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Going Backwards: Courts Roll Back Limits on Spending in Election Law
WASHINGTON - Even before a landmark Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance law expected within days, a series of other court decisions is reshaping the political battlefield by freeing corporations, unions and other interest groups from many of the restrictions on their advertising about issues and candidates.
Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey said the Republican Party would benefit from a decision loosening spending rules. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times) Legal experts and political operatives say the cases roll back campaign spending rules to the years before Watergate. The end of decades-old restrictions could unleash a torrent of negative advertisements, help cash-poor Republicans in a pivotal year and push President Obama to bring in more money for his party.
If the Supreme Court, as widely expected, rules against core elements of the existing limits, Democrats say they will try to enact new laws to reinstate the restrictions in time for the midterm elections in November. And advocates of stricter campaign finance laws say they hope the developments will prod the president to fulfill a campaign promise to update the presidential campaign financing system, even though it would diminish his edge as incumbent.
Many legal experts say they expect the court to use its imminent ruling, in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, to eliminate the remaining restrictions on advertisements for or against candidates paid for by corporations, unions and advocacy organizations. (The case centers on whether spending restrictions apply to a conservative group's documentary, "Hillary: The Movie.")
Even if the court rules more narrowly, legal experts and political advocates say that the 2010 elections will bring the first large-scale application of previous court decisions that have all but stripped away those restrictions. Though the rulings have not challenged the bans on direct corporate contributions to parties and candidates, political operatives say that as a practical matter the rulings and a deadlock at the Federal Election Commission have already opened wide latitude for independent groups to advocate for and against candidates.
"It will be no holds barred when it comes to independent expenditures," said Kenneth A. Gross, a veteran political law expert at the firm of Skadden Arps in Washington.
The United States Chamber of Commerce, the goliath of the lobbying world, is expected to outline its battle plan next week for the midterms. It spent $25 million on advertisements and get-out-the-vote efforts in the 2006 elections and $36 million in 2008, and will spend far more this year, chamber officials say. And in the last election it was already probing the limits of the court's rulings with commercials like one in New Hampshire denouncing Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, as "a taxing machine."
Labor unions, stalwart outside allies to the Democrats, plan to take advantage of the changing rules with their own record-setting spending, said Karen Ackerman, political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. But business, she argued, had more to gain.
"The corporate side will always have more to spend than the union side," she said.
Even before the Supreme Court issues its Citizens United ruling, Democrats in the House and the Senate have begun lamenting its expected result. "Clearly, the Republican Party overwhelmingly would benefit," said Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey.
Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland vowed a "prompt legislative response" if the Supreme Court rules broadly. In the meantime, he said, the Democratic campaign committee planned to counterattack big donors to outside groups to show "they are not just disinterested citizens."
Conservatives accused the Democrats of using the specter of corruption as an excuse to silence their opponents. "What this is about is prohibiting information from reaching the American people if it is critical of them, those poor little dears who can't stand criticism," said Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the Republican Senate campaign committee, said: "It is about a nonprofit group's ability to speak about the public issue. I can't think of a more fundamental First Amendment issue."
Still, Mr. Cornyn acknowledged that the expected ruling could "open up resources that have not previously been available" for the Republicans.
Democratic candidates and party committees have raised a total of $396.5 million for the midterms, with $50 million on hand and $10 million debts in public filings released this week. Republicans had raised just $204.7 million, with about $30 million on hand and about $6 million in debts, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
The campaign finance system imposed after the Watergate scandal began to spring leaks in the 1990s with the large-scale exploitation of unlimited "soft money" contributions to political parties from wealthy individuals, corporations, unions and others. Congress fortified those rules by eliminating soft money with the 2002 campaign finance law known as McCain-Feingold, and since then activists and operatives have played cat-and-mouse with regulators in the search for other loopholes.
The Supreme Court began to poke new holes in the system in a 2007 ruling that outside groups could pay for critical commercials attacking individual candidates on specific issues up to the day of the election, as long as the ad did not explicitly urge a "vote for" or "vote against."
