Thread: Analysis: Winners, losers in Supreme Court ruling campaign finance

Analysis : Winners, losers in Supreme Court ruling
By Liz Sidoti, Ap National Political Writer
2 hrs 12 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Big business and free speech won. Campaign finance reform lost. Political parties and many candidates, too. And for voters, there's both an upside and a downside.

The Supreme Court's monumental decision upending decades of campaign finance law has a slew of winners and losers.

It frees corporations, and by extension unions, to spend as much as they want to call for the victory or defeat of federal political candidates — by name — in commercials and literature. As long as there's no coordination with the candidates or campaigns.

The ruling cuts both ways for voters. They will probably get more information about candidates. But they'll probably have to endure an even bigger crush of ads on their TVs and radios, as well as leaflets in their mailboxes.

Thursday's decision shook the political landscape, and it could have an enormous effect on this fall's midterm elections and beyond. Here's a look at who made out and who didn't.

WINNER:

_Voters. Not sure where a candidate stands on an issue? Not sure how to vote? Need more information to make a wise decision? Never fear. Corporations and unions are likely to tell you their version of things now that they're freed from restrictions. But buyer beware: It's still up to voters to separate fact from fiction.

LOSER:

_Voters. Had enough of campaign ads? Too bad. People probably will have to endure even more now that corporations and unions can spend as much as they want from their general treasuries right up to the moment of an election. Voters will have to discern the motivations behind the ad campaigns as best they can. And more ads will only boost the potential for more salacious spots and negative campaigning.

WINNER:

_Corporations and unions. These high-dollar entities can now can spend freely to support or oppose named candidates for president and Congress. By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned a 20-year-old ruling barring such ads.

LOSER:

_Political parties and many candidates. More voices in the mix means candidates and parties will have even less control of the message. And they won't be able to do anything to stop groups from running ads they don't like. Still, cash-strapped candidates could welcome such independent spending that attacks an opponent. Political parties now face more restrictions than outside groups on election-time communications.

WINNER:

_The First Amendment. The ruling was clearly a victory for this pillar of democracy. Critics of the stricter limits had argued that they amount to an unconstitutional restraint of free speech, and the court majority agreed. There certainly will be even more of a marketplace of ideas. Corporations and unions can now advertise what they please.

LOSER:

_Civility and truthfulness. Watch out candidates: You may not like what you hear. And there will be little you can do about it. Both Republicans and Democrats say ads are likely to get tougher now that outside groups can expressly advocate for or against candidates. And it will be up to voters to sort through the clutter.

WINNER:

_Media companies, TV and radio stations. They already see a financial windfall every two and four years during congressional and presidential campaigns. Paydays could be even bigger now. A flood of corporate and union money for ads in federal campaigns is expected as early as this fall's midterm campaigns.

LOSERS:

_Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis. They are the fathers of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that sought to restrain the influence of money on elections. The justices struck down the part of the law that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_campai...5hbHlzaXN3aW5u

Businesses, unions freed to spend big on elections
By Mark Sherman And Jim Kuhnhenn, Associated Press Writers
1 min ago

WASHINGTON – A bitterly divided Supreme Court vastly increased the power of big business and unions to influence government decisions Thursday by freeing them to spend their millions directly to sway elections for president and Congress.

The ruling reversed a century-long trend to limit the political muscle of corporations, organized labor and their massive war chests. It also recast the political landscape just as crucial midterm election campaigns are getting under way.

In its sweeping 5-4 ruling, the court set the stage for a wave of likely repercussions — from new pressures on lawmakers to heed special interest demands to increasingly boisterous campaigns featuring highly charged ads that drown out candidate voices.

The election-season blizzard of ads on Americans TV screens is bound to increase.

While the full consequences of the decision were hard to measure, politicians made clear whom they believed benefited. Democrats, led by President Barack Obama, condemned the decision while Republicans cheered it.

Still, more labor and corporate money in the political system could dilute the role of both political parties.

And the decision seeded the ground for further challenges to an already weakened system of campaign finance regulations.

The justices weighed two fundamental political forces — the power of the central government and the concentration of corporate wealth — and tilted decidedly in favor of the latter. The opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy made a vigorous argument based on the Constitution for the right of the public to be exposed to a multitude of ideas and against the ability of government to limit political speech, even in the interest of fighting corruption.

"The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach," Kennedy wrote.

Strongly dissenting, Justice John Paul Stevens said, "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation."

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined Kennedy to form the majority in the main part of the case. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens' dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.

