Why can newspapers endorse a candidate?? Isn't this worse ??
Why no mention ever of the worse abuse in politics which has put states & cities on the path to bankruptcy?? The incestuous relationship between Democrats & public unions??
4
Corruption is rampant from California all the way to DC and care to guess which party has been busted the most at the Federal level?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_officials_convicted_of_corruption_offenses
1
His decision in Citizens United and his role in the Kavanaugh appointment assures Justice Kennedy of a place in history at least as elevated as those accorded to other judicial luminaries like Judge Crater and Judge Roy Moore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Force_Crater
10
Please urge your Congressional Representative to co-sponsor House Joint Resolution 48, which proposes an amendment to the U.S. Constitution providing that the rights extended by the Constitution are the rights of natural persons only, and establishes that the judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment. This currently has 66 co-sponsors in the House and will be introduced again in the 116th Congress. ALSO, contact your Senators about introducing companion legislation in the Senate. You can read the full text here:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-joint-resolution/48/text
13
If we can tolerate this for as long as it takes to play out (far-sight politics instead of the near sighted decisions we make now) the voting population will become immune to the palaver that is floating everywhere and become discerning readers of trusted sources - and vote with their brain instead of the latest wave of tweets. Can we stand it that long? This will finally put an arrow in the mercenary heart of the political money election purchasers. Adelson, perhaps you've bought your last president.
4
Typo: It looks like the independent spending figure should be 1.48 billion, not 1.48 trillion.
2
The idea that $$ = speech is simply nuts. We can all appreciate that, tho the wealthiest & greediest pretend the can't.
11
No citizen-congresscritter of modest means can afford to hobnob in Washington's high society of billionaires on a congresscritter's salary.
2
Two questions I have:
1) what's to stop Paul Ryan for taking a job with Sheldon Adelson for $1M/year now?
2) it's not like campaign money can be used legally by a candidate to buy a car, right? Most of it just goes to the owners of the cable networks, right?
If somebody can explain, thanks.
2
America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving plutocrats everywhere.
6
Can you smell the bananas?
2
Please join the thousands of citizens who support the Move To Amend action; it is the only way to finally end this nightmare. It is not partisan either, most everyone is fed up with our corrupt system. Move to Amend is a grassroots organization that has sponsors in government positions and it is growing. But too many Americans are unaware of it. So go to the website, movetoamend.org and support the logical solution so badly needed.
8
Sadly we've gone from bad to worse with Kavanaugh who when provoked makes threats against his critics and when pushed, starts to bluster and blubber. What backbone can he muster against those who put him in power? None and that's exactly why they voted him in.
5
Just for the record: The New York Times Company is a corporation and most of what it does is advocacy for a certain political party and worldview. Should it be censored?
3
One of the most outrageous, stupid court decision in my lifetime.
A clear attack on the sprit of our democracy.
8
RIP USA.
One of the most brilliant (and sick) parts of CU, is that now more than ever the country is run by wealthy corporations. So the electorate really doesn't have a say. Therefore leaving this heinous law untouchable. The supposed Blue Wave will barely make a dent in this mess.
MSM, is completely complicit because their job is to get the viewers rabid with nonstop loops of Trump World. Which is making the companies that own all our media rich beyond belief.
I have to ask all the people watching cable news - how many times can you watch teleprompter readers like Anderson and Rachel fill your heads with what inappropriate things Trumps does or says. Trump ain't going anywhere because he knows how much money he is making for his most hated networks.
And God help us once the 2020 s**t show starts and Democrats starting attacking each other. And what will that election produce? How about: Democracy 0 and Media outlets $1000000000000000
To paraphrase the great Paddy Chayefsky - "Turn on your televisions and scream, I'm mad as hell...but... I'll keep taking it...and taking it...and taking it...Oooo Oooo keep it down CNN has breaking news!!"
We're all a bunch of completely hypnotized suckers.
3
This says it all: "In 2010, independent expenditures totaled $203.9 million; in 2016, it was $1.48 billion. In this nonpresidential year, with final reports still to come, independent expenditures totaled at least $1.18 billion."
$2.5 billion in 2 years to ensure people as rich as Adelson get a massive tax break ("$700 million windfall") and other legislation that helps only the wealthy and massive corporations.
Think about how unAmerican the travesty of CU is. The Adelson's of the country (plus big pharma, oil, tech, ag, etc...) would rather spend massive amounts of money to bribe politicians than to pay taxes which enrich the common good. Bribes instead infrastructure, education, safety and general welfare.
CU has ensured that the only citizens represented are the mega-wealthy. Be damned the rest of us.
6
The House under Ryan’s supervision gives a Las Vegas magnate more than a trillion dollar tax cut. Whose thank you note is a $30,000,000 contribution to Citizens United.
Wheras, my meager contribution to a candidate is not tax deductible.
“Something is rotten”,stinking rotten, not in Denmark but in the Republic thanks to Justice Kennedy’s favoritism!
