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

Precisely. And there is no difference than what Fox or Rush has been doing. Im not sure what the big uproar is about.

 

As I hinted at in my CNN.com column of yesterday, those self-identified free-speech champions who are crying in their Cheerios today over Citizens United v. the FEC are able to get to what many of us think is a contradictory position by pretending that the free-speech objection to campaign finance reform is a smokescreen for enabling the Corporatey Corporates (and their puppets, the Republican Party). For instance, The New York Times editorial board:

Or The American Prospect's Scott Lemieux:

Lemieux at least points to other Supreme Court cases to build a case for hypocrisy, but what's striking here is the inability to even pretend to take debate opponents at face value. When arguments are disingenuous, that apparently obviates the need to engage them. Thus, petulant hand-waving like: "Libertarians agree that letting corporations have more influence over the political process than ordinary citizens is excellent for the cause of freedom."

Ordinary citizens like...Russ Howard and Steve Cicero, who launched an unsuccessful grassroots recall campaign against a politician they considered corrupt, then were given a fine for campaign finance violations eight times the amount of money they had raised for it? Or how about (of all things!) the Supreme Court case in question, where documentary filmmakers faced jail if they broadcast a movie that made a politician look bad during election season? Or how about this description in yesterday's decision of what regulated political speech looks like in practice?

The plight of "ordinary citizens" is precisely the reason why non-Republicans like me (let alone many conservatives who refused to support John McCain) opposed the campaign finance laws struck down yesterday. When a law requires any group of two or more people who raise $5,000 for the purposes of making a political statement to adhere to a blizzard of federal regulations subject to fines, that law by definition chokes off the "voices of everyday Americans" that President Barack Obama, in his ridiculous reaction to the decision yesterday, expressed outrage on behalf of. Free-speech campaign-finance enthusiasts are willing to censor or chill those small voices for the greater purpose of attempting (and largely failing) to blunt the political activity of hated Corporations (or "Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests," in the words of a president who has been bailing out Wall Street banks and crafting legislative deals with health insurance companies and other powerful interests for a year now). What campaign-finance supporters are not willing to do, at least most of the time, is admit that they're making any tradeoff on political expression at all.

link

 

“I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
~ Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan. November 12, 1816


http://www.movetoamend.org/we-corporations

 

The uproar is about the fact that the situation we had, which was basically legalized bribery, has gotten worse now that corporations have unlimited ability to spend to elect whoever they want. The biggest companies can now exert even MORE influence over a system that they already controlled almost completely.

The term "oligarchy" isn't too far off here.

 

And I don't agree with that either if you noticed in my post I wrote:
"I personally am leery of the idea of restricting personal spending for political campaigns but I have a hard time seeing how that should apply to entities like corporations and unions."

I agree that union spending is below corporate spending but I presume that conservatives don't like unions so I am making the point to them that this ruling also empowers unions.

Let me ask you then. Leaving aside how much spending unions do on principle do you think that unions should also be granted the same free speech rights as humans?

 

As biased as Fox News and Michael Moore are I'm not aware of them outrightly campaigning for specific candidates on air or in Moore's movies.

 

Are corporations, unions and other such legal entities the same thing as "ordinary citizens?"

There were definately problems with campaign finance laws that the court could've addressed narrowly. This op-ed makes it seem like the ruling is all or nothing when it need not have been.

 

Do you really think conservatives who would support this decision are going to go, "Uh oh, I really don't like unions, so maybe this wasn't such a good idea." If they are not seriously brain damaged, they realize that corporate spending will completely dwarf union spending, and it is a huge net gain for them.

Sam is completely right, this reflexive construct of "corporations and unions" seriously misrepresents the reality of the situation.

 

instead of getting in an uproar over this (i have no real opinion either way), let's address the real problem. an uneducated (on the issues) electorate

 

ok. Oct, 2008.
Many Fox Analysis: Im not telling you who to vote for, but Obama is a terrorist lover, socialist muslim who is not even a citizen of this country.

I know voters are dumb across the board, but you don't need to hold their hands all the way to the booth. Im not in the least bit fond of corp. being allowed to spend countless dollars towards campaigning, but nothing was stopping them in the first place.