The 2010 midterms will be the first big test of the changing rules in part because in 2008 both major party candidates - Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain - explicitly discouraged independent spending by their supporters. The Federal Election Commission had also punished previous efforts to evade the McCain-Feingold rules severely enough to discourage new attempts.
No such restraints apply this year, in part because the changing composition of the Federal Election Commission has created a deadlock blocking vigorous enforcement. "The cop is gone from the beat," said Trevor Potter, a lawyer for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center who has also worked for Mr. McCain.
Campaign finance laws block outside groups from coordinating with candidates, but it is easy enough for outside allies to read in news reports where a campaign wants to spend money and what message it wants to send. Such groups also tend to favor negative commercials because they are more potent.
So if the court strikes down the restrictions on outside spending, some legal experts say, the remaining restrictions on direct contributions to campaigns would mean much less because it would be easy to support a campaign through an outside group.
"The campaign finance system would certainly be less regulated than any time since Watergate," said Richard L. Hasen, a campaign law expert at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
45 Comments so far
Show AllThe Unions must stop funding Politicians now. Why are they draining their resources when time after time the Politicians
let them down? Keep the money for organizing.
I totally agree. The Unions' battle looms every bit as large as the womens' rights. Maybe the two should unite??
duplicate post removed
This story details one of the most miserable stories in at least a year of miserable stories. Any semblance of a representative democracy in a country in which our "representatives" are selected and controlled by special interests will disappear if the Supreme Court decides to define corporations as "persons" with "free speech" rights that entail uncontrolled amounts of campaign contributions. The old saying that "money talks" will have to be replaced with "money shouts" so loudly that no other voices can be heard in our political processes. Bill Moyers Journal last night demonstrates how dangerously close we are now when the banks of this country "own the place," that place being not just the Congress but every city hall, county court house and state legislsture in the land. We've known for months that this debacle at the Supreme Court was coming; and no amount of crying in the wilderness that the Court's lastest nominee has a record of corporate-friendly decisions that provide a bitter taste of how she might vote on the court was cast aside as anti-Hispanic or anti-woman prejudice. But of course what this article highlights is the reality that, in a sense, the Supreme Court's decisions are less relevant than the "death by a thousand cuts" that can be delivered at local jurisdictions: the way Roe v. Wade has become almost a dead letter for protecting a woman's right to choice when localities can raise limitless barriers to her opportunity to exercise that "right" (and of course under the health care "reform" legislation now pending, for her to receive the medical insurance coverage without which she could afford to exercise that right). I hate to be a doom- and gloom-er who sees no way to stop short of the cliff over which we are about to fall, but honestly, I don't know what that "way" might be.
Our "representatives" appear to be the corporations of Amerika.
This is naked criminality.
It would cost only a few dollars/citizen/year for 100% public funding of all Senate, House and Presidential campaigns. Then, with a fully publicly funded PBS (No, not brought by Chevron, Monsanto, etc. as the Lehrer "News" Hour is; fully funding of PBS would cost less than a weeks worth of our wars), all candidates could air their platforms without prostituting themselves to big money.
We would get a new breed of legislator. It would change everything.
Missed this post, so I made a similar suggestion.
Great minds think alike?
Yeah right!
Gary
Yes, this sensible suggestion would help save what's left of democracy here. But, since the greedheads in government would not only be deprived of their payback from their corporate contributers/masters, but also lose their post-government careers as lobbyists for the very corporations they served while in government, and because these government greedheads are the very same ones who make the laws, they will never change those laws to full public financing.
The fix has been in for more than a century, but these recent and expected court decisions will be the final nails in the coffin of democracy here, as our police state gets ever more intrusive under the guise of "fighting terrorism."
If you think that things suck for actual humans NOW, just wait. These decisions will guarantee that they will only get worse. FAR worse. MUCH worse.
What we have now is a system of institutionalized bribery and corruption. NOTHING will change it until we remove ALL private money from elections. PERIOD. NONE. And no minor slap on the wrist for punishment for breaking those regulations, but jail time. MANDATORY jail time for BOTH parties involved. WE go to jail for possession of a piece of a plant. THEY need to go to jail for destroying our country.
