Money Talks II

Citizens United v. FEC is right up there with the Dred Scott decision for being the worse decision ever by the Supreme Court. It gives corporations the right to make direct contributions to politicians, something that had been denied them by sixty-three years of legal precedent. So much for stare decisis. Apparently conservatives are only concerned with judicial activism when it is liberals doing the deciding. But give them credit for being prepared. Faced with the prospect of being out of power for years after another unpopular war, they made sure that the Supreme Court was controlled by a solid conservative majority, and the Stevens Court has delivered. As US Person stated previously {29.01.10}, the inequity of empowering a legal fiction with the same political speech right as a natural person goes back to the 19th century. A constitutional amendment limiting political speech to natural persons would be the appropriate way to correct the situation. But such an amendment is highly unlikely to succeed. Senators Schumer (D-NY) and Leahy (D-VT) offered the next best thing, a bill requiring corporations to disclose their political contributions publicly. The DISCLOSE Act is also a corny acronym, which in acronym crazy Washington is almost a necessity to get people's serious attention: Democracy Is Strenghtened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections. When the proposal was voted on this July, it lost by one vote due to yet another Repugnant filibuster[1], but the Democratic Senators are planning to reintroduce the measure after the August recess.

The problem of corporate domination of national politics is bigger than where to build a mosque in lower Manhattan. Without knowing which corporations are sponsoring which politicians, Americans will be unable to counteract unwanted influence with their votes. Washington floats in a swamp of special interest money now. Conservatives hoping to counteract their numerical disadvantage have opened the floodgates to unlimited, anonymous spending. As the law stands corporations can hide behind non-profit organizations doing issue advocacy since the non-profits do not have to disclose their donors. The proposed Act seeks to insure transparency in election funding by requiring more disclosure from corporations making donations. An example of anonymous corporate spending is coal companies planning to form a Section 527 group that will allow them to hide their campaign activities until tax returns are due after the mid-term elections. They are targeting politicians the coal industry considers "anti-coal". In a letter to other coal companies, the senior vice-president of International Coal Group said thanks to the Citizens United case, "we are in a position to be able to take corporate positions that were not previously available in allowing our voices to be heard." Not just coal companies are deciding to take advantage of this undemocratic change in campaign finance law. Tell your senator or congressperson during the recess that you do not want the last vestiges of "government by the people" to perish from the Earth. Sign the petition here.

[1] Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had the unmitigated gall to tell NPR the DISCLOSE bill was a "transparent effort to rig the fall election". You really do have to admire his ability to ignore cognitive dissonance.