What we need to do is start throwing politicians in jail for bribery.

 

Wow, I actually agree with you on this one, but had I said it, or some other evil conservative, it would have been automatically disregarded.

Good for you man!

Intelligent statements are intelligent statements, no matter from which side of the aisle they originate.

 

I've long been fascinated by US History, particularly things like the 1824 election, the Red Scare, the Know-Nothings, the Panic of 1873, the Spanish-American War and the Gilded Age.

I never imagined I'd live through similar stuff in just one short decade.

 

That's fine. But now Exxon has the ability to influence every house, senate, and presendential election in the land. They can put millions of dollars behind each candidate they want to win.

Effectively, Exxon can control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency, and therefore Exxon is our gov't.

All hail and pledge allegiance to Exxon!

I hope you're happy. This is enormous. I think history will write this as the final nail in the coffin of American Idealism and Leadership in Democracy.

We're just a big bad East India Company now....except the company controls the gov't, not the other way around.

 

Hysterical much?

An opposing viewpoint for you, just something else possibly to consider from a different perspective:

These restrictions exempted media corporations, such as the Big 3, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc. And from my point of view, the majority of those corporations were both overwhelmingly liberal in their mindsets, and also unabashedly partisan in their delivery of the 'news', and openly working for and rooting for particular candidates.

And since this hullaballoo is really all about influencing voters in elections, and not just 'buying elections' as so many people are perceiving it, the question is, would you prefer it to go back to the way it was, with openly partisan influence-of-voters by overwhelmingly liberal media outlets? I wouldn't. See, to me, this just levels the playing field.

However, what some people have said in this thread is valid: transparency is going to need to be a huge new reform in all of this. It may be hard, since politicians on both sides clearly do NOT want transparency, no matter how much lip-service they pay to it. And PGabriel was the most right - the real issue always comes down to the voters themselves.

Nanny-staters believe that voters are too stupid to be able to figure things out for themselves, and thus must be 'protected' from the big bad money-spenders because they will be helpless in the face of political advertising.

I don't believe that.

I believe that Pandora's Box is already open, there is too much independent information out there, too many sources, and a million bucks spent on a campaign commercial that the majority of voters don't even SEE is just a million bucks wasted, nothing more.

I believe that the voters are becoming increasingly sophisticated and informed, as evidenced by what happened in Massachusetts this week.

The government should not be in the business of censoring political speech, under any circumstances. Sure, the results of this SC decision may happen to be inequitable from time to time, but welcome to real life. Watch and see. The spending was always there, and always will be, it was just all back-room and clandestine before. The real issue will be, can we get true transparency? If we can, then the only thing this decision will have done is get the government out of the business of censoring political speech, which it should have NEVER been in in the first place.

 

I like that you are now branded "intelligent" only when you agree with one of the more conservative posters.

Anyway, I totally disagree with your sentiments. Let me paint the uproar for you. You will never have an educated enough electorate to circumvent what's coming:


McCain (or Kucinich, or anyone else with a backbone): I cast my vote against this legislation.

Corporation X: Is that your final answer?

McCain (or Kucinich): Yes, my vote best supports the interests of the citizens in this nation. It's why they elected me.

Corporation X: Before you finished that sweet, sentimental statement, we had already wired $45M to support a male supermodel who will now be running to unseat you next November. Good luck.

McCain (or Kucinich): So that's pretty much the last vote of my political career.

Corporation X: You catch on quick. You'll be missed... or not. Buh-bye.

EDIT: note that Corporation X could be based in Germany, or China for that matter. So I should have written in some ESL bits to drive the point further home.

 

"Romney President naaaa-aaaah!"

 

B-Bob,

To be fair, I didn't call PGabriel intelligent, I said he made an intelligent statement. (clearly he is intelligent anyway). Are you saying he DIDN'T make an intelligent statement?

Anyway, your little scenario is cute, but how exactly is that scenario different today that it has always been? Unless you think the Chinese, for example, have NOT been heavily invested in American politics and politicians for the last couple of decades at least?