6
While not underestimating the impact of Citizens United (the facts of which dealt with a smear campaign against Hillary Clinton, by the by), I agree with Post that the root of the problem is Buckley v Valleo. If we could cap campaign expenditure, there’d be no need for rivers of cash, from anyone. And it would level, and open up, the playing field, so that yes, anyone, from any background, could rise to the presidency.
Whether that last thing is good or bad, in the age of Trump, I don’t know. But at least you wouldn’t have to have a golden toilet to contemplate running for office.
4
Thomas Edsall is the best - period.
2
When money talks, it speaks with a loud voice. There is no way around it and it buys access any and everywhere.
What we have to police is what is done after the access is given. During the 2016 campaign, much was made of Ms. Clinton giving access to people who contributed to her charity.
What was proven though is that Ms. Clinton never did any favors based on that access.
What was obvious to many but not enough is the Reality Show Con Artist will do ANYTHING for money up to and including justifying murder for people that "buy a lot of my condos".
And let's not forget prostrating himself in front of the leader of Russia who many speculate is the world's richest man.
Of course it wasn't Citizen's United that didn't contribute to that debacle. It was the mainstream media who never took the time to correct the salacious details of Vichy GOP talking points. The Billions in free publicity the grifter in Chief got was not Court ordered but through the media's equal desire for eyeballs and ears.
Since the influence of money is not going away, my desire would be for the media to not encourage the dissemination of lies, especially when the dissemination is the whole point. After all, the New York times knows that 8 out of every 10 people don't read past the headline.
5
Let's see, under Citizens United, Adelson invests $30 million in political payoffs and gets a $700 million return on lower taxes.
That is a 2,333% return on investment.
Where else can you get a whopping return like that?
Only in politics. Only with Citizens United.
These folks knew exactly what they were doing in making Citizens United the law of the land.
8
Citizens United needs to be ended ASAP for the good of the American people and the world. We have been witnessing its tragic consequences unfold before our eyes. Citizens United has no place in a true democracy. Otherwise, politicians just work for the oligarchs and big lobby groups instead of the common people.
3
Dear Justice Kennedy, thanks so much for planting a stake in the heart of our democracy. You sold out to big business and in the end to trump, some legacy.
4
With their hand picked judges, The Federalist Society has been extremely successful in destroying American democracy.
8
Thank you Mr. Edsall for keeping this tragic and horrific failure of our court system on the national radar. Citizens United is a clear and present danger to our already frail democracy. This ruling fully de-legitimizes the Supreme Court. This institution is rotten to the core. Term limits for SCOTUS judges are a must and so overdue.
5
“egalitarian strain in First Amendment law,”
Ohhhh that pesky First Amendment. It never fails to get folks riled up.
Ever since I was told it was a legal expression of one's First Amendment rights to wave a National Liberation Front flag at anti-war protests, I've come to accept as legal all sorts of actions that I once considered illegal and even treasonous. This was prior to my serving a tour of duty in RVN.
Edsall appears to have outdone himself on the cut and paste operations to pass off another polemic as something approaching scholarly research.
Cry all you want about the end of the Republic but know that First Amendment is now reaching further than the self-styled revolutionaries could have ever imagined. How's that go? Oh yeah, Power to the People! You betcha.
1
After the family member of an elder asked me to participate in coordination efforts of a terminal family members nursing needs. I specified if she would ask her doctor for a professional write up. She was known as a druggie person, a party'er, and had been out drinking the night before of her request. She owned a day care for children and her mother lived on sight of the daycare. Her Mother was old but not to the capacity that the daughter made her to be. I was shocked by CPS and Police involvement the following week, citing me as not being helpful or even served in the needs of this terminal case. My child has been "fostered" for over 8 years now. The quotes in this article are all the language of the daughter asking me, a 31 year old Mother, to forfeit her own life to hear. I am very Constitutional in asking how is free speech is revealant. She discussed a terminal diagnosis with a student medical provider. The daughter didn't get the write up. There was no nursing need. Why the fostering?
"The American system of campaign finance, undergirded by a Supreme Court whose conservative members feign innocence, has become the enabler of corrosive processes of economic and political inequality."
Why would anyone think that the "conservative" majority is naive about this? I submit that they knew exactly what they were doing, enabling corruption because it favors the Republican Party, the source of the court's majority. If opening the floodgates to money in politics favored Democrats, they would certainly have ruled against it.
The solution is to maximize transparency - no secret donations - and, more importantly, to sever any link (besides small permitted donations directly to campaigns) to the beneficiary of political spending (e.g., donations to super PACs). In other words, you can give as much to PACs as you want, but politicians and campaigns would be blocked from knowing who gave. This could be an impediment to quid pro quo donations.
3
As the saying goes, "In politics, a poor man’s soapbox is no match for a rich man’s wallet." That the conservative majority would ignore this age-old, folk truism, is of itself an indictment of their judicial temperament and partisan independence.
