Roberts Court Overturns Yet Another Precedent in Favor of Corporate Campaign Cash

If I run an ad that would have cost you several million dollars to have aired, it has the net effect that my handing you those millions so that you could air the ad.

 

But, but... technicalities will save our great nation from corruption! As long as the corporations can't *technically* funnel the money *directly* to the candidate, the candidate will never be influenced. Whew!

 

Does it? If I was a politician I would rather have the money.

 

Well, before this ruling corporations could already donate through PACs.

 

delete

 

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june10/sb_01-22.html
[rquoter]
JIM LEHRER: Meanwhile, also this week, the United States Supreme Court handed down this decision on campaign finance. Some people say it's a huge catastrophe. Some people say it's a blessing, a freedom of speech issue, a First Amendment issue.

A tragedy? A victory? How do you see it?

MARK SHIELDS: It is the single biggest decision the Supreme Court, politically, in my lifetime. Everybody I talk to who is involved in campaigns, who has raised money politically said -- is terrified by it, in the sense...

JIM LEHRER: Terrified?

MARK SHIELDS: ... its implications.

American corporations, by IRS' judgment in 2005, are worth $23 trillion dollars. Barack Obama raised $800 million. Now, if we are -- say I'm Goldman Sachs, and David is sponsoring legislation to get back my bonuses. And David's got a safe district. I don't have to go after David.

All I have to do is take somebody who is sponsoring, sponsoring David's legislation, supporting David's legislation, and I go in and spend $3 million and beat him. I have hanged that person. My lobbyist says, we're going to stop this one way or the other. We will spend whatever we have. I don't want to hurt you, David, but, I'm sorry, Shields just had to sacrifice his seat.

That is -- the implications of this are absolutely unfathomable and they are terrifying.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I think it is a bad decision. I do -- I think it will have a poisonous effect on political atmosphere, but for different reasons than most people that I have read and heard from.

First, I'm not convinced it will have a -- it will totally change the landscape, because I'm not convinced a lot of corporations are going to want to have a political profile.

JIM LEHRER: Why not?

DAVID BROOKS: Because you are a corporation. You want to sell everybody.

JIM LEHRER: OK.

DAVID BROOKS: And, so, why stick your neck out?

But I do think it will have this effect. What do corporations, when they go to Washington, what do they want? One, they want subsidies from Washington. Two, they want to crush small businesses who are hoping to compete with them by erecting regulatory hurdles.

So, I think they will use that money to try to essentially hurt small business, who don't have lobbyists, don't have money to spend. And I think both of those are very negative effects on the country.

I do not necessarily think it is great for the Republican Party and terrible for the Democratic Party, because when you look at who is willing to subsidize corporations and erect regulatory barriers, both parties actually do that. So, I think will have bad effects, but not necessarily partisan effects.

JIM LEHRER: When President Obama said yesterday, we're going to do -- I'm going to talk to Congress and we are going to have a forceful response, what can he do? What can anybody do about this, whether they like it or not?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I mean, the way that the opinion, the decision was written, it's going to be awfully tough. I mean, they have made it constitutional...

JIM LEHRER: The Supreme Court of the United States has made a decision.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, David, that there's not too many options?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I mean, people like Chuck Schumer are working on it, but it's -- from what I have read -- and I don't understand it completely -- they are nibbling on the edges, rather than going at the core.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. No, it is -- I'm serious -- this is big-time. It really is. And the -- just the presence of that kind of money, why would anybody volunteer in a campaign?

JIM LEHRER: Why do you assume -- this is a question -- David is going to ask you this question, but I'm going to ask it before he does.

MARK SHIELDS: Sure. OK.

JIM LEHRER: Why do you assume that people will use it in evil ways, the money?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I don't find corporations, historically, in this country to have been altruistic agents.

JIM LEHRER: David?

DAVID BROOKS: I think they are altruistic when they make great products. I happen to like my iPod and all that kind of stuff.

MARK SHIELDS: I am talking about public policy.

DAVID BROOKS: No, I agree.

MARK SHIELDS: Public policy.

DAVID BROOKS: They try to stifle competition.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: That is what businessmen do.

MARK SHIELDS: And they -- and they are not -- and they don't take a wide perspective. They don't take -- I didn't see them -- did you see the corporations really pushing for the civil rights acts? I mean, did you see them pushing for Americans With Disabilities Act? I missed that, I guess.[/rquoter]

 

Nice comparison, Sam.

 

The politician would spend the money on the same advertisements that the corporations are going to be buying anyway.

Really, corporate power far exceeds the power of single votes in the political process already - this just makes that fact much more blatant and much more difficult to combat.

