EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Corporate Win: Supreme Court Says Monsanto Has 'Control Over Product of Life'
- Cornel West: Obama 'Is a War Criminal'
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Disaster Capitalism Strikes as Hedge Funds Circle Near-Bankrupt Municipalities Like Vultures
- Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New 'Highly Toxic' Pesticide
Popular content
Today's Top News
High Court Opened Door to Legalized Bribery
Remember the 2010 State of the Union address when President Obama spoke directly at the Supreme Court justices sitting in the front row and “lectured” them about their Citizens United decision?
“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections,” Obama told the justices, as the glare of the cameras focused on them. “Well, I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests.”
The court, by a 5-4 vote, had just declared that corporations are, in effect, people when it comes to First Amendment rights and, therefore, their “free speech” can’t be limited by campaign spending laws.
As Obama sternly expressed his displeasure and Democrats in the chamber rose to applaud him, the cameras caught Justice Samuel Alito, one of the five in the majority, shaking his head and mouthing the words, “Not true.”
Well, here we are barely two years later and already the impact of the Citizens United decision is being felt across the land. Those who were criticized for predicting that the decision would swamp election campaigns with even more wild special-interest spending have already been vindicated. That includes the four dissenting justices, who wrote a blistering dissent forecasting what would happen.
The “not true” Alito now looks like just another ivy-towered jurist who can’t fathom what his opinion might mean to the real world with which he is so painfully out of touch.
Just look at Iowa last week.
Political committees, unfettered by limits established by the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, for instance, spent so much on attack ads during the last weeks before the caucuses that they actually swamped the efforts of the candidates themselves.
Noted the Chicago Tribune: “The early activity heralded a transformation across the country in the first presidential cycle since a 2010 Supreme Court decision lifted the limits on individual and corporate donations to independent political organizations known as super PACs.”
According to the paper, the decision has rendered “quaintly obsolete the old system under which donations were strictly limited to candidates and party committees. If the trend continues, the 2012 presidential election will reverse more than a century of efforts to curb the influence of big money on politics.”
The effort to rid the system of big money, as former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, the co-author with Sen. John McCain of the McCain-Feingold Act, used to point out, began with former President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a fierce foe of corporate spending in elections.
Since the Supreme Court opened the doors, super PACs have been formed to support specific candidates, although they’re not supposed to be linked with the campaigns themselves. But this is yet another subterfuge in the never-ending spending binge that marks today’s campaigns. The super PACs raise and spend unlimited funds while the candidate claims to know nothing about the ads and, of course, is “powerless” to do anything about them. That’s what Mitt Romney claimed in Iowa, where millions were spent on his behalf to tear down Newt Gingrich.
Fred Wertheimer, president of a national campaign finance reform group, believes the super PACS are vehicles that will spread to Congress and lead us back to a system of pure legalized bribery.
In other words, with Iowa, we have just seen the beginning.
Someone should inform Justice Samuel Alito that his “not true” was the real falsehood.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
22 Comments so far
Show All"The “not true” Alito now looks like just another ivy-towered jurist who can’t fathom what his opinion might mean to the real world with which he is so painfully out of touch."
BS! You're giving this fascist too much benefit of the doubt, like he was a well-meaning but out-of-touch justice.
This fascist knew EXACTLY what he was doing! He's a class warrior, who struck a blow for the wealthy to achieve their goal of becoming the new "royalty".
You need to understand the class war to make sense of their actions. The Fascist Five on the Supreme Court need to be impeached, tried, and thrown out for their anti-democratic, fascist rulings that favor the wealthy!
Yep, lets have Autocratic rule instead!!
You're confused. Control of the Supreme Court (and the rest of OUR government) by the wealthy and their corporations IS autocratic rule!
These fascists (and the fascists of BOTH parties that confirmed them) need to be removed before their damage to OUR democracy is irreversible.
I am sure Alito will be well rewarded for his treachery.
The Roberts court, owned by the one percent and don't forget it! I think it's time to get a rope.
Just because these 5 assholes were appointed by republican presidents means nothing. Just because Obama lectured them in front of a worldwide audience means nothing. In fact the whole world means nothing. I'm quite certain that my mind is sitting in a mason jar out in the vast unknown and I've made up the entire universe. Still, it is fun to pretend that something is real.