7
Anyone who is paying attention understands the impacts of the Citizens United decision. Certainly in the vignette that opens this story, it's clear that Mr Ryan effectively has the choice of raising $30M by going to one person or by going to 30 million people for $1. Justice Kennedy and his colleagues were remarkably naive if they didn't understand the implications of their decision. Have they never heard politicians wail about the amount of time spent on fundraising rather than doing the people's business?
Furthermore, Mr. Ryan (were he not retiring) would need $30M next election cycle, and each successive cycle after that. Of course, Mr Ryan is going to make certain his mega-donor is happy. He might even be incentivized to pass a $1.5T tax cut to ensure that his mega-donor continues to have such a slush fund.
What is unclear is how the country can backtrack. If corporations are "people" with rights of free speech, and money is equivalent to free speech, what is/are the court case(s) to cause the USSC to reconsider its decision? Mr Edsall?
4
Argue the first amendment all you want. But there is no constitutional guarantee of secrecy in political donations. Records of All corporate and individual contributions should be made public in real time. No dark money and the scam opacity of PACs and related 501c4 groups. It’s clearly bad for democracy when knowable information is made secret this way.
10
There is a solution to the ongoing problem of the politically naive Supreme Court continually undermining Congress' attempts to institute reasoned and politically fair rules around campaign finance, as the SC has done for the last 50 years: Congress can use the Exceptions clause in Article III to remove matters of campaign finance, advertising, etc. from constitutional review. Without the undue interference of the one unelected branch of gov't over the elections of the others, we can use the democratic process itself to shape the democratic process for the purpose of protecting the Republic for all, instead of being overly concerned with abstract interests, such as the illusion of "free speech" rights of non-persons such as corporations and unions.
Let each natural person speak with their own voice, and within reasonable limits use their own money to do so, and if they want to amplify their voices further, they will have to join with others of like mind and speak in concert to be heard more broadly. And identify themselves when they do. That sounds a lot more like a the Jeffersonian vision of a yeoman's democracy than anything I've seen in my own lifetime.
I would say there are several other areas of law where that clause should probably be applied, but let's start with the one from which solutions to all other problems flows.
4
The Supreme Court, in its disingenuous decisions on campaign donations, has refused tondifferentiate between a lone person’s “voice” and a millionaire’s bullhorn. To consider an individual’s $25 donation the same as a millionaire’s $100,000 (or more) donation is not just naive, it’s blatantly stupid. The Supreme Court is not stupid. So the only conclusion we observers can make is that the conservative majority on the court favors the wealthy, and thinks we citizens are too ignorant to see through their thinly veiled subterfuge.
8
Corruption? How can that be. Weren't we assured by Justice Alito that there'd be none of that? And at the State of the Union, no less. And Alito is an honourable man.
Not to mention Kennedy, who never saw an issue on which he couldn't find the wrong side; or Thomas, who probably can't read at college level. And so are they all, honourable men.
6
According to Pew Research (April 2018), 77% of Americans support limits on campaign finance, while 65% say that new laws could be effective in fixing it. The Supreme Court is willingly ignoring the will of the nation. The Congress is as well.
Money is a cancer that has metastized in the body politic. There are no doctors willing to treat it who are currently in power.
7
In a gross distortion worthy of a Trump tweet lie, our once respected Supreme Court in 2010 rationalized its pro corporate, anti citizen stance---pretending that 'only quid pro quo' corruption matters.
A total misreading of how political influence works.
It's actually possible in 2010 Trump took notice of Citizens United and started planning to run for president someday----the way seemed clear in a political atmosphere warped by big money.
When the media discusses the warped politics of Trump and GOP, it must start relating it to Citizens United, its origins and its effects on all our issues.
4
This is what needs publicity and media discussion:
NYT--- Small Donors Fuel a Big Democratic
Lead in 2018 Fund-Raising -- OCT. 16, 2018
"Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United, said Democrats are focusing on small donations by average citizens.
“This is not just a backlash to Trump…it’s a fundamental difference in the way we’re funding campaigns.”
And PBS Newshour article-- The rise of the anti-PAC Democrat Apr 5, 2018--- says "some Democrats are foregoing PACs opting for more grassroots fundraising to appeal to the progressive base.
This worked for Sanders, who surprised the political world by raising more than $200 million in 2016, largely from small donors"
(and was voted the most popular politician in 2017).
Most voters hate big money politics, but the media has ignored their views. The media makes big money from our big money politics. How to combat this big blockage to reform?
2
I find it very interesting that the Supreme Court was held in perhaps it's highest regard when Earl Warren was the Chief Justice.
Warren was a Republican, appointed by a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower. But before he was appointed, he had been the governor of California.
He brought to the bench a political experience and expertise that is sadly lacking on today's court.
That Justice Kennedy could be so naive as not to predict the utter disregard for the niceties of the law by politicians and their donors is staggering, that he still stands by what he wrote in 2010, is quite honestly, pathetic.