"If you think that things suck for actual humans NOW, just wait. These decisions will guarantee that they will only get worse. FAR worse. MUCH worse."
If we let them get away with it, right WJM?
They ought to save their money because we are going to ignore their ads.
Progressive people need to be more vocal about supporting socialism and calling out fascism for what it really is-- roll back the Orwellian meanings. The other day a public school music teacher for heavensakes was explaining she thought Obama is a socialist (he's not) so in her mind socialism is a bad thing.
Please, once the SCOTUS rules that corporations for elections are people, can we finally write the USA off as a democracy. Associating that idea/concept, democracy, with the USA is a sick joke. The corporate entity rules the USA and shortly will simply buy government institutions directly every 4 & 2 years. Incidentally why waste funding on even having government institutions. Come-on USA privatize yourself. Then maybe China will use all your green backs it has stored up to buy all Government_USA shares if they trade publicly and give you a real government.
Corporations have been legally considered "persons" (with all our rights but few of our responsibilities) since 1886. That's when our democracy began to crumble. It's been an accelerating downhill slide ever since.
Halliburton and Blackwater (now Xe) are merely the most egregious examples of corporations running our government.
The correct word for a corporatist-militarist state with increasing surveillance power over its own population is fascism. What we now have here is fascism with a smiley face.
If this truly becomes the Law of the Land in America We the People can Kiss whatever remnants of Democracy that remain, Goodbye - the corporate dollar would have complete supremacy over the electoral process.
What a travesty that all these millions are spent to persuade the public. Real Leadership in affairs of governance comes of actual accomplishment in providing service - anything else is propaganda and manipulation.
Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live
I believe I hear the fat lady singing.
I am looking on the bright side, the wrapper is off, it has been a covert corporate police state for a long time now, as we try so hard not to see.
Now on we can live in whats left of the world AS IT IS, rather than how we wish it was.
I truly hate what this nation has become, and here I am in the middle of it.
I love my little daughter, and i love the earth, with all her fancy flora and fauna.
So what is to be done?
Xzorloc, I too have children, three of 'em, which I love immensely. It is so terribly frustrating to know what the state of this country has become and that they are being stuck with paying for the greed and selfishness of current/recent times.
I truly wish that I (we) could give our children a future that is full of hope. That hope would then turn to ambition for them to work towards an even better nation for their children. But unfortunately, our current and recent "leaders" have considered their own personal material wealth to be far more important than the future of their children. It's truly difficult for me to grasp the mindset of a person that could be so selfish as to sacrifice the well being of their own decendants for immediate personal gain.
I don't have the answer to your question and truly wish I did. Unfortunately, it seems that we the people lose more of our ability to influence the future every day. With corporations being free to use their financial influence virtually unimpeded, what little influence we currently have will become moot.
aussidawg has stated it clearly, "With corporations being free to use their financial influence virtually unimpeded, what little influence we currently have will become moot." We must have public finance of qualifided candidates. A candidate who gets a number of registered voters to sign his or her nomination papers (the number determined by the number of registered voters in the district)and receives a contribution of five dollars, gets public funds to campaign. The public funds must equal the funds the opponent gets from other sources. That levels the playing field and candidates will not need to sell their souls for funds. We can clearly see that elected officials who take corporate funds are ignoring the advice of their constituents. This is easy to see on the matter of the vote for the bankster bailout, the surge in Afghanistan and the lack of support for Single Payer, Medicare for all. These three recent issues were supported by the people but our elected officials didn't heed the advice of the people.
I get a kick out of the comment by Senator Menendez when he says, "clearly the Republican party overwhemingly would benefit" (by getting rid of limits on corporate funding). That Senator thinks that the Democrats are better than the Republicans. I don't see much difference. Both of the corporate parties heed the advice of the 'donors' over the constituents. I put 'donors' in when I really mean bribers.
Or we could give all candidates that meet a certain minimum number of signatures on a petition (internet included -- with safeguards against spamming) would get an EQUAL amount of money to play with. Paid for by checking a box on your tax-return (if any) for five bucks.