 

$10k per candidate, yes, (with a max of $5k per primary and $5k for the general), and they could produce ads.

Brooks brings up the great point of the regulatory cluster**** to come. Still, he and Shields didn't cover (at least in that segment) the fact that corporations should try to modify regulations not just to stifle competition but to increase their profits (e.g. hidden fee-o-rama for financial, medical and telecom industries.)

 

And in response to the Pavlovian need to defend unions, yes unions realize they are going to be outspent but that doesn't change the issue about treating legal entities like corporations and unions virtually unrestricted political speech.

Those defending the unions and the unions themselves keep on bringing up the issue that they don't have that much money. Well a lot of corporations don't have a lot of money either so is the argument then that legal entities that don't have a lot of money should be allowed to have no restrictions on their political spending?

 

This is an excellent point that bears repeating:
[rquoter]DAVID BROOKS: And, so, why stick your neck out?

But I do think it will have this effect. What do corporations, when they go to Washington, what do they want? One, they want subsidies from Washington. Two, they want to crush small businesses who are hoping to compete with them by erecting regulatory hurdles.

So, I think they will use that money to try to essentially hurt small business, who don't have lobbyists, don't have money to spend. And I think both of those are very negative effects on the country.

I do not necessarily think it is great for the Republican Party and terrible for the Democratic Party, because when you look at who is willing to subsidize corporations and erect regulatory barriers, both parties actually do that. So, I think will have bad effects, but not necessarily partisan effects.
[/rquoter]

 

rj, I don't hear anybody at all saying that. Where is anyone saying that the Supreme Court should have made this radical ruling, but made it just for unions?

Your repeated attempts to say "unions could be really bad too," which is technically true, is kind of like a weatherman who says "well, hurricane Katrina could cause some wind gusts that may give windsurfers dangerous conditions in Corpus Christi, and a storm surge of up to 6 inches! Sure winds and storm tides will be higher in the New Orleans area, but don't forget Corpus Christi."

Seriously, the magnitude of money is that different. EDIT: Agree on excellent Brooks point. I think it underlines that unions are an irrelevant part of this. Big big money versus smaller, innovative money, and against the rights of consumers, is the big big issue.

 

You and Sam though are sidestepping the point in regard to having legal entities of any size being allowed essentially unlimited political speech. The arguments you guys fall back to in regard to defending unions is just that they are smaller than corporations. Yes they are but there are many small corporations out there.

So as much as Sam has accused me of a pavlovian reaction considering that the ruling specifically mentions unions it seems like that Sam and yourself are engaged in a pavlovian defense of unions. I brought up unions for a specific reason, to point out that this ruling has affects across the political spectrum, but it is very relevent since its in the ruling while the amount of spending is not.

 

But you cannot ignore the fact that unions were specifically included in the opinion so the issue of the nature of rights of legal entities also includes unions. I agree that the amount of spending is important but the ruling didn't address that and all along one of my main concerns has been the issue of granting legal entities the same as those of actual humans.

That is an interesting question and I don't know enough about union laws whether you can do that or not. That said that goes back to Commodore's argument though about that legal entities should have unrestricted political speech rights since they are really just groupings of individuals. I suspect that unions though also have some legal separation from the people in it otherwise they wouldn't have mentioned them in the ruling.

 

I won't speak for Sam, but to me, we have a communication problem. You again say anybody is defending unions, and in fact that I am "defending unions." Where am I defending them? Am I defending Greg Oden's photos because I haven't posted what an idiot he in that now classic NBA Dish thread? Am I defending Trevor Ariza's shot selection because I haven't railed against him in the GARM?

We are talking about a truly enormous pile of crap with this ruling, and I feel like I'm talking about the smelliest, deepest part, where people could literally drown -- it needs to be cleaned up first, if there is even anything we can do -- while I feel like you're theorizing about other parts of the miles wide crap spill having similar color and texture. I don't disagree with you at all, but I'm worried about the worst part of this.

Unions will have similar new power to influence as some non-fortune-500 businesses. I wish they would not. I don't at all like them having extra political power via this ruling. So we agree.

My point of interest and greater worry happens to be the entities with much greater resources. They don't need to be any more like Triumph than they already are.

 

I'm not theorizing anything since the ruling specifically mentions unions and as I have stated my concern is with the issue of legal entities granted a right to unlimited political speech. As I noted in an earlier post this ruling affects broadly across the political spectrum. Unions are one area where they have an affect but not the only area.

In terms of defending unions. I would say saying how little their spending is compared to corporations so we shouldn't be bringing them up is a defense. My point is that the size of the spending isn't relevant to what I see as the central issue of this ruling, that legal entities of any size[/i] are granted unrestricted rights to political speech.