7
@AWG: "was held in perhaps it's highest regard when Earl Warren was the Chief Justice."
You're joking, right?
How many citizens does each state have? Initially, at our country's birth, the Constitution stated that--for purposes of determining representation in Congress-- the white population of each slave state should added to 3/5 of the population of slaves. Put another way, each slave was, at that time, treated as only 3/5 a person. Now, of course, the Constitution counts everyone as a whole person. Or so it seemed, until the Supreme Court decided Citizens United and concluded that corporations are citizens too. What's next? Can corporations vote? Where, in which state(s)? Can a corporation vote in every state where it's licensed to do business? Or only where its home office is located? Who decides what the corporation's vote(s) should be? The Chairman of the Board? The COO? The machine learning robots that might, someday soon, really be the agents helming the company? And what If (god forbid) the draft were ever reinstated? Could corporations be conscripted? Or does that go too far? Why is it too far? Because corporations aren't really conscious? Because they're not really persons at all?
4
I fail to believe naïveté on the part of the justices who gave us Citizens United , Buckley v Valeo and
any and all other decisions which have resulted in the lose of and trashing of our democracy. They knew what they were doing - the institutionalization of corruption and the brutal and complete censoring of the voice of the American people. Corporate money shouts and ,apparently , will always get its way in its absurd and ridiculous corporate personhood. Vote to amend the constitution to disallow this gangsterism in all its forms. Democracy is one natural person one vote ! We need to get the money out of politics!
5
@Steve Randall: A previous Court made up the Constitutional Right to privacy. So don't act all surprised at equally ridiculous and phony rulings.
1
In reading about Kennedy's role in CU, it struck me that replacing him with a justice of Kavanaugh's ilk was just more of the same. Please continue writing about the corrosive influence of CU, and the need for each of us to support the organizations that fight against it.
7
The idea that there is no "quid pro quo" is silly and naive. I'm reminded of the story told by someone who met John McCormick, at the time the Speaker of the House, in his office and requested a favor. Speaker McCormick pointed to the space above the mantelpiece in his office, where there was nothing on the wall. "You get nothing for nothing" he said (or something to that effect).
3
The movie at issue in the "Citizens United" case was a bald-faced character-assassination without any objective value whatsoever. It informs people of character what can happen to them if they run for a public office, just as Saudis have seen the cost of defying Mohammad bone Saw.
3
If all the people who could vote would vote, influence peddling would be inconsequential. The SCOTUS cit United decision presupposes that voters are mature and thoughtful people; this is the decision’s main flaw.
And I note the law profs quoted all have liberal bias: a balanced article would quote others, such as profs at Scalia Law School.
Justice Kennedy must believe that corporations like to hear themselves create speech.
Every corporation I know wants value for its dollar. What did he think they were buying?
4
Citizens United is one of a succession of ABSURD decisions by the Supreme Court as governed by the "rat pack"
(R oberts, A lito, T homas, and S calia), fostered by the contrived speculation (probably planted in the media for several months beforehand to influence the rubes and signal the unreconstructed South of what was coming) that somehow, we now live in a "post racial society" - a veritable "nation redeemed" (now THERE'S a fairy tale for you), and that as a result, the alleged extraordinary measures that the Voting Rights Act embodied were magically no longer necessary.
(How interesting then! Was it to note that, literally as soon as the decision had been announced, states like Texas, Alabama, Mississipi and North Carolina implemented restrictive voter laws that their legislatures had ALREADY PASSED - how's THAT for the fix being "in"?)
Money corrupts correlative to its amount in the hands of a few persons. The more the money, the greater the corruption. This is not democracy. This is not freedom of speech or expression.
There are few things more sacred in our democratic republic than the franchise to vote. These GHASTLY decisions need to be struck down, the sooner the better.
4
Anyone out there who doesn't think there's too much money in politics corrupting politicians? If not, please raise your wallet!
3
Sorry, I got fed up about halfway through where some fool was lamenting that Justice Kennedy, with his lack of electoral experience, was too naive to deal with the gritty realities of campaign finance.
Let's not mince words: on the evidence of his actions in Bush v. Gore and CU, Anthony Kennedy is as filthy corrupt and harmful to democracy as the lowest ward-heeling bag-man in Royko's Boss.
Here's hoping when the Mueller file comes out it includes hard evidence linking Kennedy's son's desk at Deutsche Bank to Trump's decades-old bloody Russian Mob money-laundering operation.
To paraphrase Deep Throat: if you find a quid, but no pro quo, you need to dig deeper.
6
Seeing SCOTUS Kennedy's pic reminds me yet again that it was his son that made all those Deutsche bank loans to trump.Kennedy had made no noise about retiring.. how much of a bribe do we think Kennedy took to retire so that unhinged Kavno could replace him and remove his son from the spotlight??There is an unending amount of corruption in trump's family,adm.and the GOP.There is so much meat on this bone it deplorable.
7
An unforgiveable by the Supreme Court. No consideration of the consequences.