That way we wouldn't get corporations forcing their employees to contribute to their selected candidates and so up the ante. Among other scams to get around the already leaky laws.
An equal playing field for all.
Radical enough for ya?
Gary
aussiedawg and xzorloc: I posted above (10:44 am) my own "gloom and doom" mood in reflecting on the situation described in this article. My optimistic disposition doesn't allow me to stay in this mood for long however; and your poignant posts nudge me to share a little of this optimism with you. As with most "hopeless" situations, we may be too much constrained by our experiences with reality to comprehend fully the power of dreams of better things. MLK's dream of an more eqalitarian America, when pursued in the hard world of reality, did have effects in the realization of that dream. There are dreamers today, even as we seem to be inundated by the power of the money changers, in those who recognize the fact that people have their vote within their own power, and they do not HAVE TO be influenced by all the media sloganeering and by the domination of the news and the air waves by the well-heeled and their designated politico puppets. To begin with, there are millions of people who never even vote but who would do so if they ever once heard a compelling narrative of how their votes could make a difference in this money and consumption crazed world. Many of these, and many as well who dutifully troop to polls to vote for a D or an R candidate selected by one or another of the corporate duopoly, would vote for a man or woman who honestly and forthrightly ran AGAINST the obscene compaign chests enjoyed by their opponents. Years ago Lawton Chiles "walked across Florida" to be elected Governor, and such shoestring campaigns still will appeal to that part of our population that is not bedazzled with office incumbents and/or the celebrity character of those who aspire to office. What I'm saying is that a grassroots, low-budget campaign can work; and is the best way (even more effective than campaign finance reform) to pull the teeth of the corporate tigers who run our politics. One such organizing effort of which I know is underway in western North Carolina, and I'm sure is happening in other places as well. What grassroots organizers desperately need is a kind of "committee of correspondence" to pool their experiences and resources and inspiration. The American revolution was built out of such beginnings, and aren't we a bit overdue for a revolution which Thomas Jefferson said we needed every 20 years?
Phoenix20, thanks for the nudge:) Your optimism is both welcome and appreciated! Hopelessness can do several things. One is to serve as a strong motivator to fight to alleviate the cause of that hopelessness. Of course another is to cause one to self destruct and fall into their own footprint if said hopelessness has become too advanced to deal with. As difficult as it sometimes is, I will continue to choose the former.
" To begin with, there are millions of people who never even vote but who would do so if they ever once heard a compelling narrative of how their votes could make a difference in this money and consumption crazed world."
Yes, there are a lot of people who do not exercise their responsibility to vote. But...how many posters have you seen in the recent past even here on CD who because they were badly betrayed by Obama and the democratic "majority" in congress, plan to stay home and sit out the next election(s) to demonstrate their anger? A very real problem we currently have is that there are a lot of voters, especially new first time voters who, out of a strong desire to change the horrific policies of the Bu$h regime, voted for Obama expecting change...and monumental change at that. They got badly screwed and therefore discouraged. The SCOTUS appointment of Bu$h in 2000 and the rigged elections of 2004 further discourage voters by instilling the belief that it would be impossible for a third party to win an election and that voting a third party will increase the risk of an "even worse" candidate being put in power. My own personal belief is that voting for a third party candidate is far better than sitting home and accepting defeat, and that is exactly what I plan to do for evermore. (No more voting for the lesser of two evils for this dawg!)Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who will think that the formation of a successful third party that can pit the people against the corporate parties is impossible. *WE* need to convince them of the power in numbers and that nothing is impossible!
It is far too easy to see the negative aspects of our society without seeing the possible positive solutions. I have actually seen a few recent articles on how the corporate/elite media use the creation of a sense of defeat to defeat us, first psychologically then completely. We struggle against public apathy, voter ignorance, corruption within the system, and selfish/greedy political candidates to eagerly forward the agenda of corruption. Every one of these obstacles could easily be overcome with a cooperative media. The challenge appears to be overwhelming an enormous and uncooperative corporate media.