The court overturned two earlier decisions and threw out parts of a 63-year-old law that said companies and unions can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads urging the election or defeat of particular candidates by name. The decision, which applies to independent spending that is not coordinated with candidates, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions and didn't touch the McCain-Feingold ban on unlimited corporate and union donations to political parties. Nor did it disturb companies' right to solicit voluntary contributions to political action committees that can donate directly to candidates.

Corporations and unions would still have to identify the sources of money for their political activity — a provision of current law that the court upheld in an 8-1 vote.

Obama called the decision a victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and other powerful interests.

The ruling will lead to a "stampede of special interest money in our politics," Obama said. He pledged to work with Democrats and Republicans in Congress to come up with a "forceful response" to the high court's action.

But Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader who filed the first lawsuit challenging the McCain-Feingold law, praised the court for "restoring the First Amendment rights" of corporations and unions. "By previously denying this right, the government was picking winners and losers," McConnell said.

Kennedy's opinion goes to the heart of laws dating back to the Gilded Age when Congress passed the Tillman Act in 1907 banning corporations from donating money directly to federal candidates. Though that prohibition still stands, the same can't be said for much of the century-long effort that followed to separate politics from corporate money.

Campaign lawyers and political operatives immediately began contemplating the consequences of the decision.

Its most immediate effect is to permit corporate and union-sponsored political ads to run right up to the moment of an election, and to allow them to call explicitly for the election or defeat of a candidate. In presidential elections and in close congressional contests, that could substantially increase the television advertising competing for the public attention's with the candidates' own ads.

"It's going to be the Wild Wild West," said Ben Ginsberg, a Republican attorney who has represented several GOP presidential campaigns. "If corporations and unions can give unlimited amounts ... it means that the public debate is significantly changed with a lot more voices and it means that the loudest voices are going to be corporations and unions."

The legal community was split over whether corporations or unions would be the biggest beneficiaries.

"I'd be surprised if it opens new express advocacy by big publicly traded corporations," said Joseph Birkenstock, a former chief counsel for the Democratic National Committee.

Big firms, sensitive to the feelings of many shareholders and customers, not to mention Congress, would be less inclined to affix their name to a hard-hitting negative ad calling for a candidate's defeat.

Instead, corporations, large or small, may be more likely to funnel their cash to broad industry groups, and let them mount political campaigns that keep individual corporate fingerprints off the effort. Indeed, trade associations already weigh in politically; the court's decision will simply empower them to be more explicit closer to election day.

But unions would also benefit. The AFL-CIO filed a friend of the court brief calling for more freedom to run political ads. Labor organizations have a long history of political activity. In last year's presidential election, they ran millions of dollars in ads that stopped short of calling for a candidate's election or defeat. But their intent was clear.

"Given how extensively many unions are involved in various aspects of the election process, such as get-out-the-vote drives and the like, there seems little doubt that these same unions will have strong motivation to now engage in election-related independent spending," said Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at the New York University.

Emboldened by the ruling, critics of campaign finance regulation may now challenge the ban on direct corporate donations to candidates.

"If all speakers are going to be treated the same, why wouldn't a corporation be able to make a contribution to a candidate just like a PAC or an unincorporated association or an individual?" said James Bopp Jr., a campaign finance lawyer who has fought limits on political money.

The decision also may strengthen political party groups that seek to end the McCain-Feingold ban on unlimited contributions to parties from labor and corporations.

Stevens, in a 90-page opinion that dwarfed Kennedy's, complained that the court majority overreached by throwing out earlier Supreme Court decisions that had not been at issue when this case first came to the court.

"Essentially, five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law," Stevens said.

The case began when a conservative group, Citizens United, made a 90-minute movie critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton as she sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Citizens United wanted to air ads for the movie and distribute it through video-on-demand services on local cable systems during the 2008 Democratic primary campaign.

But federal courts said the movie looked and sounded like a long campaign ad, and therefore should be regulated like one.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100122/...l6dW5pb25zZnJl

Schumer: Let’s have a hearing on SCOTUS’ McCain/Feingold ruling
Posted by: Sister Toldjah on January 21, 2010 at 9:57 pm

Because, dang it, today’s SCOTUS ruling needs to be, you know – changed: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...court-decision

The Supreme Court’s ruling striking down limits on corporate and union spending in elections is “un-American,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Thursday.

Additionally, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a top Senate Democrat who formerly ran their campaign committee, said he would hold hearings on the decision in the coming weeks. “I think it’s an un-American decision,” Van Hollen said at a press conference along side Schumer on Thursday. “I think when the American people understand what this radical decision has meant they will be even more furious and concerned about special interest influence in politics than they are today.”