2
I often wonder if Justices read newspapers or ever have anything like buyer’s remorse when their rulings are overwhelming rejected by Americans. It is startling that 75 percent of those polled in a recent survey are in favor of a constitutional amendment that would overrule Citizens United. ( There are not many things in which three in four Americans would agree on.). The current Congress has failed to hold a single formal hearing on some two dozen proposals on campaign finance reform. Perhaps with the new Congress there will at least a faint chance.
5
Campaign donations from a corporation HAVE to be a quid pro quo. If not, then management has willfully failed to pursue the best interests of the corporation! If they cannot point to a benefit, then they are ultra vires. not in the strict sense, but in the sense that they can be sued by their shareholders, no?
State Farm Insurance is being sued for purchasing an Illinois Supreme Court justice with money that rightfully belongs to the owners of the corporation, which is a mutual. But why doesn't this apply to any publicly traded corporation?
It's one or the other: either there was a quid pro quo, or management was on a lark in violation of its fiduciary responsibilities.
4
I cannot accept that members of the Supreme Court could be sufficiently naive to believe that political candidates operate independently from their supporting PACs.
1
@Saba
Maybe not, but the proof is for all to see. Anyone with two brain cells could see what would happen if the court sided with them, it meant we went back to the 1970s era corruption. It's no wonder since the court is loaded with republicans, contrary to Roberts assertion that the court doesn't have Obama, or Bush, or Trump, judges. They are all, ideologically driven, it's all ways been that way from the time of Roosevelt.
Even though they should look at a law statute and apply standards not their own interpretation based on ideological theories.
1
Yes indeed the vicious cycle of wealth upward transfer is accelerating, and Citizens United is unfortunately just one of its multiple dynamos. Either we inactivate the dynamos (but our tools for doing so are all going on the bonfire) or our rare surviving great-great grandchildren will have to deal with the ashes.
1
I know it's not a handy comparison, and relatively meaningless
but do you thing Adams, Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Franklin et al would have signed on to the concept of
a corporation having the same rights as a citizen?
Of course, a corporation can't vote, but with Citizen's
their opinion is worth more than mine or yours
since I only send in an rare $20 while Adelson's corporate wealth can kick in thirty million without blinking.
Who's views get highlighted?
1
In an interview on the Diane Rehm show historian David McCullough stated he didn't think unlimited money equaled speech. This coming from a highly critical thinker actually makes sense. However the problem is a majority of people aren't critical thinkers and our school system has greatly failed our children.
CU just made it easier for deep pocketed donors to encourage voters to vote against their own best interest.
"If you want can't drink your own tap water because it's polluted vote for me and I'll abolish the EPA because the immigrants are coming for your jobs cleaning toilets!"
"If you work 40+ hours a week and still can't make ends meet vote for me and I'll stop government interference of minimum wage increases and your religious freedom!"
The problem is not seeing the forest for the trees.
Surprisingly, there has been neither extensive follow-up by the press nor any mention in any of Times picked comments about the possible conflict of interest inherent in Deutsche Bank, which employed Justice Kennedy's son, providing significant loan dollars for Trump's real estate investments. While the Fact Checker of the Washington Post dismissed the conflict of interest accusations, in a July 12, 2018 article, the situation still might not pass the smell test. If any indication of a potential conflict arises, shouldn't a Justice recuse themselves in such a situation? The fact that the issue came up at all indicates that there is an issue worthy of further investigation.
3
@Benjamin Hodes: German authorities recently raided Deutsche Bank. Maybe there is a Panama connection to Kennedy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/business/deutsche-bank-money-laundering-raid.html
1
Here's the ultimate inside straight that has to be filled for the tragic flow of things to be reversed:
- Donald Trump must lose in 2020.
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer have to remain on the Court beyond 1/20/21.
- The Democrats have to regain control of the Senate.
- One of the five right-wing justices has to either die or retire, but not until the three above-mentioned pre-conditions are met.
Good luck.
3
In his book Behind the Carbon Curtain (reviewed in inequalitybookreviews.com), Professor Jeffrey Lockwood points out that with the commodification of free speech it becomes the property of those who can afford to pruchase it. When speech can be bought and sold, only the rich can speak in ways that are heard, particularly after Citizens United.
In the US, the top 0,1% have as much wealth as the bottom 90%. With this concentration of wealth comes the consolidation of "free" (actually pruchased) speech so that the distribution of political spending closely matches that of wealth. Thus spending to promote elite special interests easily drowns out the voices of those who oppose them.
4
Putting teeth into donor disclosure provisions by requiring all donors of more than $10 to identify themselves by name and address at the time of donation would inform the electorate and help keep the system honest--if not equitable.
2
Citizens United has been a force multiplier for BIG MONEY. Big Money that is NOT transparent but the wellspring of DARK MONEY.
The evidence following the Citizens United decision shows a significant decline in the power of our representative government system on the people's issues.