Cheers and keep up your optimism! We can all most certainly use it:)
-A. Dawg
Allman Bros. Band - "Well, by and by, way after many years have gone
And all the war freaks die off, leavin us alone
We'll raise our children, in the peaceful way we can
It's up to you and me brother
To try and try again"
"So, hear us now, we ain't wastin time no more
Cause time rolls by like hurricanes
Runnin' after subway trains
Don't forget the pourin' rain"
If the Supreme Court allows a surge in this type of campaign spending America as I knew her for nearly 50 years is completely undone. The plutocrats didn't have the technology to fully exploit this "free speech equals money for the purposes of political campaigns" power prior to the Watergate era that they do now. Neither did they have the now extensive PR knowledge of psychology: Advertising using deceptive but very effective psychological triggers. Any timely progress from here on out will be very hard fought and local while State and national conditions that aren't already there will go straight to hell.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
--President John Fitzgerald Kennedy at a White House speech in 1962
Jeevee
Who worships Thomas Jefferson and "what he said"? He was a wino who sold his own illegitimate children as slaves.
What we actually DO tells the tale; what we imaginatively write about is too often pretentiously schizoid.
A Real News story on this had a different spin (http://therealnews.com/t2/) -- that a Supreme Court ruling that opened the doors to direct corporate political advertising wouldn't change things much, since they can already do this through PACs, but that the Democrats didn't like it because it gives the APPEARANCE of corruption.
Of course, most CommonDreamers already think the system is corrupt. But as the veils covering the pile of bs that we're being fed by the corporations and their Republicrat flunkies get pulled away, I think more Americans will get shaken out of their political apathy. Then there will be some opportunities for REAL, positive changes in this country.
Bush's Extreme Court sure makes it easy to vote for None Of The Above!
wayne lapierre now there's a credible source of inform
ation.this leak comes in the usual repuglican way- the
friday every bodies out of town news cycle. this is going
to be ugly. but harry reid could on his way out change
procedure rules drop the current rules to majority
vote and pass legislation taking away corporate person
age thus nullifying this. wow now that i woke up from
my dream we are fucked!
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
It's unfortunately not as simple as passing legislation to strip corporations of their artificial personhood under misguided law.
Attempts to enforce new laws to strip those odious protections would be fought tooth and nail in the courts by corporate America and its gargantuan legal war chest for many decades. It would make the Exxon Valdez appeals look like guano through an Ex-Laxed vampire bat. Several Supreme Court misrulings on this issue would have to be overturned. It needs to happen but don't hold your breath waiting on a DLC corporate puppet like Harry Reid to push anything like that in the current Senate.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled on this very thing in 2004. The same basic arguement was made in that Campaign spending limits on Political parties , lobby groups , and special interest groups was a limit of free speech.
The Court ruled 6-3 that such limits were constitutional.
The National Citizens Coaltion brough the suit claiming it an affront of democracy to have such limits. This group was once headed by our current Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The 3 dissenters in the decision all agreed that the limits were Constitutional. Their dissent was based upon the limits being too low.
It interesting that in defeat the spokesperson for the group bringing the suit indicated that "The Government now held all the cards in Political Campaigns and that the Citizens had lost".
My own take on this was this was more of the doublespeak. The Government IS the people, therefore the people won. The ones that lost were that small group of people with MONEY who wished to take over the process as they have in the USA.
camus13
Why in hell anyone would want to continue to vote in this country is beyond me. First the idoit courts said that corporations were people, now let the money people continue to run the show.
It's hopeless First they steal an election and now let the crooks go wild..............
Why???????
"Why???????"
Because it's all part of the natural evolution of unregulated capitalism which is, if you haven't figured it out by now, entirely incompatible with democracy. The gradual accumulation of wealth in a few hands, as exemplified by the American system, inevitably results in a collapse into fascism. The system is just evolving into its final stage.
As much effort as our allegedly brilliant founding fathers put into constructing a system of diffused power, they totally failed to address the inherent danger presented by concentrated wealth. That failure doomed the American experiment from the start. We are now finally witnessing it coming to its inevitable conclusion.