Democrats have responded quickly to rebuke the court’s 5-4 ruling in the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case, handed down Wednesday. The decision essentially kills a sizable portion of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, better known as the McCain-Feingold Act for its high-profile sponsors.

[...]

At least one Republican — Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell — praised that ruling on Wednesday. He described the court’s decision as guarantee of “free speech” to businesses groups that were previously deprived of it.

But a handful of Democrats have since charged otherwise. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said earlier Wednesday that new corporate spending abilities would only ensure “citizens voices are drowned out.”

Schumer echoed those criticisms in his press conference Wednesday morning, describing the ruling as a grave mistake. “We will regret the day this decision has been issued,” Schumer said.

Oh, the left is already regreting it, as the subheadline of this “unbiased” Los Angeles Times piece on the SCOTUS ruling demonstrates: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-a...0,850920.story

The justices overturn a century of U.S. electoral law by a 5-4 vote. Millions of extra dollars are expected to start flowing from big business to Republican candidates.

What does the LAT (purposely?) leave out of that subheadline? The fact that it opens up the door for union $$ to flow freely to … you guessed it – Democrats: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000..._WSJ_US_News_5

WASHINGTON—Corporations, labor unions and other political entities are gearing up to play a larger role in elections in 2010 and beyond after a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down elements of campaign-finance law.

[...]

The question now is whether corporations and labor unions will take advantage of their new freedom. For the last decade, labor unions have been more aggressive than corporations in finding legal ways to fund independent political campaigns. But the relaxation of campaign-spending restrictions could clear the way for groups from all points along the political spectrum to spend more, and target more of that spending in the critical final days of a campaign.

The President himself is already hinting around at the possibility of new legislation to counter the SCOTUS ruling: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-...urt-decision-0

[quote]With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington–while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That’s why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.p/quote]

LOL. Keep in mind this comes from the guy who in 2008 broke his own promise on the issue of public financing, and continued to collect big money from special interests and lobbyists, who he had been taking money from not just in 2008 – but for years. And who did he blame for having to make that decision? Heheh – of course he blamed sneaky GOPers who would “game” the system:

“We’ve made the decision not to participate in the public financing system for the general election,” Obama says in the video, blaming it on the need to combat Republicans, saying “we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system. John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.”

And we all know that Democrats didn’t have a single 527 to stand by, did they? http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527i...Q02&cycle=2010


Ahem, just who is it again who “games the system” routinely? As they say, follow the money. http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/index.php?filter=D

Reason Magazine’s Matt Welch sums up today’s ruling: http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/2...sion.campaign/

Citizens United, a conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofit that has funded a dozen political documentaries over the years, produced a critical documentary about Hillary Clinton in 2008 entitled “Hillary: The Movie.” By a decision of the federal government, which was enforcing the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (known more broadly as McCain-Feingold), this piece of political speech was banned from television.

Let’s boil it down to the essential words: Political documentary, banned, government.

You don’t have to be a First Amendment purist to intuit that political speech was, if anything, the most urgent subcategory covered by the First Amendment’s “Congress shall pass no law” restrictions. And you don’t have to be a Hillary-hater to imagine the shoe on the other foot. What if MoveOn.org’s 501(c)(4), Campaign to Defend America, had been blocked by George W. Bush’s Federal Elections Commission from broadcasting “McCain: The Movie”? Wouldn’t that stink, too?

As Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion, “The law before us is an outright ban, backed by criminal sanctions. Section 441b makes it a felony for all corporations — including nonprofit advocacy corporations — either to expressly advocate the election or defeat of candidates or to broadcast electioneering communications within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election. … If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”

[...]

Even if you just can’t bring yourself to believe that people who take civil liberties seriously have long-held serious civil libertarian criticisms of campaign-finance laws, or if you simply think they’re all wrong, I’ll offer this last salve: It has never been easier for groups of citizens to swarm together and flow money through the Internet toward campaigns and candidates who excite them. Ask Ron Paul — or more relevantly, Barack Obama — what’s more powerful: $10 million from Dr. Evil Industries, or $10 each from 1 million people who can actually vote?

The American people are not sheep, eager to be led by the highest bidder. As the Supreme Court rightly noted today, “The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”

Amen.




http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/20...ingold-ruling/

Will corporate ads buy 2010 voters?
By Sharon Theimer, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jan 22, 6:41 am ET

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has opened the door to a new era of big and possibly shadowy election spending, rolled back anti-corruption laws and emboldened critics of fundraising limits to press on. In the middle of it all will be voters, trying to figure out who's telling the truth.

The court's ruling Thursday lets corporate America start advertising candidates much as they market products and tell viewers to vote for or against them. While it almost certainly will lead to a barrage of hard-hitting TV ads in the 2010 elections, its implications reach far beyond that.

