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US Supreme Court Expected Political Ad Transparency
T Murphy writes "The Supreme Court, when ruling that corporate and union political donations were allowed under free speech, assumed the source of the donation would be disclosed immediately under current donation laws. Due to loopholes, this has not been the case, eliminating the hoped-for transparency the Supreme Court ruled to be vital to democracy. Justice Kennedy, who sided with the majority on the ruling, has been called naive for his expectation that there would be greater transparency. In the meantime, campaign spending for House candidates alone is expected to reach $1.5 billion."
Kennedy has always attempted to be a fair mediator between the left and right impulses on the Court. But he really blew it on this one. His attempt at moderation in this case has taken an already out-of-control problem and made it much worse. This ruling will ensure that individual citizens are forevermore completely and totally drowned out in our government by corporate interests and their puppet foundations/non-profits. It was almost that way *already*, but now the big interests won't even have to *try* to hide their bribery. And, thanks to this, nothing short of a Constitutional amendment will ever stop corporate control of the government now (and good luck getting a 2/3's majority in a Congress owned by those corporations). Thanks Anthony!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The Supreme Court doesn't make mistakes!
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I fail to understand how SCOTUS could be so short-sighted. When they made the ruling, I agreed with their judicial logic, but that was a case where very clearly the ruling was not in the good of the general population. I don't know how much transparency matters; if you can buy an election, you need not bother with appeasing the populace - you can just ignore it.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
I call bullshit. The court knew exactly what it was doing and knew that loopholes big enough to drive a dump truck full of money through were in place.
The problem is not corporate/union donations to individuals, the problem is one of transparency. Focus on that and on closing the "loopholes" mentioned in the summary, rather than beating your chests about the supposed unfairness surrounding the act of individuals joining together to pool their resources for political change. Anything else is merely a red herring.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Contributions may only come from registered voters (and with the current $2000 limit)
That would exclude money from corporations.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Every US election cycle, I get more proud of Canada. My latest warm fuzzy? There was a nice article in Maclean's (our Newsweek) a few months ago about Beverly Mclachlin, our Chief Justice for the last 10 years, and the various notable decisions of the Mclachlin court. It's only because of that article I know her name, and I can't name any of the other eight.
Whereas, just from news spillover, I can probably name most of the SCOTUS, because every confirmation and a dozen decisions every year are so politically charged. Polarized pitched battles seem to infuse every branch of the US governments, at every level. Quite frankly, it sounds exhausting.
Democracy can only function properly when it's a one man-one vote system where every man and vote has the same bearing on the outcome.
This level playing field is seriously out of balance because of the present donations by companies, organisations and rich individuals.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Perhaps you're not aware, but the Supreme Court didn't "make [a law] that depend[s] upon [an]OTHER law". The Supreme Court doesn't make laws, period.
The Court did apparently make assumptions about the implications of a particular interpretation, but that's pretty much unavoidable. It speaks to the excessive complexity of our body of laws that they could not predict the outcome correctly.
While I disagree with the Court's ruling, the I do not find such severe fault as you do with the specific detail of meaning (but apparently failing to say in a binding way) "...following the same rules as everyone else".
So what we need then is a group of people to run the country that properly represents it's citizens. We need the 20-somethings working alongside the 60-somethings. Why shouldn't our government be representative of age distribution too?
I agree that this goes beyond naive. It is almost unbelievable that the Supreme Court would expect greater transparency where it is not explicitly required.
The only thing that makes it believable is the rash of other outrageous -- I will go so far as to say stupid -- Supreme Court decisions recently. I won't go into those, but even so I suspect the older members of the Supreme Court of gradually increasing senility, and the newer members of not having properly studied history... in addition to being overly-politically-motivated. Properly speaking, politics should carry no weight in court decisions. I know that is an idealistic dream, but still that is the ideal.
The thing that makes this ruling by the Supreme Court so outrageous on its face is that corporations simply don't have "rights". They have the legal privilege of acting in business matters as a person. That is all. They do not have a "right" to vote, they do not have a "right" to bear arms, they do not have a "right" to free speech! Sure, individuals within corporations have the right of free speech, but that is not the same thing, and restricting corporate donations does not infringe on that right.
Back in January 2010, Obama gave the State of the Union right after the Court handed down the Citizens United decision. Obama told Congress, with several of the Supremes sitting in the front row, that the decision would allow foreign corporations to influence US elections, which most Americans still realize is a terrible development. Justice Alito, who had just decided in the majority to allow corporations "free speech" by spending unlimited money in US political campaigning, was mad: he angrily mouthed "not true". The corporate mass media attacked Obama for "picking on the justices" by warning Congress and "embarrassing" the court, but of course failed to examine whether it was true.
