Taking on Citizens United

"Hawaii just made history, becoming the first state in the nation to effectively ban dark money in elections. The new law takes a novel approach: rather than trying to restrict corporate speech, it redefines the powers corporations have in the first place — and political spending is not among them. The strategy, known as the “Corporate Power Reset,” was developed by Tom Moore of the Center for American Progress. And at least a dozen states are now working toward passing similar laws."

Video news from MS Now

How simple. States grant corporations power to operate in their borders, states can decide what powers corporations are granted in their states. SuperPacs can still operate, but they can only accept money from individuals, and they have to publicly name those individuals.

Interestingly, the law passed unanimously in one house and 52-1 for it in the other.

Expect legal challenges against it.

Creative thinking in politics

Ever since the Supreme Court shattered campaign finance law with its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010,1 Americans have been told there are only two ways to stop corporate and “dark” money in politics: Amend the U.S. Constitution or wait for the court to undo what it has done.

[...]

Citizens United held that government may not regulate a corporation’s right to spend money independently in elections. But the court did not say what a corporation is—it could not. That question lies beyond even the Supreme Court’s reach.

[...]

Corporations are creatures of statute, not of nature. And for more than two centuries, the power to build them—to define their form, limits, and privileges—has belonged to the states and only to the states.

[...]

[T]he underlying authority to define and limit corporate powers never disappeared. It simply went quiet: unused, untested, and unmentioned [...] .This report names that authority, explains it, and shows how states can reclaim it to, in effect, undo Citizens United by executing a reset of their corporations’ powers. The sovereign authority to decide which powers states grant to the corporations they charter includes the authority to not grant their corporations the power to spend in politics.

[...]

The legal strategy developed by the Center for American Progress—the “Corporate Power Reset”—will, state by state, drain corporate and dark money from American politics. It does not overturn Citizens United; it makes it irrelevant.

  American Progress

That would be great. But I can imagine Red states offering more lucrative conditions for corporations, including allowing them to continue their political power via dark money. Blue states would have to allow the same in order to compete. This is something to think about, though. If you're interested, read the long article in totality.

See a pattern?

 

Also, guess what year Citizens United (allowing corporations to be considered people for the purposes of campaign contributions) was passed.

Yep.  2010.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the real "wealth redistribution" in this country.

Musk money in Wisconsin

 If Democrats ever get power again - and that's looking increasingly unlikely - the first thing they need to do is work on ways to reverse Citizens United.

About time

 

It won't fly now, but it's about time someone started working on it.  Must have been approved by Dems as well as Republicans until now.  Money going into Congressional coffers on both sides of the aisle.

Citizens United stakes its final claim

 

Post Citizens United, it was never going to end any other way.

The destructiveness of Citizens United

Few foresaw this in 2010, when the Supreme Court launched us onto a dark path. The court’s 5–4 Citizens United decision, allowing unlimited corporate, interest-group, and individual spending on elections, did trigger dire predictions from plenty of doomsayers. But even the most pessimistic among them fell short of imagining American reality today.

  The Bulwark

I disagree about the "few". When it passed the Supreme Court, most of us knew it would be one of the worst decisions in history. But I'd say even more than a few were pessimistic enough to envision today's reality.

“We knew that it was going to be really, really destructive for our democracy,” says Tiffany Muller, president of the group End Citizens United, which is dedicated to electing Democrats committed to seeing the ruling overturned. “Fifteen years after that decision, we’re seeing the full culmination of living under a Citizens United world—where it’s not just elections that are for sale, but it’s that our entire government, and the apparatus of our government, is up for sale.”

It’s hard to believe, but once upon a time there was bipartisan common ground on gun safety, health care, voting rights, climate change, and even limits on campaign funding. The Senate in 2006 voted 98–0 to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, and George W. Bush signed the law. He also added a voluntary prescription benefit to Medicare, with help from Democrats in both chambers.

Bipartisan Senate pairs introduced major climate bills in 2003 and 2007, but their prospects faded amid opposition from the fossil-fuel industry. In 2010, a few months after Citizens United, a cap-and-trade tax designed to reduce carbon emissions passed the House in a landmark vote, but it fell short in the Senate. Democrats had 59 seats and needed just one Republican vote to advance the bill—and they couldn’t get it.

[...]

When Citizens United turned ten, in 2020, the political money-tracker Open Secrets reported on what the ruling had wrought. Super PACs—the non-party committees created to legally raise cash in unlimited amounts to independently promote issues and candidates—spent $4.5 billion over the decade (up from $750 million over the previous twenty years).

[...]

“The court’s naïve view of our electoral process set the stage for 10 years of billions of dollars corrupting our politics and dictating national policy on everything from the cost of prescription drugs to climate change to gun violence.”

I'm going to disagree with that statement, too. I think the court was anything but naive. It was trying to change America to favor the ultra-rich. I think it understood exactly what it was doing - which was exactly what it wanted to do. And it was the beginning of turning the country into one party rule.

By the time the Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United, it had lost the one justice who had campaigned for office and negotiated political deals: Sandra Day O’Connor.

[...]