The ruling was a victory for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, the National Rifle Association and other interest groups most likely to run ads with money from their treasuries. It's unlikely major corporations would want their name on an ad, but they can avoid that by giving money to interest groups, who would then run ads and disclose the spending under the groups' names. It also presents a new option to wealthy individuals who were allowed to spend millions on their own to run election-time candidate ads before, but now can join forces to do so and get more bang for their bucks.

The court's 5-4 opinion represents the latest development in the cycle of scandal-law-loophole that has typified the United States' approach to campaign finance regulation.

From the corporate titans of the early 20th century bribing candidates, to Watergate in the 1970s, Democratic fundraising scandals during the Clinton years in the 1990s and most recently, the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling case, Congress has periodically tried to rein in political spending only to have loopholes emerge or political players mount successful constitutional challenges to the rules.

The court seemed to sweep those concerns aside, saying that it doubted election-time ads could lead to the corruption of lawmakers and that in any case, proponents of the ban hadn't provided any proof of corruption.

Campaign finance watchdogs predict members of Congress now will cast their votes on controversial legislation with an eye to whether their position on it risks inviting a barrage of special-interest ads against them before the election, or on the flip side, could draw outside spending favorable to them.

"I just think the court got it dead wrong if it thinks that a $10 million expenditure in a campaign can't buy influence of a corrupting nature the same way that a $10 million contribution can," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, who pressed for the ban on election-season corporate- and union-financed ads that the court swept away.

For those like Wertheimer who believe the threat of corruption justifies restrictions on campaign money, it could get even worse.

Heartened by the court's view that corporations have the same free-speech rights as citizens, opponents of campaign finance restrictions think the time is ripe to press the justices to go still further and do something not allowed since the robber-baron bribery scandals of a century ago: let corporations and unions give money directly to candidates.

"If all speakers are going to be treated the same, why wouldn't a corporation be able to make a contribution to a candidate" just as individuals and political action committees can? asked Jim Bopp, a conservative lawyer involved in several lawsuits that have scaled back campaign finance rules over the past few years, including the one decided Thursday.

Bopp thinks the conservative-leaning court might even go for a case arguing that donors should be able to give as much money as they want to a candidate: "You certainly have some justices who say that the contribution limits cannot be imposed at all."

The ruling could bring more than office politics to the workplace. Bopp reads it to permit corporations and unions to speak freely about elections to employees and authorize partisan politicking on their property, rather than stop at simply encouraging workers to vote, as they've had to do until now.

Just as opponents of campaign finance regulation are considering further challenges, campaign finance watchdogs and their allies in Congress plan to pursue legislation to try to deal with Wednesday's ruling. What they could do to restrict corporate and union campaign ads after the nation's highest court called a ban unconstitutional is unclear.

And in the middle of it all are voters, the people whose opinions the new spending will seek to influence.

The court seemed to agree with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's contention that voters want more election ads and that they are craving the viewpoints and information that will be presented in them.

But if the country's experience in the years before the McCain-Feingold law, when corporations and unions poured millions of dollars into election-time ads that targeted candidates but stopped short of calling for their election or defeat, is any indication, much of the new ad spending will likely be aimed at turning voters against a particular candidate, rather than urging them to vote for one.

That may please voters who do not like the candidate anyway, but it could turn off some voters so much they tune out. Getting key voting blocs to stay home on Election Day can be as important as getting voters to turn out.

The ruling leaves intact major parts of a hard-won 2002 campaign finance law, but it is unclear what will happen with those in coming months. That is the McCain-Feingold law, named after its sponsors, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis.

The Republican National Committee is challenging one of the law's pillars, a ban on corporate and union donations to political parties.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100122/...5hbHlzaXN3aWxs

McCain says campaign finance reform is dead
Sun Jan 24, 4:03 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain says the movement he led to reform how political campaigns are financed is dead.

McCain says the Supreme Court has spoken on the constitutionality of political contributions by corporations. The Arizona Republican had sought to regulate them with a landmark campaign finance law he wrote with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.

Last week the Supreme Court ruled that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress.

McCain says there's not much that can be done about campaign financing now. Still, he predicts a backlash over time from voters once they see the amount of money that corporations and unions pour into political campaigns.

McCain spoke Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100124/...FpbnNheXNjYQ--



Supreme Court opens the money gates
By The Monitor's Editorial Board
Thu Jan 21, 5:01 pm ET

The Supreme Court on Thursday opened wide the gates to allow more corporate and union money to finance political campaigns – and potentially influence politicians and lawmaking.