Less than a year later, we see it was totally true. We see that foreign corporations have invested huge amounts of money campaigning in the 2010 election. Republican candidates have gotten hundreds of $millions spent to elect them, sponsored by corporations including many foreign ones. The "US" Chamber of Commerce (Inc.) collects money from lots of foreign corporations, especially Indian ones that want US jobs shipped there, foreign banks like Credit Suisse and HSBC that want financial reform repealed, and even corporations owned by foreign kings, like the Emir of Bahrain. Foreign kings are spending more in US election campaigns than US citizens.
Whether you think that's OK or not (it is very not OK), Alito was totally wrong. And a jerk about it. Not surprising, since Alito was installed by Bush. Alito swore in his Senate confirmation hearings that he would respect established law, but his Citizens United decision overturned lots of established law, went against the basic understanding that corporations are not people, and recklessly unleashed foreign corporate power on US election campaigns.
He should be impeached. Then he'll be free to skip the State of the Union the way he plans to from now on because he can't stand criticism of his abominable rulings.
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make install -not war
Agreed, the real problem here is corporate personhood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood).
Businesses have something approaching the full rights of a human being, except, as the quote goes "They (corporations) have no soul to save and they have no body to incarcerate."
Combine this with the ideas of limited liability, proprietary knowledge, and the common practice of boards of directors being friends with the executives they appoint, and what you have is a class of corporate management run amok with little or no accountability to shareholders. Management has access to billions of dollars to spend towards their own interests, which in many cases are not the interests of the shareholders.
That said, I believe the government does have the authority to dissolve corporations, so a repeat felon corporation could be dissolved or fined into non-existance, although I don't know of any time this has happened before. The US guidelines to sentencing organizations (http://www.ussc.gov/2009guid/CHAP8.htm) mention fining an exclusively criminal organization of all its assets, but I see no mention of dissolving repeat offenders. Maybe someone else can chime in here.
Political speech by people.
A corporation is not a person. In fact, a corporation is a government-created entity, which was created to explicitly avoid having responsibility. In the wake of CU, they've extended this shirking of responsibility to include secret funding of political campaigns.
Corporations, as an entity made up of people, have just as many rights to speech as any other "entity made up of people". Trade unions, for example.
If the National Education Association can dump tons of money into campaigns, and the SEIU (Oregon state employee union), and the UAW, then so should GM and other corporations be able to do so.
We currently have an incumbent who is painting his opponent as "bought and paid for" because his campaign got a few thousand from a company while the rest of his money came in $100 and similar donations from a large number of people. The incumbent, however, is backed by many of the large unions and has gotten the vast majority of his money from them. Bought and paid for, he says?
Now, you may claim that the unions are speaking with the voice of the members, but that is far from true. They speak with the voice of the leadership. The members are lucky if they can get their politically-based dues back without repercussions.
Two things which make your assessment invalid:
There is nothing in the constitution which defines corporations as citizens with 1st amendment rights. That is an artifact of judicial decisions and law on the books. Get rid of corporations (which reducing liability for shareholders), or make the shareholders criminally liable for actions of the company and we can talk about giving corporations more rights. If you were to strictly interpret the constitiution, any group that took money from non-citizens should be exluded from the political process. If a company feels its shareholders are best represented by a certain political movement, then it should hand out a special divadend and send a note to the shareholders suggesting they give the money to a specific cause. And if that shareholder is a mutual fund, then the fund should do the same. At the end of the day, the decision to give money to a political campaign or cause should be done by the individual.
"People form groups, corporations, unions, non-profits, and the like, to give more weight to their voice"
People do not form corporations to give more weight to their voice. They form corporations to make money.
While you may not like it because it does not fit in a shoe box, some groups ARE different than others. The charter of a union for instance makes it clear that their role is to represent the needs/welfare of their members. Same with an advocacy group such as NOW, various pro life groups, environmental groups, etc. A corporation has no such requirement. They exist ONLY to make money for their shareholders. They are duty bound to try to make money without regard to morality, but only by ethics and, in theory, within the laws of the land. That is it. Non monetary considerations cannot be taken into account BY LAW. A union also wants its members to get more money, but they also have the flexibility to look at other issues which may influence their decision. Advocacy groups are more flexible as well.
citizens United was a bad decision on its face. By giv
they do not have a "right" to bear arms
You know that's an interesting point. It's a completely logical extension of "Corporations have Free Speech rights", to "Corporations have all first amendment rights". Corporations with "freedom of religious expression" make me a little scared (could be an interesting end run around civil rights legislation), but there's definitely a sufficient conflict between the individual rights of employees and the "rights" of the corporation to make that at least a less likely problem. It's not a big logical step from there to "Corporations have the right to bear arms". That's a scary idea.