On issues that need a powerful government response such as global warming and the economic turmoil that will result from depleting fossil energy reserves is doing harm to humankind's ability to ADAPT to these environmental challenges. The response is being ignored by narrow interests who only have money to hang onto their wealth and power.
We are restricting our intellectual firepower in responding to the climate change threat. Prior to Citizens United our political system could recognize a threat and respond. Projects like the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Project, Eisenhower's Defense Highway program to bring greater efficiency and safety to our national logistics. Think of what Lincoln did in advancing the country. It is clear to most historians that Lincoln made this country. My favorite image is Teddy Roosevelt sitting in the operator's seat of a steam shovel at the Panama Canal.
The late Senator Moynihan's great idea to complement the Interstates with a 300 mph Maglev network to prepare the U.S. for an electric future came out of committee as a bi-partisan response but was defeated by vested interests. I doubt it would have made it past the Senate if there were a Citizens United.
@james Jordan: Trump's interests in science end with keeping his golf courses free of weeds and bugs.
As I understand it a corporation is a legal entity created by the state for the purpose of promoting commerce. Why is it unreasonable for the state to set conditions on participation in that entity or limits on the types of activity that can be carried out by said corporation?
1
Big money mutes constituent speech:
Constituents aren’t heard over the bullhorn of big money.
(So much for the notion that limiting campaign spending limits speech!)
4
The Times and Cable TV must now discuss a great contrast---that many democracies ban the paid political campaign advertising that swamps US media to manipulate voters, financed by private donors. Huge ripple effects. Paid ads are our campaigns biggest expense, needing big donor funding. Mega donors get mega returns on investment.
Wikipedia says many countries ban these ads to “prevent special interests from dominating the political discourse.” Just imagine that.
Our mega donor funding shapes our political messages, and set limits to policies, setting the agenda for media discussion of issues.
America ranks behind other capitalist democracies in economic equality, affordable health care and higher education. See GINI Index and OECD rankings.
America ranks higher in gun deaths and in % of population incarcerated and in poverty or downward mobility.
Our CEOs make more money than those abroad and put some of their profits into candidates' campaigns. It’s a vicious cycle while the S. Court put out a Trump-type lie that equates big money politics with 1st Amendment ‘free speech’.
Other countries don't fall for that--- they protect their democracies by using more public funding and limiting private money in elections. They don’t give up control of their political discussion to financial elites.
Now we need this publicized in our media. It will reinforce the desire of most voters and many politicians who do want to reverse Citizens United.
2
@Meredith: Only one other country in the world permits prescription drug advertising, with more restrictions than the US.
1
@Steve Bolger...good point---most other democracies don't inundate their citizens with drug ads or paid political ads. This shows an attitude of basic respect to citizens, vs the more exploitive attitude here. Many ripple effects.
Here, health care and elections are big profit centers.
1
European countries do not have a First Amendment. They do not have the same level of “free speech” Americans have, especially in political speech. In Scotland a man was fined for teaching his girlfriend’s Pug dog to raise its arm in a Nazi-type salute when he said “Heil Hitler”—as a joke to show his girlfriend her sweet little dog was a Nazi. He shared a video of the dog raising its arm on cue on Facebook and with a few friends, one of whom put the video out to the general population. The boyfriend was charged with propagation of offensive speech, tried, convicted and fined. We shouldn’t follow Europe on the issue of speech as Europeans are not truly free to say what they want to say—either seriously or in jest.
We have “free speech”, which includes the right of the press to say almost anything. In Europe the government can legally enjoin the press from publishing government secrets—called prior restraint. The government can’t stop the press from publishing in America. Again, how is the European model better?
It takes money to be heard, and thus money and speech are connected at the hip. If Sheldon Adelson wanted to take his own money and buy advertising to promote his company’s views on certain issues, his “free speech” rights guarantee he can do that. And if union members, or gun-rights activists, or drug makers, or wildlife lovers want to pool money to promote their interests via a corporation organized for such purpose, then their “free speech” rights guarantee that.
1
Let’s focus on solutions.
We have a classic system problem, directly related to the way we structure and finance our federal political system. To correct it, we must repair enough of the following problematic parts to result in proper representation of our broad, public interests:
• Millions are denied the right to vote.
• We have unenforced campaign finance laws by a gridlocked FEC.
• Current campaign donor sources distort outcomes of law, regulation and policy to serve private over public interests.
• Gerrymandering decreases citizen choice of candidates.
• A tiny percent of primary/caucus voters select candidates for all voters to choose between in the general election.
• Plurality election winners often lack majority support.
• We have bad use of public airways to educate voters about candidate choices.
• We have inadequate financial disclosure by candidates.
• Plus more?
For decades, we’ve continued to follow the unsuccessful strategy of lobbying Congress to initiate comprehensive constitutional and legal reform.
Many of us also oppose and raise fears about efforts to use the Article V constitutional convention approach provided by our Founders to use when Congress refuses to reform.
