You might soon be hearing a lot more from your favorite drug maker or bank about which political candidates it favors and why.

That's the upshot of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Thursday. The court in a 5-4 ruling overturned a century of law and said that corporations enjoy freedom of speech, including the right to bankroll political speech through paid advertising.

We understand the deep concern about this ruling. Bank of America and Pfizer have a lot more money than you do, and that means they can speak more loudly than you can at campaign time. A corporation with the will and the deep pockets could overwhelm a candidate it doesn't like with negative ads.

The bottom line, though: We don't fear information. We trust voters to sift through political messages, consider the source, and vote their best judgment.

It's not as though corporations don't already influence politics. They bankroll campaigns through political action committees; those though do have spending limits.

So what now? Will you start to see candidate endorsements on the back of Wheaties boxes? Probably not. But you probably will see more efforts by companies large and small to get their views — and their candidate preferences — across to voters. (Direct donations by companies to candidates' campaigns still are barred.)

We suspect this means that candidates will have less control of the message in their campaigns.

We suspect this also means there will be pressure to raise the caps on how much candidates themselves can raise and spend. Those caps should be raised, or abolished.

Some analysts predict a flood of corporate political spending, with companies creating slick spots or hogging the air to make their case. But don't be so sure about that. If anything, corporate influence might become more transparent than it is now. A company that pours money into a campaign to back one candidate or slap another candidate, or that steps out in public to offer its views on an incendiary issue at campaign time, risks a backlash. It could lose a lot of customers who disagree with its views.

Take note: What the Supreme Court on Thursday allowed corporations to do in federal elections, they always have been able to do in Illinois elections. Yet we have not seen corporations mount their own campaigns for or against state candidates here.

In a dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the majority decision "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation." We'd like to think democracy is stronger than that.