Slippery slope arguments are often silly and convoluted, but in this case it's really *not* a huge jump from "Corporations have *this* Constitutional Right" to "Corporations have all Constitutional rights". One really does imply the other. Of course there's lots of interpretation to be done on what it would *mean* that Corporations have these rights (I mean, they're not cognizant sent entities with a single opinion), but the idea that they do *have* them is a short logical jump from this decision. That's more than a bit concerning.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
The fundamental problem is people actually paying attention to TV political ads. What we need is voting reform in the form of massive civics and logic education. Teach people to cast a vote based on their own research & conclusions and not an error laden, buzzword filled TV ad that plays on people's emotions.
I like this idea; unfortunately, logic and civics are widely known to have a liberal bias, so it would be very difficult to bring either of these into our public education system.
You're resting on the assumption that all groupings of people are created equal. I'm not sure I agree with that.
A corporation is given specific benefits and expected to abide by specific rules. It does not transiently acqurie all the rights or responsibilities of the indivuals who make it up, and in particular an individual's right to expression cannot be exercised by leveraging corporate assets to which he or she might have access.
Each corporation has a stated purpose for existing (though typically the founders keep this as broad as is legally acceptable), its assets are held to be used only in acceptable ways to advance that purpose, and the government has every right and interest in constraining what ways are acceptable.
Going beyond "naive" in this instance was not (I think) by Justice Kennedy.
Going beyond "naive" in this instance for some Justices/Lawyers may have been a crime against Democracy (not the law), IMO, probably in spirit and with intent "The US Constitution" was circumvented with great plutocratic hubris and gross intent to harm US with political/legal treason (but that is not against the law).
The Corporate States of America (CSA) is a plutocracy not a democracy. The CSA economy is corporate-welfare institutionalism not capitalism. The CSA justice system protects the few from the public many. The CSA religion praises wealth as proof of the gods will and favor.
Democracy is governance for the People, Tyranny is governance of the people.
As corporate states, are EU and US any better than CN or RU? I think maybe not, but EU and US still have great expectations (or delusions) to be far better for The People.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Far from it. That is why I did not say one word about voluntary collaborations of people formed for specifically political purposes.
Unions are, for the most part, involuntary groupings formed based on employment or occupation, having no political purpose behind them. No, "collective bargaining" is not a political purpose, it is a commercial one.
Then the same rules should apply to an individual who has access to union dues. Those are just as much "corporate assets" as "company money", and in many cases less so. If I own a company then those corporate assets are, indeed, mine.
Each corporation has a stated purpose for existing ...
Just as each union has.
That's your opinion, but not the law. I suggest you contact Ben and Jerry's and tell them that their donations to civic causes are not allowed because they do not fall within the scope of "ice cream business". Or Progressive Insurance, which has that name not because they sell progressive insurance.
Again, your opinion. In my opinion, the government has no right, and indeed no Constitutional authority, to tell me that I cannot spend the corporate assets of a company I own in any way I see fit. And for the potential pedant, I'll add "that is legal for any other citizen to spend his money."
How so? Do you understand that there are corporations that are based on religion operations? How does the freedom of expression of a corporation in any way limit your civil rights?
It's not a big logical step from there to "Corporations have the right to bear arms". That's a scary idea.
How, exactly, does a "corporation" bear arms? Do you mean the people working at a corporation? Yes, they still have their individual rights. They do not lose their inalienable rights when they are hired.
Do you mean "bear arms as part of the corporate operation"? Briggs and Wells Fargo and other armored car services come to mind as corporations that "bear arms" in that sense. Do those corporations scare you? I don't believe that the individuals in that corporation bear arms in violation to laws applicable to individuals, but I can't testify to that. I'm rarely scared by a passing fellow with a gun and a moneybag. YMMV.
Or do you mean the corporation can "bear arms" in some other way? The Remington corporation comes to mind as a corporation that "bears arms" in a generic way -- boxes and boxes and boxes of guns sitting in warehouses. So too, Walmart, K-Mart, Bi-Mart, Gander Mountain, and any other retail corporation that stocks them.
Slippery slope arguments are often silly and convoluted, but in this case it's really *not* a huge jump from "Corporations have *this* Constitutional Right" to "Corporations have all Constitutional rights". One really does imply the other.
I am most disturbed not by the idea that corporations have the rights, but the idea that it is a "slippery slope" to think that having one right means one has them all. Yes, having one right means one has them all. That's part of them being "inalienable".
It is a rare human being who has "a single opinion", or even unchangeable opinions. If we make a "unified, consistent set of opinions" a litmus test for having rights, we've removed any concept of "inalienable" or even "rights".
And, if we make "unified opinion" a litmus test for "corporate" rights, we eliminate trade unions from the playing field of political speech, since the members of such unions rarely, if ever, have a single opinion about any political action.
You're resting on the assumption that all groupings of people are created equal.
Far from it. That is why I did not say one word about voluntary collaborations of people formed for specifically political purposes.