I had an intersting thought about the citizens united decison yeasterday. Say for instance, I was pulled over by a law enforcement officer for some reason. Seeing as money = speech, could I not offer him enough free speech to change his or her mind about why I got stopped in the first place? I mean if money truly = speech then bribery has no meaning in Fascist Empire Amerika. Thanks SCOTUS for your horrible decades long decisons that have effectively killed America and left us holding onto a reeking Fasist regime.
Good one!
The "high" court is not so high anymore. These days, more and more people are recognizing Merkan institutions as flooded with swamp muck and in need of a major purging. Meanwhile, the oppressors' key strategy is to make their oppression of the people a "normalicy", that need not be questioned because there is no alternative in sight. Debate has been stifled, and in the silence what can possibly inspire the people toward an alternative? This is where self-determination comes into play. I guess you know the Demoks' liberal establishment does not support the people's self-determination. Here's how self-determination frees the people from the shackles of the elites: When the people listen to their own internal voices, the silence is lifted, the debate is settled, the elites run frantically for their lives, and the people take control of industrial production and pubic policy. The inner voice rules.
rtdrury:
It is true that U.S. public policy -- in particular the debates, campaigning
and "elections" leading to SELECTION of a president to rule over us --
is smeared with muck. In muck there is money, and has been so ever
since the Industrial Revolution in England and somewhat later in USA.
[We need new "muckrakers", as the long-ago exposers of corruption
were called.] As you posted, what is now needed is that " ... the people
take control of ... public policy." Also, "The 'high' court is not so high
anymore." Yes indeed! The gang of four (sometimes five) is in the
money in the muck! They are so drastically bought-out that virtually no
action to counter them is too drastic. On January 6 at 2:23 PM, in string
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/05-6 [Lead article by
Bill McKibben], I posted what I admitted therein to be an extreme
approach to remediation of a "low down" Supreme Court : Neglect to
enforce their dictums. SCOTUS may be the supreme adjudicator in the
U.S., but they are not -- and never were intended to be -- dictators.
Accordingly, the composers of the Constitution gave SCOTUS no power
of enforcement; it also gave SCOTUS no power of legislation. If the
SCOTUS dares to legislate from the bench [judge-made law], and then
declare their own "law" to be the laws of the land, then let them also send
their own inventive "police" to enforce said "law". We'll see then how the
people take to "laws" that never were voted on by any legislature, either
state or federal. They go too damned far! They'd impose a dictatorial
regime. The people's inner voice will tell themselves that "money rules"
is no fit motto in a supposedly free nation.
On January 6 at 4:51 PM [in the same thread that was
posted in my comments just above], I was taken to task
by Robert Riversong's post, which said essentially that
I didn't know the law, and really didn't know what I was
talking about. Today's thread under Dave Zweifel's
lead article gives me an opportunity to say that I most
certainly know what THE PEOPLE know, and that is that
their wishes are being imposed upon by the "legalized
bribery" that works so as to SELECT the new president
via what used to be called "Madison Avenue" advertizing
methods. Furthermore, such advertizing "quasi-bribery"
is enabled by the SCOTUS's Citizens United dictum, which
also was bought and paid for. We can sit still and let the
"judge-made law" rule the conduct of elections for lack of
ANY feasible response to SCOTUS's dictums, or we can
at least attempt to do something. And, NO!, an amendment
to the Constitution (while desirable) would be (i) too late for
this election, and for elections to come, and (ii) not likely
to be even passed through congress, let alone ratified by
three-fourths of the states. The bought and paid for congress
wouldn't let the amendment even get to the states. It may be
that we'll have to have a Thomas Jefferson style revolution.
TJ didn't think that would be such a bad thing in a supposedly
free nation.
"When the people listen to their own internal voices, the silence is lifted, the debate is settled, the elites run frantically for their lives, and the people take control of industrial production and pubic policy. The inner voice rules."
....Beautiful, rtdrury!
....It reminds me of Thomas Jefferson: ‘When the government is fearful of the people, you have liberty. When the people are fearful of the government, you have tyranny.’
