When the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission on January 21, 2010, the immediate and still resonant reaction from many quarters has been: "this will open the floodgates" for corporate spending to influence the democratic election process in America. We hear outrage at the concept that "corporations are persons" entitled to First Amendment speech rights. We hear shock at the conservative turn of a Court that, in a 5-4 decision, upended a hundred years of progressive campaign finance reforms and overruled its own precedents prohibiting corporate political expenditures--precedents set as recently as 1990 and 2003.