That’s unfortunate, and means that the role of watchdogs tracking the money trail will be more important than ever.

It’s not as if corporations and unions have so far had their wallets glued shut. They can fund issue ads that are important to their interests. And they’re allowed to form political action committees that directly support candidates, as long as the donations are collected voluntarily from employees and union members.

But even members of Congress, whose energy is increasingly diverted to fundraising, have long recognized the potentially corrupting effect that big money can have on them. More than 100 years ago they banned corporations from donating directly to federal candidates.

Thankfully, the justices upheld that ban Thursday, as well as disclosure rules about contributors. But in a divisive 5-to-4 ruling, they overturned other important restrictions.

In time for this year’s midterm elections, corporations and unions can now spend directly from their treasuries on ads to support or defeat candidates – as long as those ads are produced independently and not coordinated with a campaign. They may also run ads right up until election day, instead of pulling them 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy grounded the ruling in First Amendment rights. Corporations and unions – like individuals – have a right to free speech, the majority reasoned. “The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach,” he wrote.

But Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissent, “The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.” Indeed, when voters say they want “change” in Washington, the influence of money on politics is the kind of thing they’re talking about.

The high court has the final word, but not the only word. Groups that track campaign fundraising will need to raise their voices when they find wrongdoing or worrisome signs – even as they have more money to watch. Those groups include nonprofits; the news media; and the official watchdog, the Federal Election Commission.

Yet the traditional media are downsizing and the FEC, which has an equal number of Republican and Democratic commissioners, has a poor track record. The FEC could be strengthened if its members were recommended to the president not by the Senate, which has a vested interest in a watchdog with no bark, but by an independent commission.

Transparency is now more important than ever, and so is beefing up the competition to corporate and union donations – small donors and public campaign financing. The Internet has given small donors a much bigger voice, but that can be amplified even further by Congress.

Now is the time for lawmakers to pay serious attention to proposed legislation that would allow House and Senate candidates to choose to run for office without relying on large contributions, big money bundlers, or donations from lobbyists. If candidates commit to raising a certain amount of small donations, they can qualify for competitive public funds for their campaigns.

Thus, candidates would divert far less energy to fundraising – which can take as much as 40 to 50 percent of the time of members of the House, who face election every two years. And, candidates would be less beholden to monied special interests.

The Supreme Court has significantly altered the landscape of campaign finance. The next election will reveal how the new arrangement works in practice.

Watchdogs must keep their eyes open.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100121/cm_csm/275232

Supreme Court’s campaign ruling: a bad day for democracy
By Bob Edgar
Fri Jan 22, 1:50 pm ET

Washington – Thursday was a bad day for democracy. The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission paves the way for unlimited corporate and union spending in elections, and the drowning out of the average citizen’s voice in our public policy debates. In other words, the court has made a bad situation worse by enhancing the ability of the deepest-pocketed special interests to influence elections and the US Congress.

In its 5-to-4 decision, the Roberts Court declares outright that corporate expenditures cannot corrupt elected officials, that influence over lawmakers is not corruption, and that appearance of influence will not undermine public faith in our democracy. These are unsubstantiated claims that will change the ground rules of American democracy.

As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent, “the court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt.”

Justice Stevens explained that corporations are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established. He lamented that the court used “a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel” when it struck down one of Congress’s most significant efforts to regulate the role that corporations and unions play in electoral politics. Stevens added that the court negated Congress’s efforts “without a shred of evidence.”

The fear factor of unlimited corporate political spending this decision creates will now fuel a rapidly escalating fundraising arms race in Congress. With big firms now free to spend jaw-dropping sums to oppose or intimidate them, elected officials will feel compelled to spend more and more of their time raising money, thereby further distracting Congress from the pressing issues of the day. In addition, this potential spending will create even greater fear of political reprisal for unpopular votes, expand conflicts of interest, and further undermine the public’s confidence in government’s ability to act in the public interest.

Congress must respond swiftly and forcefully to ensure that corporations do not take over the electoral process.

The path from here is clear: Congress must free itself from Wall Street’s grip so Main Street can finally get a fair shake. We need to change the way America pays for elections. Passing the Fair Elections Now Act would give us the best Congress money can’t buy.

The Fair Elections Now Act was introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin (D) of Illinois and Rep. John Larson (D) of Connecticut. In the House, the bipartisan bill has attracted 125 additional cosponsors. Both bills blend small donor fundraising with public funding to reduce the pressure of fundraising from big contributors.

Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision means more business as usual in Washington, stomping on voters’ hope for change. Congress must take on the insider Washington money culture if it wants to make the changes voters are demanding. The way to do that is by passing the Fair Elections Now Act.