It doesn't matter how much they spend on advertising its the group that controls the election machines that win according to "Hacking Democracy".
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
How much they spend on campaign ads now matters more during the primaries. How much they spend on campaign ads during the last 8 months leading up to a general "election" helps them determine where the crucial regions and districts are that demonstrate high opposition campaign resistance and so determine where voting machines are manipulated and various other machinations, falsified felon voter lists, voter intimidation, etc., is concentrated.
These Justices know perfectly well what the Declaration of Independence meant when it said, "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
The protection of the minority opinion's voice was a protection against silencing. Freedom of speech was never meant to set a minimum price for the purchase of speech.
Furthermore, the principle of informed consent being the basis of legitimate government rests on access to information. Consent cannot be freely given when the means of knowing what you know are controlled by a few who have no respect for democracy.
What is also plain and has been proven out by recent history is that "speech" is not what is being paid for. Any lobbyist can speak all he or she wants, and I have no problem with that. But by limiting the candidate pool to those who money chooses to fund, we no longer have free elections of representatives of everyone. When these paid for representatives get into office, they have to deliver on the money paid to get them there, as well as begin to auction off our rights to deliver further goods to stay in office. These corporations are buying our representation and they are buying legislation. In a very real sense, they are buying us as they legally transfer our wealth and well-being from us in ways we would not consent to if we had voice.
I've been reading Michael Pollan, and in a discussion about eating animals or being vegetarian he talks about the worst thing about the way we raise and slaughter animals is that we look away. He argues that if we looked at what we were doing, we would do it more humanely.
Not to get too far afield, but I had an epiphany that "looking away" is the problem in politics, too. These justices, our congress, the lawyers, the corporations--everyone involved knows perfectly well that the auction house in Washington has nothing to do with the intentions of a free people governing themselves. But they get pretty checks, nice careers, and they look away.
It is worth remembering the next line of the Declaration: That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
>>I had an epiphany that "looking away" is the problem in politics, too.<<
Made me think of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) and how that classic muckraking expose of the meat-packing industry led to the Pure Food and Drug Act.
If only books had that kind of power today...
Gary
I think we blew our last shot here. Hope not.
Silly, silly, silly People: just ask the corporations which of the parasites they prefer. Cuts the middlemen right out, don'tcha see? Saves a pile of money as well.
I agree. We can save quite a bit toward the deficit if we get rid of the charade. Let the corporations pick their own representatives and feed and cloth them. Leave us out of it all together.
It's time to dust off again a past made suggestion. While the Democrats still have Congressional majorities and hold the Presidency, they ought to pass a second judiciary act stripping the Supreme Court of appellate jurisdiction. Concurrently a Supreme Court of Appeals ought to be created, with explicit exclusion of judicial review. Additionally, all Federal judges, with the exclusion of the now emasculated Supreme Court, should be given term limits. Only in its stupidity did the Constitution grant Supreme Court justices life tenure, ironical when politicians are hostile towards academics having life tenure. Doing this would not only democratize a horribly aristocratic institution, it would send a desperately needed signal to the Federal and state judiciaries that the court system has gotten out of hand.
As long as Scalia et al don't rule it unconstitutional. But, then, if they did, no doubt Congress would impeach them, because that is within their power. Hmmm... Reid and Pelosi impeaching anything except that which threatens their corporate donations... no, I guess Scalia, Roberts, and Co. WOULDN'T be impeached.
WHAT'S THE RELEVANCE OF "THE VOTE" IN THE EMPIRE?
By regarding society from a class perspective, one can see through the machinations of the rich. Marx explained that "in any epoch, the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas..." The ruling class insists on control. Hence it demands unchallenged domination of the political system. It acts to mold all social institutions -- including schools, media, & political parties -- to serve its own interests. Any group that might oppose it (such as militant labor unions, leftist intellectuals, antiwar types, consumer & environmental advocates, etc) it tries to marginalize, coopt or destroy.