We need to vigorously debate which strategy will best result in effective and comprehensive reform, specifically including the Article V convention.
It may well be our best alternative, and we can limit the convention to only consider the above improvements to problematic parts.
1
Maybe a work around for CU would be to pass a law that states only American citizens ( individual dollar limits) within a corporation can contribute to a corporate PAC . Just like unions. Corporations are people, my friends.....
Aside - I was hit up for PAC money from my employer (but I ignored it.)
1
Citizens United has furthered the dis-uniting of the United States, by legally unbalancing political influence. Our hostile factions fight each other for crumbs left over by elites.
NYT--- "Small Pool of Rich Donors Dominates Election Giving.
“Fewer than 400 families are responsible for almost half the money raised in the 2016 presidential campaign----unprecedented in the modern era."
Pro Publica -- “Mitch McConnell said “All Citizens United did was to level the playing field for corporate speech…. We now have the most free and open system we’ve had in modern times.”
But "The ‘playing field’ isn’t level for American voters — Citizens United amplifies the speech of corporations and drowns out the rest of us. That’s the opposite of free and open.”
( the corporations were victims)
Now the media must discuss --corporations effectively regulate our government, instead of the other way around.
In the 21st C, a version of aristocracy rules the nation that had rebelled from King George. Big money just calls regulations by elected govt "left wing big govt interference and the road to tyranny.’
So citizens are putting up with danger from guns, plus unaffordable health care, unfair taxes, low pay and economic insecurity.
Polls show on most issues, voter majorities disagree with mega donors, and want to reverse Citizens United, as do many politicians. But the media must focus on it like this column, and not ignore it, for a movement to build.
3
Among the laws overturned by Citizens United were century-old measures Montana passed after mining corporations had essentially bought the state legislature. It happened before. It’s happening again, thanks to Republican-appointed justices who consistently favor that party in their decisions, most blatantly of course when they put George W. Bush in the White House.
2
"The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy." Really? Justice Kennedy, who wrote that in his Citizens United opinion, is either astonishingly naive or utterly hypocritical. Is he truly that oblivious to what most Americans already know and feel about Capitol Hill's many paid-to-play politicians? To watch Mitch McConnell's puppet dance for the coal and healthcare industries that own him is to see the absurdity of that statement.
134
@Mark Hugh Miller: If we believe the system that vets these justices is a democratic process, we'll believe anything.
21
Mr. Edsall's description of the corrupt American political system, a system corrupted by the Citizens United decision, appears to demand corrective action by the American people.
The critical issue is on full display in the Ryan-Sheldon two-step on the campaign-finance dance floor as described in the article. This campaign-finance dance is the sine qua non of the political corruption (think North Carolina and Wisconsin and the Republicans' efforts to undermine democracy in those two states as examples of political corruption) created by the Robert's court Citizens United decision.
Was not Mitch McConnell's scuttling of Obama's supreme court nomination of Merrick Garland another example of political corruption as the result of the Citizens United decision?
137
@John S., agree that McConnell's attitude toward Merrick Garland was outrageous, actually showed his contempt for the Senate he claims to love.
19
@Marylee: McConnell probably pines for the Rapture because he wants everyone dead.
7
Thank you Justice John Roberts for birthing the legal ruling that began the destruction of American democracy, driving a cleaver between the rich and poor, and allowing political corruption to flourish.
There is an outstanding burning question though. If corporations have free speech rights as individuals, why don’t they have the right to vote? You can’t have it both ways.
98
@TheUglyTruth If corporations have free speech rights as individuals, the problem with that is corporations have no living body, they feel literally no pain, no pain for when they abuse the law and peoples rights. Maybe a fine is levied, the cost of doing business (or what they can get away with).
19
If people don't lose their right to vote when they join a corporation, why should they lose their right to free speech?
@TheUglyTruth: When my grandfather worked in a steel mill, he was obliged to donate to the Republican Party, and poll-watchers checked ballots to make sure they were voted Republican.
9
"In the eight years since it was decided, Citizens United has unleashed a wave of campaign spending that by any reasonable standard is extraordinarily corrupt."
This one sentence says it all. All the rest is commentary.
However, there is one small of light of hope in my area. Republicans see Democrats are getting stronger, so much so that they started playing dirty tricks on Democrats during the recent elections, stealing campaign signs and even "cancelling" a fundraiser by a local Democratic club. But the fundraiser managed to get on track anyway and took in close to record amounts of money.
41
@Barbara: One can probably raise the most money by being the weakest candidate in a Democratic primary because the Republicans will donate the money to make the candidacy look credible.
The Supreme Court 2.0 will approve Citizens United 2.0 that the Republicans are now preparing. Might well make you love the current Citizens United (great name by the way).
@Fourteen: Corporations will be Gods, and CEOs their messengers.
"...faith in this democracy.”?
What democracy? America has been an oligarchy and quasi autocracy for decades. The people DON'T have faith in "this democracy" such that a loudmouthed grifter who promised to upend it managed to get elected as POTUS! And some still live in hope (false) that he will!