Bob Edgar is president of Common Cause, a nonprofit, nonpartisan citizen’s lobbying organization promoting open, honest, and accountable government.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100122/cm_csm/275358


Supreme Court ruling: Do we really trust corporations more than elected officials?
By Kermit Roosevelt III
Fri Jan 22, 9:47 am ET

Philadelphia – Yesterday’s 5-to-4 decision on campaign finance reform was bold and sweeping. The parties on both sides of the case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, offered the Supreme Court narrow ways in which to resolve their dispute. But the Court rejected those options.

Instead, it overturned two of its own prior decisions and struck down a key portion of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. The effect of the ruling is that corporations and unions can now spend freely on political ads directly related to a candidate, and with no time restrictions.

Why did the Court take such a strong stand in support of the free speech rights of corporations? The answer is not that corporations, as legal “persons,” are necessarily entitled to the same rights as humans. They are obviously not. Dissolving a corporation is not murder, and regulating corporate speech does not silence a speaker about whom we have an obligation to care.

Instead, the Court focused on the real people who might hear the speech of corporations. “Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people.” Hence, Kennedy seemed to suppose, more speech is always better for democracy.

But on reflection, the idea that more speech is always better should seem just as ridiculous as the idea that corporations should have equal moral standing with people. Speech is plainly bad for democracy if it misleads voters. It might even be bad if it affects views by repetition rather than persuasion, if it is simply so pervasive that it effectively drowns out competing voices.

The current political process is replete with examples of both kinds of speech. Exit polls after recent elections have shown that many voters hold false factual beliefs, and that these mistaken beliefs influence their votes. And the media blitz that saturates voters’ minds to the exclusion of all else is the goal of any campaign manager with enough money to pull it off. Under these circumstances, voters trying to inform themselves about the issues of the day are not shopping in a marketplace of ideas so much as looking for a needle in a haystack.

The reason that we are skeptical of government attempts to regulate political speech, then, is not that such speech is necessarily good. It is that people disagree about which speech is bad and fear that government officials with the power to make that call might use their power to protect themselves rather than enlighten the public.

But if we cannot identify low-value speech, can we at least identify low-value speakers? Corporations would seem to be pretty obvious candidates. One thing we should be able to agree on is that speech will generally seek to promote the interests of the speaker. That’s fine if the speaker is a person; the government should respond to the interests of the people.

But it should not respond to the interests of corporations, whose officers and directors are charged by law to enhance shareholder wealth rather than any abstract vision of the general good. If there is anything that is likely to lead systematically to worse governance, it is unrestricted corporate influence on the political process.

In the complicated world of the First Amendment, the line between corporations and people is one of the easiest to draw. Unfortunately, it is a line that the Court has just erased.

Why, again, would the Court do that? The decision makes sense if you assume that voters have a superhuman ability to resist the effects of pervasive and misleading political advertising. But that assumption is so obviously false that it is hard to believe it played much of a role in the ruling.Â

Instead, the justices in the majority seemed to be driven by the sincere fear that elected officials will suppress the vital truths that corporations are trying to tell us. That radical suspicion of government is what this decision comes down to.Â

The Supreme Court has told us that we should trust corporations more than our elected officials. Right or wrong, it is a sad comment on our democracy.

Kermit Roosevelt III is a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the author of “The Myth of Judicial Activism.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100122/cm_csm/275306_1

Alito disparages Obama's Supreme Court criticism
By Laurie Kellman, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jan 28, 12:16 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito didn't like hearing President Barack Obama publicly criticize the high court's ruling removing corporate campaign spending limits — and he didn't try to hide it.

Alito made a dismissive face, shook his head repeatedly and appeared to mouth the words "not true" or possibly "simply not true" when Obama assailed the decision Wednesday night in his State of the Union address.

The president had taken the unusual step of publicly scolding the high court, with some of its robed members seated before him in the House. "With all due deference to the separation of powers," he said, the court last week "reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections."

A reliable conservative appointed to the court by Republican President George W. Bush, Alito was in the majority in the 5-4 ruling.

White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton on Thursday defended the president's statement.

"One of the great things about our democracy is that powerful members of the government at high levels can disagree in public and private," Burton told reporters traveling with Obama to Tampa, Fla. "This is one of those cases. But the president is not less committed to seeing this reform."

Vice President Joe Biden also sided with Obama, calling the ruling "dead wrong" and saying "we have to correct it."

"The president didn't question the integrity of the court. He questioned the judgment of it," Biden told ABC's "Good Morning America.

