It turns out that giving the green light to corporate spending on elections does have consequences. Who could have known?

Fifteen years ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy made a prediction. Writing for the majority in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, in which the court struck down key guardrails against corporate spending in American elections, Kennedy rejected the allegation that the court’s ruling would have deleterious effects on how Americans perceived their republic.

“The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy,” he wrote. Kennedy’s reasoning was stilted and formulaic: Because corporations were “willing to spend money to try to persuade voters,” he argued, that dynamic “presupposes that the people have the ultimate influence over elected officials.”

Hmm. Because the money bags pay for our vote, we are flattered by their deference to our “ultimate” influence. That is some twisted reasoning right there.

The last two months have proven him disastrously incorrect. Elon Musk, a South African billionaire who is considered to be the world’s wealthiest man, spent $288 million to reelect President Donald Trump last year. In return for his contributions, he has been given more power over the federal government than any other private individual since the founding.

With that power, Musk and his henchmen have dismantled entire federal agencies and directed the dismissals of thousands of civil servants. He has gained access to private data on millions of Americans from the Social Security Administration, the IRS, and other bedrock components of the federal government. He has used the Treasury’s payment system to cut off funds to congressionally authorized programs and disfavored recipients of federal funds.

The entire federal government now seems to bend to one man’s personal interests. Trump personally took part in a private car show for Tesla, Musk’s ailing electric car company, on the White House lawn. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently announced that the Justice Department would treat vandalism of Tesla cars and dealerships as “domestic terrorism.” Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick told Fox News viewers this month that Tesla’s stock price slide was a historic buying opportunity and urged them to take part in it.

Corrupt enough yet? No? Seriously, you’re going with no?

The court’s liberal members, for their part, were unpersuaded by Kennedy’s reasoning. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the dissenters, criticized the conservative majority for its dangerous nonchalance toward the corrosive effects of corruption. “The majority declares by fiat that the appearance of undue influence by high-spending corporations ‘will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy,’” he noted. “The electorate itself has consistently indicated otherwise, both in opinion polls and in the laws its representatives have passed, and our colleagues have no basis for elevating their own optimism into a tenet of constitutional law.”

It’s almost as if bribery works, you know?