The political system that best serves the interests of the rich is the one that A) obediently does their bidding, while B) posing theatrically as a "democracy," in a convincing enough way so that most people don't catch on that they're simply being played. Objective "B" serves to greatly reduce resistance.
The illusion of "choice" and "free elections" is very important to the ruling class. They recognize that this pretty illusion makes their job much easier, so they want to preserve it. The rituals of campaigns & elections function to con most of the population into believing that "they're free." Most people will never clearly recognize that the choice they're being offered is a highly contrived one. They're being forced to choose between 2 parties which are united against them, rigged to serve the interests of their oppressors.
In today's US, especially at the national level, elections are worse than worthless -- they simply perpetuate illusions & waste time. They are degrading & repulsive exercises in Madison Avenue PR techniques, where "the truth" is off limits from the get-go. Effort should be directed not at participating in this system, but at bringing it down, exposing its corrupt essence, & building genuinely constructive alternatives.
Great post. It also shows why elections are designed to be rigged by privately owned voting machines, guided by exclusionary rules, etc., when we could be selecting our candidates online as safely as we do our banking and pay our taxes.
One live person, one vote, a corporation is not a live person, all parties receive the same funding from the federal purse, no corporate funding, no personal contribution over a token amount.
Corporations are Anti-Democratic, Anti-liberty, Anti-Human.
At this moment they are the occupying force in our Government.
Our "Statesmen" have been run out of town or have become Corporate whores feeding their crack like greed/power addiction.
Not until we eradicate corporations from our government will we begin to see policies and government agencies that protect our liberties,freedoms, environment and pursuit of happiness.
Okay, let me get this straight. The Democrats have $400 Million for the mid term elections and the Republicans have $200 Million. But it is the Democrats who want restrictions on campaign contributions. What a joke this 'Democracy' is.
I understand the concept of the First Ammendment and why corporations feel that they, as persons, should be able to express their right to free speech in their campaign contributions - but I don't agree with it.
If democracy is what we are striving for, but lobbyists control government by providing campaign contributions to assure elections and write all of the legislation and eliminate any chance of real democracy, why are lobbyists allowed to exist?
Public funded elections now, Public funded elections tomorrow, Public funded elections for'eva - note Public is purposefully capitalized.
Corporations fail a very basic test to be classified as "persons". They cannot be physically held accountable for their social misdeeds, i.e.: You cannot incarcerate a corporation. Their executives can be imprisoned but not the corporation. If the misdeed is due wholly to further the advancement of the corporation, wouldn't the corporate entity have at least conspired to commit the crime?
There is a famous incident from the last couple of decades where the Coca-Cola Corporation had its "agents" commit cold blooded murder of union organizers at a bottling plant in Venezuela. U.S. law would not apply here, but any reasonable system of laws would ostracize anyone acting in such a blatantly anti-social way. Isn't murder usually a lifelong sentence? Coca-Cola should not be allowed to operate in Venezuela. (I personally do not buy Coke products as a result of this incident.)
In the U.S. there are many stories of corporately led anti-social behavior, notably Ford Motor Company and the "Battle of the Overpass" during the early days of the UAW. If Ford had such an act of lethal force enacted on its behalf, shouldn't it be ostracized for it? Any person would surely suffer such a punishment. The only reason Ford Motor Company went without any interruption to its existence was because: Corporations are not people or persons!
"If voting changed anything, it would be made illegal."
--Emma Goldman
"The corporate side will always have more to spend than the union side," she said. Yes, and anyone in the labor movement whose brain is not on drugs knows this--ask anyone trying to unionize their workplace! Time for people to come out of their mental stupor and grow a radical backbone. That corporations are NOT people should be obvious, that if they want to get cheap labor elsewhere help this "cheap" labor elsewhere to organize against these parasites. If these corporations want to leave and if their government lackeys don't demand stiff financial penalties for doing so and distribute the funds among the people they are injuring then occupy the damn buildings. Wreck whatever you can't strip from their offices. They want to globalize usury we globalize solidarity. If their cronies in government "mandate" ways to force us to be exploited by these same parasites we do not cooperate.