Senate Democratic leaders sitting immediately behind Alito and other members of the high court rose and clapped loudly in their direction, with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., leaning slightly forward with the most enthusiastic applause.

The court did upend a 100-year trend that had imposed greater limitations on corporate political activity. Specifically, the court, in a 5-4 decision, said corporations and unions could spend freely from their treasuries to run political ads for or against specific candidates.

In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the court's majority "would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans."

Obama said corporations can "spend without limit in our elections." However, corporations and unions are still prohibited from contributing directly to politicians.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100128/...RvZGlzcGFyYQ--

The next battle in campaign finance reform
By The Monitor's Editorial View Fri Apr 30, 2:01 pm ET

Once a Supreme Court ruling has been issued, overturning it can be as hard as the white marble of the justices’ stately building.

It can be done through constitutional amendment, which is slow and arduous. It can be done, perhaps, through another high court ruling, which depends on a new case and the mix of justices hearing it.

The best that can be hoped for is legislation that tries to mitigate the effect of a ruling. That’s what some lawmakers in Congress are attempting with proposed legislation on campaign finance.

This week, members of the House and Senate – mostly Democrats – unveiled legislation dubbed the “Disclose Act.” It attempts to blunt the court’s regrettable decision in January to overturn a previous campaign finance law, thus opening the floodgates of corporate and union spending in elections.

The court did not shine in its 5-to-4 decision in the case of Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission. It broke with precedent by allowing unlimited spending by corporations and unions on political campaign ads.

The majority found that corporations and labor unions have the same First Amendment right of free political speech that individuals have. With that, they opened up a broad river channel for deep-pocket special interests to drown out the voices (donations) of individual citizens.

The House and Senate bills, which were worked out with the White House, are strongest in their requirement of transparency – the core of the legislation.

These bills reasonably require corporations, unions, and advocacy groups to identify themselves on ads they pay for. A corporate chief executive officer or union or other leader would have to offer an “I approve this message” type of endorsement for an ad. Additionally, these groups would have to disclose their election spending to shareholders, members, and the public through their annual and periodic reports and, within 24 hours, on their websites.

The US Chamber of Commerce, which acts as an umbrella advocate for businesses, vigorously opposes the legislation. It argues that the bills stifle free speech. But it’s hard to see how the chamber can launch a credible fight against the transparency aspects, since the Supreme Court has upheld disclosure.

More problematic might be the bills’ outright bans on campaign spending by foreign-controlled domestic corporations as well as government contractors (although, interestingly, unions are not targeted). The legislation defines “foreign controlled” according to the standards of states such as Delaware – 20 percent owned by a foreign national. It also bars campaign spending by domestic corporations where foreign nationals have influential leadership positions. Businesses that have government contracts worth more than $50,000 would also be banned from campaign spending.

The bills’ backers make a pretty good case for these provisions. Election law forbids foreign individuals, governments, and corporations from participating in US elections, so why not foreign-controlled US corporations? And, supporters argue, they are simply extending existing bans on government-contractor political contributions to include political spending – all in the name of avoiding “I grease your palm, you grease mine” favors.

And yet, the provisions establish fairly low thresholds that could sweep a lot of US companies into an outright ban on political ad spending. That would seem to defy the spirit of the Supreme Court decision, no matter how strenuously one might disagree with it.

What would help here is bipartisan cooperation to make this legislation as strong and impervious to a court battle as possible.

Two Republicans are cosponsoring the Disclose Act in the House: Mike Castle of Delaware and Walter Jones of North Carolina. Sadly, no Senate Republicans have come forward to join Democratic supporters Charles Schumer of New York and Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold – a champion of campaign finance reform. He worked closely with Arizona’s Republican Sen. John McCain on the 2002 overhaul of campaign finance.

Money can have a corrupting influence on elections and lawmaking. Controlling it is a never-ending battle. Twenty-one Republicans who voted for McCain-Feingold reform are still in Congress. How is it that only two are willing to take on this next fight?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100430...VuZXh0YmF0dGw-

[center]Comments

Corporations and Unions both have the right to put forth their ideas in politics. It is unfortunate that there was ever any law that limited free speech. McCain-Feingold was a mistake and we are much better off without it.

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corporations and unions do not have the right to put forth their ideas in politics. The supreme courts terrible decision paves the way for our country to be run by president ronald macdonald and senators exxon and mobil. these people at these companies can speak freely individually as per the first amendment, but the idea that they can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence our local and national elections is just outright foolish if you want your right to vote to mean anything whatsoever.

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Of the people for the people, It's a lie as long as the money launderers of the banking and insurance PACs are allowed to pay huge bribes to both major political parties. It is so filled with conflict of interest of the Constitution it is on the brink of treason.

