Reasonable people worry about the world that has been bequeathed to them by the Supreme Court Justices who upended campaign finance laws in the Citizens United case. But there's really no better demonstration of how creepy the entrenched corporate interests in our governance already are than to point out that Lockheed Martin purchased a full-page ad in the Washington Post to pay their "respects" to the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.).
I put "respects" in the ol' scare quotes specifically because you can be sure that Lockheed Martin is not guided to memorialize Murtha for his long career or the good he's done or the legacy he left behind. This ad exists because Murtha was a "rainmaker" for the defense industry and only last year was one of the more defiant voices fighting the efforts of the White House and Secretary of Defense Bob Gates to cut funding for Lockheed's F-22 fighter. It would have looked weird for Lockheed to give the F-22 this sort of send-off -- but that's essentially what's being done here.
Perhaps in the future, corporations can pay for birth announcements when a lawmaker is spawned. With nepotism flowering so fully in politics, corporations may as well mark their territory early.
The good news, of course, is that this ad paid for some print journalism.
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