Unions are, for the most part, involuntary groupings formed based on employment or occupation, having no political purpose behind them. No, "collective bargaining" is not a political purpose, it is a commercial one.
Collective bargaining is inherently political. Commerce is regulated by politics, and politics is influenced by commerce. And the power of the state is involved in any dispute between union and labor, e.g., the rights of labor to petition, contract matters, even the matter of obtaining a permit to picket. Before unions had political influence, the government would often come to the aid of companies in conflict with their workers. Think Department of Labor. Think Labor Day. Collective bargaining is nothing if not an exercise of political power.
Again, your opinion. In my opinion, the government has no right, and indeed no Constitutional authority, to tell me that I cannot spend the corporate assets of a company I own in any way I see fit. And for the potential pedant, I'll add "that is legal for any other citizen to spend his money."
A corporation is not the same as "your money". A corporation is an artificial, legal entity created by a state that has its own assets and its own liability. Most particularly, it can sue, be sued, own property, even go bankrupt, but the assets of the owners of the corporation are protected. Normally, only knowing commissions of fraud or crime are grounds to "break the corporate veil" and give plaintiffs access to an owners personal assets.
This is an extraordinary protection. And has absolutely no constitutional basis (but you're welcome to look for it yourself). Thus, the rights of a corporation are completely arbitrary, created by government and therefore changeable and may be regulated by government for any reason. States like Delaware and South Dakota, for example, are comparably lenient on corporations, thereby to be more attractive as a registration site.
In other words, a person, e.g., you, have the right to express yourself in any way you choose. But if you incorporate, and your corporation makes money, you do NOT inherently have the right to spend your corporate assets in any way you choose. You could, of course, pay yourself a big bonus and then do what you want with it, but there are rules regarding liabilities and your obligations to your co-owners. Throwing a $million birthday bash for your wife with corporate funds is not a good idea.
The abuse comes because one can incorporate anything. Most taxis in New York are owned by a hand-full of corporations. But if a taxi hits you and you sue, you will find yourself suing a tiny nothing-corporation with no assets other than that individual taxi; the assets of the parent corporation will be out of your reach. The same chicanery is applied to politics.
The point is, the rights of a corporation have no constitutional basis. Really. Go and look for some. There is no language in the constitution pertinent to corporations (notice how many times the Constitution expressly says "person"), nor is there any evidence that the Founders considered corporations when framing the document. On the contrary, the matter of corporations was left entirely to the states until late in the 18th Century at the earliest.
No constitutional rights means free to regulate... speech, commerce, anything. And whocan argue that corporate speech isn't targeted, at least ultimately, to making a bigger buck? Hence, Kennedy and the Ro
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Anecdotal, but my mom was unable to get her dues back from the Washington State Teacher's Union, when she opposed their political spending.
Comment of the year
If you are going to assume something that will never happen, we might as well assume that the deficit is gone, everyone makes a million dollars a year, and that there is peace and joy all over the planet with no hunger and no pestilence. Gitmo is closed, we're out of Iraq/Afghanistan completely, Hamas and Israel are buddies, nobody ties bombs to their children and sends them to the local markets or on the bus, and sea levels/climate changes are stable and nonthreatening.
There aren't "very few unions left", and they will never be fully abolished. It would require a complete rewrite to the US Constitution for such a prohibition to occur.
But this is wandering far afield from my original comment. I was pointing out that if corporations do not have the right to donate money to political causes, then unions should lack the same right and have the same controls. That is an argument neither for nor against corporate/union campaign contributions, just an argument that the color you paint one naturally paints the other.
How do you feel about this law? Comfortable with it?
The law abolishing unions? Won't happen. There are too many unions and too much union money in play for that to ever happen.
Did you not notice how the UAW managed to get paid off by Mr. Obama at the expense of every stockholder in GM? There are a lot more stockholders of GM (and some of them are VERY rich) than there are union members. If the corporation was in charge, it wouldn't have happened.
And that's why, at least in most states, unions are required by law to allow you to opt out of paying all union dues except the portion that directly contributes to its expenses in collective bargaining. To the extent that this is the case, any political contributions made by a union are to a large extent determined by the consent of its members, unlike a corporation's contributions, which are only determined by the consent of its board members.
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I agree that corporations and unions should be treated the same for the purposes of political donations. However I think you will find that all but one union has revenues of less that $20M/yr and the vast majority can only dream of revenues in excess of $1M/yr. The one union with revenues in exess of $20M/yr rakes in $175M/yr which in the grand scheme of things is peanuts. The notion that they can compete on an equal footing with corporate donations in a $1.5B campaign is laughable, the average US CEO's remuneration of $8.5M dwarfs the yearly revenue of all but a handfull of unions.
Note: The source for the union figures is the US DOL, they have a web app where you can look these things up but I used my fragile memory since I can't be bothered finding the link.
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