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HenryC evidently is hoping for the quick demise of what is left of "representative democracy".

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People don't agree with this decision for the most part because Corporations and Unions alike do not have a "human" interest in what happens in everyday citizens lives. When an organization has exsisted hundreds of years with no heart, it has no business in the business of life or in laws that affect the lives and hearts of men.

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This is like asking your dogs to pass a law restricting you from feeding them. Won't happen.

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Corporations are inanimate. They exist by writ (law). We, the people, write the laws - at least that's how it's supposed to work - remember "of the people, by the people, for the people"? It's not "of the BP's, for the Exxons, by the JP Morgans."

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Inanimate entities, created by writ, have NO fundamental rights. NONE. They have no fundamental right to "free speech" as they have neither mouths nor vocal chords. People - you know, those of us that have mouths and vocal chords - have the right to free speech. Don't let the patent-leather-shoe-wearing lobbyists fool you. No amount of flak and propaganda from the US Chamber of Commerce - an organization that once represented Mom and Pop businesses but now just flaks for the extreme right-wing multi-national corporations - will change the facts. Corporations are not people. Any fourth grade child can understand this.

Senate to vote on Orwellian DISCLOSE Act…again
By Michelle Malkin • July 16, 2012 09:26 AM

Always look under the Astroturf mat.

Senate Democrats have failed to pass a budget in nearly 1,200 days.

But they are carving out time today to vote on the loophole-ridden, incumbency protection racket, masquerading as “campaign finance reform,” dubbed the DISCLOSE Act. http://michellemalkin.com/2010/09/23...lose-act-vote/

Wait a minute. Didn’t they already vote on the DISCLOSE Act? http://michellemalkin.com/2010/07/28/hideandseek

Why, yes. Yes, they did.

They voted on it in September 2010 before the midterms. And it failed to meet the 60-vote threshold.

I told you two years ago in July 2010 why the DISCLOSE Act was a sham:

You know when a politician starts a sentence with “frankly,” he’s about to lie to your face. The same principle applies to campaign finance legislation dubbed the “DISCLOSE Act.” The voter’s instinctive reaction should be: What are they trying to hide now? Drafted out of public view with left-wing lobbyists and rammed through Congress after bypassing committee hearings, this bum bill would have been better named the CLOSEDDOOR Act.

At a Rose Garden press conference on Monday, President Obama decried the influence of “shadow groups” on elections and urged the Senate to pass the “reform” sponsored by N.Y. Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer. But the loophole-ridden package exempts large nonprofits with 500,000 or more members. Behemoth labor unions get preferential treatment. Bradley Smith, former Federal Elections Commission chairman, noted that the law places radical speech-squelching restrictions on companies’ ability to run independent political ads: “(I)f you’re a company with a government contract of over $10 million (like more than half of the top 50 U.S. companies) or if you’re a company with more than 20 percent foreign shareholders, you can’t even mention a candidate in an ad for up to a full year before the election. … There are no similar prohibitions for unions representing government contractors or unions with foreign membership.”

GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell put it more starkly during Tuesday’s debate before the Senate cloture vote on the bill: The DISCLOSE Act, he said, is a “transparent attempt to rig the fall elections.” At bottom, McConnell diagnosed correctly, this is a jobs-protection bill for entrenched incumbents more interested in protecting their hides than protecting the Constitution. While the cloture vote fell three votes short of the needed 60 on Tuesday, Schumer vowed to resurrect the issue “again and again and again until we pass it.”

…Team Obama and their allies on Capitol Hill have some nerve gnashing their teeth about transparency after two years of backdoor kickbacks, secret Big Labor deals, C-SPAN camera evasion, White House disclosure-ducking coffeehouse meetings, and sunlight-shirking holiday and midnight floor votes. And while they preached about America’s right to know and posed as crusaders for open access, Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate continued to stonewall on public hearings for health care rationing czar Donald Berwick — Obama’s recess-appointed head of Medicare and Medicaid.

A White House spokesman called the battle over the DISCLOSE Act a “defining moment for the public.” Nah. It’s just another example of the Democratic majority’s endless hide-and-seek hypocrisy.

Related from former FEC chariman Bradley Smith: A proposed campaign-finance law attempts to scare and regulate opponents into silence. http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...-bradley-smith

More: McConnell vows a filibuster today. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/...ges-filibuster He talked to Mark Levin about disclosure theater here. http://www.therightscoop.com/sen-mcc...t-be-defeated/

I’ll update the post with roll call vote and predictable shrieking from Sen. Schumer.


http://michellemalkin.com/2012/07/16...ose-act-again/