Leave it to Bill Moyers, one of America’s most useful citizens, to sum up our country’s present political plight in a succinct metaphor: “Our elections have replaced horse racing as the sport of kings. These kings are multibillionaire corporate moguls who by divine right — not of God, but (of the Supreme Court’s) Citizens United decision — are now buying politicians like so much pricey horseflesh.”

Pricey, indeed. In its disgraceful, democracy-crushing judicial edict of January 2010, the Court took the big advantage that America’s corporate elite already had in politics — and super-sized it. This is the first presidential election to be run under the rigged rules invented by the Court’s five-man corporatist majority, and we can see the effects of this ruling.

For instance, we saw in this year’s Republican nominating contests that a new, supremely authorized critter not only arose, but instantly became the dominant force in the game, allowing a handful of extremely wealthy players to shove their selfish agenda ahead of all other interests in the election process: super PACs!

These are secretive money funnels that various political partisans have set up to take advantage of the court’s implausible finding that the Constitution allows corporations and super-rich individuals to put unlimited sums of money into “independent” campaigns to elect or defeat whomever they choose. (I should note that the justices’ ruling was a model of fairness in that it also allows poor people to put unlimited amounts of their money into super PACs.)