Congress could fix the Citizens United problem with a simple change to statutory language, but the reality is that everyone in congress loves Citizens United because it makes it very difficult for a newcomer to defeat an incumbent.
"Only United States citizens and groups made up of 100% United States citizens may contribute to political campaigns. Any group with one or more non-citizens members who contributes to any political campaign shall face a fine of not less than $1 million and a prison sentence of not more than 25 years."
The supreme court could never get away with saying that non-citizens can contribute to campaigns if the American people stood up. But they won't, because they have McDonald's, and Coke, and video games, and all the other essential parts of a meaningful life.
The Citizens United decision was an interpretation of the first amendment; the Congress cannot legislate to override the first amendment. Citizens United did not authorize corporations (or labor unions) to contribute directly to campaigns. It held that an "issues" advertisement--in that case a movie criticising Hillary Clinton--was protected under the first amendment.
"High Court" - right. The question is, what are they high on? It sure can't be justice. Things are so bad that the spouse of at least one (I refer, of course, to the ever-despicable Clarence Thomas) is openly running a lobbying service. Lewis Carroll would have a hard time believing this stuff.
Unfortunately the worse things get, the more reactionary and conservative people get, the worse things get.
In lower animals, increasing competition for depleting resources leads to conflict, lowering populations through attrition and restoring nature's balance. Conservatives tend to believe God exempts humans from natural controls, which helps nature to continue culling our species.
It also helps nature that the conservative animals think they can hoard all resources forever without causing attrition by impoverishing other people or their own environment. They call it economic growth, and it is like God's own words to them.
Direct democracy
The typical fifth grader knows and can describe the difference between a company and a person, and betwen speech and money. What is evident here is that the right-wing 'judges', let by Roberts and Alioto, are not as smart as a fifth grader.
Our whole election system is one of legal bribery and always has been. The Supremes just kicked the door open wider and propped it with a brick.
Public Campaign Finance. Simple as that and the only ones that can demand it don't have the voice.
When one uses the word “corporation”, it is very important to clarify that you refer to a tiny, not-necessarily-US-national, minority of demographically identical 'people-with-pulses' who populate the inter-locking boardrooms and corner offices operating behind the fascade of "corporation".
(That's the nice way to say it...insert "sociopaths" and "Anti-Christ" in the appropriate spaces, for the juicy version.)
Seriously, each time we fail to make that distinction, we re-enforce the fiction of corporate personhood. 'We' are up against a flesh-and-blood global oligarchy using the "corporation" as a front to concentrate wealth and power in ways that will result in the destruction, of not only society and all that's been accomplished, but also, the ecosystem itself.
We are in a struggle for survival.
splitting hairs about citizens united and corporate personhood is a distraction.
instead of only invoking historic precedent and whining about the bad consequences of corporate political contributions, one should rather denounce directly that such contributions are a de facto usurpation of the power of money that was raised from investors small and large, private and institutional, for an economic purpose rather than for a political purpose.
indeed the CEOs of corporations usurp this power whenever they support their favorite candidates and legislation without an explicit and democratically obtained go-ahead from everybody who invested in their companies.
the duty to consult investors in a democratically credible way each time that a company wants to support a specific political candidate or party should become the law of the country. investors coud be polled, e.g., about which party should get their % contribution (by number of shares?) if the corporation ever decides to bribe... er... "finance" politicians and this could be easily audited.
why should retirees through their pension funds, e.g., end up supporting a politician unknown to them just because their pension system invested in a company whose CEO likes that politician?
this law would allow unions to recover their political voice since as mass organizations they can poll their members very readily before federal and political elections (unlike corporations).
union statutes could specify whether a simple majority, plurality, etc. suffices for the union to support candidates, parties, etc. with money, people, and resources.
let’s see what by-bribe-only judges and politicians and let-me-enslave-them-freely libertarians can say against a reform that stresses democracy and opposes the usurpation of small people's (freely after alan simpson) private property by well-heeled CEOs.
If I remember American History correctly, when the high court was first formed nobody wanted the job. The supreme Court was thought to have little influence and even less power and prestige.