The root of [the current] corruption debacle, of course and alas, is Musk spending nearly $300 million to get Trump elected in the first place. Now he’s trying to purchase a state supreme court seat in Wisconsin, and his fellow billionaires are pouring money into state legislative races.

[...]

[Justice O'Connor] likely would have been part of a 5–4 majority against opening the cash floodgates. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about O’Connor’s decision and a couple of portentous what-ifs as we endure this disastrous, potentially deadly, anti-democracy Trump-Musk reign of error and terror.

[...]

What if Bush’s first choice to replace O’Connor, Harriet Miers, had not withdrawn amid critiques that she was not sufficiently experienced or conservative? What if Bush had not then nominated Samuel Alito?

Yes. The rest is history. And so might be the democratic government of the United States.

Corrupt Thomases again in the news

And I keep thinking that even if the Democrats retake the House and keep the Senate, they STILL won't investigate.  The party is scared of its own shadow.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Time to amend the Constitution again

Trump era: the quiet part loud

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

More first orders of business

It won't pass this time, but it's good they're starting to peck away at this horrible legislation.



Read about it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Citizens United

Surely no liberal Clinton supporter would have been opposed to the Citizens United ruling that said corporations can give money to political campaigns because, as we all know, there is no quid pro quo in politics.  They certainly don't have any problem with the Clinton Foundation collection of millions of dollars from foreign countries while Hillary was Secretary of State.

During the four years Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation run by her husband took tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments and corporations.

Many of these donors had a lot riding on Clinton’s decisions. Saudi Arabia gave the foundation up to $25 million, and Clinton signed off on a controversial $29 billion sale of fighter jets to the country. Oil companies gave the foundation around $3 million, and Clinton approved a lucrative gas pipeline in the Canadian tar sands they’d long sought.

  Vox

Still, you can't PROVE a connection.

[A]nother media feeding frenzy over the foundation kicked off again on Monday, when the State Department was forced to release emails showing that the foundation’s leadership tried to land its top donors meetings with the secretary of state.

[...]

Certainly, none of them offers proof that Clinton was willing to trade government favors directly for big contributions. Moreover, as Mother Jones’s Kevin Drum writes, most of the donors’ requests to see Clinton were actually turned down.

[...]

So if there was no quid pro quo, does that mean Clinton's conduct was aboveboard?

[...]

Talking with top government officials obviously isn’t the same as getting them to do your bidding, but doing so can help structure how they think, whom they turn to for advice, and, ultimately, what they decide to do. And the emails at least strongly suggest that foundation donors had a better opportunity to mold the secretary of state’s worldview than they would have otherwise.

No, I think the Saudis gave money to the Clinton Foundation because they're such great humanitarians. It was all about charity. They just wanted meetings with the US Secretary of State to personally thank her for allowing them to further the cause of women's rights the world over.

As the AP has pointed out, the State Department is stonewalling the release of Clinton’s schedule — meaning we probably only know a fraction of the actual meetings she held with donors.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Money in Politics: It's Okay if You're Hillary

Hillary Clinton January 2016:

“I know how much money influences the political decision-making,” Clinton said, [...] “That’s why I’m for campaign finance reform."

Hillary Clinton February 2016:

"What the Sanders campaign is trying to do is link donations to my political campaign  [...] , with undue influence with changing people’s views and votes. I've never ever done that and I really do resent the implication or as I said the other night the insinuation," Clinton said. 

After years railing against the Citizens United decision, which opened the floodgates to outside spending in elections, some of them appear to have done a complete reversal.

[...]

The Clinton campaign has spent the last few weeks furiously pushing back at the criticism that she is influenced by the vast donations her campaign receives from backers in the oil and financial industries.

[...]

As journalist David Sirota reported earlier this week, in the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Clinton harshly criticized then senator Obama for accepting donations from oil and gas executives – and even cut a campaign commercial about it. The kicker? It was less money than Clinton has accepted from people working for fossil fuel companies so far this campaign season.

  Guardian

[A] key argument of the right-wing justices in Citizens United has now become the key argument of the Clinton campaign and its media supporters to justify her personal and political receipt of millions upon millions of dollars in corporate money: “Expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” [...]. Indeed, the Clinton argument actually goes well beyond the Court’s conservatives: In Citizens United, the right-wing justices merely denied the corrupting effect of independent expenditures (i.e., ones not coordinated with the campaign). But Clinton supporters in 2016 are denying the corrupting effect of direct campaign donations by large banks and corporations and, even worse, huge speaking fees paid to an individual politician shortly before and after that person holds massive political power.

[...]

Oh no, Clinton supporters insist, the mere fact that a candidate is receiving millions upon millions of dollars — both politically and personally — from Wall Street banks, hedge funds, and large corporations is not remotely suggestive of corruption.

[...]

[A] core Clinton-supporting argument [is]: Look, if you can’t prove that Hillary changed her vote in exchange for Goldman Sachs speaking fees or JPMorgan Chase donations (and just by the way, Elizabeth Warren believes she can prove that), then you can’t prove that these donations are corrupting.

[...]

But as establishment Democrats have repeatedly proven, there is literally no principle, no belief, immune from being dispensed with the minute they think doing so helps empower their leaders.

