in New York,

New Jersey, Connecticut, and 32 other states will require drastic revision in the wake

of yesterday's Supreme Court decision that struck down nearly all limits on campaign spending

by candidates for federal office."

It was the first of a cascade of decisions that reached their peak in 2010 with Citizens

United versus FEC.

From 1789 when the Constitution was ratified and we

officially became a republic until 1976 when the Supreme Court decided to

strike down thousands of state and federal laws put into place over a century or more to hold

back oligarchy, the federal government had never before interfered in the rights of states

to regulate money in their elections.

In 1907, in fact, the federal government itself

had made it a felony for any corporation to give money to candidates

for federal office with the Tillman Act.

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