  Glenn Greenwald

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Citizens United Protest Continues

As Democracy Spring demonstrators engaged in a second day of civil disobedience at the US Capitol, part of a week-long series of demonstrations aimed at expanding voting rights and reducing the influence of money in politics, attorney Marc Owens [former director of the IRS division that regulated nonprofit institutions] told an audience at the National Press Club that the widespread use of nonprofits as ways to shield the identities of political donors has corrupted the system.

[...]

More than 2,000 people have pledged to participate in the organization's sit-ins following a 10-day march from the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

[...]

Under the 2010 Citizens United decision, the nonprofits can raise and donate unlimited amounts to influence elections. Unlike super PACs, which must report donors to the Federal Election Commission, “dark money groups” [...] never have to reveal the sources of their funds, as long as — supposedly — politics is not their main focus.

[...]

Robert Maguire of the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, [said] it looks like another record-breaking year for stealthy political spending. Maguire said CRP so far has tracked $21 million in dark money spending for the 2016 cycle. That’s almost three times what it was at this time four years ago, a campaign in which total dark money spending ended up north of $300 million.

  Kathy Kiely at Bill Moyers

OpenSecrets.org tracks the amount of money raised by candidates.  Here are the figures so far.  The top bar for each represents the amount of money raised by super PACs, dark money outlets, etc.

Detailed list of campaign and donor money: 

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/outsidegroups.php

[W]ith some of the failures of Obama—failure to achieve real universal healthcare, a failure to really tackle climate change or growing income inequality—we’re seeing this kind of return to civil disobedience, these tactics from the 1960s, or even going back to the 1930s, that are returning to the mainstream in American politics. And I think that’s very interesting. And it’s very savvy, I should add, for all of these protesters to make corruption, money in politics, their focus, because that’s what kind of threads the needle here. No matter what issue you care about, it’s very difficult to see reform when big money, special interests dominate the policymaking process.

[...]

[A] significant number [of Democratic superdelegates] are actually party insiders or lobbyists and former politicians who now work in the lobbying industry [...] , folks who are registered to represent big banks, even in some cases foreign governments, and they have incredible power over the nomination process. And in one potential scenario, we could have these lobbyists selecting the nominee, if Hillary and Bernie have about the same number of pledged delegates going into the convention later this summer.

  Lee Fang

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Biggest News Story You Didn't Hear

THE DEMOCRACY SPRING, a protest movement calling on Congress to “end the corruption of big money in our politics” and “ensure free and fair elections,” converged on Capitol Hill on Monday, staging a nonviolent sit-in that resulted in over 400 arrests — a massive number by Washington sit-in standards.

[...]

The protests were widely covered by CSPAN, Al Jazeera, and NPR, among other outlets. But cable news programs, which specialize in American political news, were another story.

[...]

During daytime and afternoon news segments, CNN did not devote any coverage to the actions. MSNBC mentioned the protests for approximately 12 seconds, while Fox News mentioned the arrests and discussed the protests for about 17 seconds.

[...]

[H]osts on both networks misrepresented the protests, claiming they were narrowly focused only on “voting rights issues.” The focus on systemic political corruption, an issue that was widely criticized during the rally yesterday, was ignored.

[...]

Comcast, parent company of MSNBC, is among the biggest spenders on political lobbying, and its senior management has raised thousands of campaign dollars for congressional Republicans and Hillary Clinton. Other broadcasting companies have lobbied in recent years against reforms that would diminish the role of big money in election campaigns largely because the bulk of campaign funds are spent on television advertisements, a major source of revenue for television programs.

  Intercept

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Take Corporate Money Out of Politics

What would you get?

[A] U.S. PIRG report examines how 2016 presidential candidates would fare under a campaign financing system similar to that of New York City, which matches small donations to local candidates with additional public money at a six-to-one ratio. For example, if someone gives $10 to a candidate for the New York City Council, the city provides an additional $60, so the candidate receives $70 total [with an individual contribution cap of $200].

[...]

The U.S. PIRG report also demonstrates that a small-donor matching funds system would overwhelm the financial impact of super PACs.

[...]

The U.S. PIRG report acknowledges it does not take into account how both candidates and potential small contributors would change their behavior under a small-donor matching system. The report notes that New York City has seen both an increased number of small donors and increased diversity in where donors live.

  The Intercept

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Key Word: Retired

A bipartisan group of 108 retired high-level politicians called for fairly ambitious reforms of the U.S. campaign finance system at an event on Capitol Hill on Thursday. The “ReFormers Caucus,” a project of the advocacy organization Issue One, includes 23 former senators, 82 representatives, 16 governors, 8 cabinet secretaries, 10 ambassadors and one vice president, Walter Mondale.

  The Intercept

Lost Democracy Found in Brazil

Truth in Advertising

The Daily Show fixed Koch Brothers ads:



http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/avy6xw/democalypse-2014---south-by-south-mess--ad-of-brothers

By the way, the Koch Brothers are rounding up republican presidential candidates for a seminar.  Mitt Romney is not invited.  Mitt Romney Has a Koch Problem

Citizens United