Here is a country where the majority vote, i.e. the will of the people, doesn't win power from the lowest level of government to the highest. Where voter suppression and gerrymander constantly rig outcomes. Where a vote by the people of up to 60% will not win power. Where politicians are bought and sold by special interests.
A country where the party in power can and has rigged the justice system for a generation to keep the opposition from fulfilling the will of the people even if it does get enough votes through the biased system. Where officials of the justice system are elected so he/she who can buy enough votes will enact the law. Where people can be paid to vote or intimidated so they don't. And all that is on the surface! What goes on under the surface?
What Democracy?
The US today constantly reminds me of the times of Mad King George, where a system of parliamentary rule existed but was rotten to the core, the `Rotten Borough' era in Britain. Look it up.
2
@Deirdre Oliver: The US is the only former British colony that rejected the parliamentary system as its basic scheme of government. It is the baby the US threw out with the bathwater in its vaunted revolution.
Of course the simple irony of this horrible SCOTUS decision is the case's title: Citizens United. No justices, Citizens Divided is its meaning.
"...so that government of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation will not vanish from the face of the earth..."....or something like that.
Truly, think about it, the first thing we need to do is outlaw corporations. Then everything would have to be owned by an actual human. Not an imaginary "person"
Actually thank you for this column. I hope someone who can do something about it reads it....
2
@Lucifer: Corporations are just tools. It is silly to treat them as if they had feelings. Laws that govern how humans can conduct corporations are where the rubber meets the road.
And even worse than Citizens United: Shelby County vs. Holder. Because a motivated electorate could get Citizens United overturned. Shelby v Holder can potentially destroy that electorate.
". . . a Supreme Court incapable of applying either reason or common sense to stop the madness." A body, in short, now saturated in resistance to reality, ensconced in immunity for another generation, probably -- with which the legislature must deal forcefully, if necessary re-shaping the drift into judicial autocracy in lockstep with the far right, which has fostered the illusion that any branch of government possesses "supremacy."
@Carter Nicholas: The US Supreme Court has lost credibility with respect to its understanding of the English Language.
Well this member of the electorate has lost faith that the SCOTUS will protect the integrity of the election process. What tortured reasoning on the part of Anthony Kennedy. I hope he comes to see the harm he has done, but won’t hold my breath.
2
Citizens United has worked to keep old white rich men in power, which is exactly what Bush 41 and the Supreme Court intended. It represents free speech for those men and it suppresses the speech of minorities and women. It allows for rich white men to get elected to office, then gerrymander districts and suppress voters in order to stay in power. Once out of power, the rich white men become lobbyists and stay rich.
2
The Dred Scott decision was to slavery as Citizens United is to political corruption. May we as a nation someday see the error of the court's way and pass a constitutional amendment allowing Congress and the states to regulate money in politics.
4
Citizens United is the result of over reach by Hillary Clinton supporters who tried to use the power of Government to silence Hillary's critics in the 2008 primaries. Citizens United wanted to advertise and stream its "Documentary" hit film Hillary. A friendly FEC and Circuit Court found against Citizens United and the rest is - History. If the Clinton Machine had not over aggressively sought to protect Hillary - Citizens United never would have happened. And for the record, in the 2016 Campaign of the top ten "Citizens United" spenders; 70% went to Hillary. None the less Mr. Edsall does his usual good job of pulling NYT readers by the nose. The Second and Third sentence of this article drive all the evil Republican comments that follow.
2
Don't fool yourself; what is corrosive of democracy (or at least, a well-functioning democracy) is the undiscerning, low-information, credulous voter (both Democrat and Republican). These are legion in this country, a fact well-known to journalists and politicians, but rarely spoken of, including by the staff of the New York Times. It is the elephant in the room.
Remember, it is not just Tantrump voters who are the problem. The Democrats brought us the war on Vietnam. Both sides play the partisan game, to get elected and re-elected. Think for yourself?
1
I wish I had 30 million so I could magically turn it into 700 million that I get every year on an annual basis! Crazy!
This is great writing/analysis/editorializing.
2
Yet another open wound on the body politic that could be quickly cured by progressive tax reform, including a wealth tax, and a confiscatory top marginal income tax rate.
Billionaires have proved themselves, all in all, to be a pestilence. Let's get rid of them.
2
So much rot unravelling in this country, hard to figure out what takes the cake.
Harvard/Russian mafia connection, Jeffrey Epstein creep and pedophile, who on his "“orgy island” was directing underage girls to have sex with prominent public official, dignitaries, prime ministers, famous dirty lawyers, movie and networks moguls, GOP grabbing for power in states where democrats won and limiting their ability to govern, blatant election fraud in NC, stollen ballots, Saudi murder cover up, and now we're talking that president has unlimited power to announce state of national emergency so he can stay in power by unleashing the chaos on our country.
And that's just in a last few days, and not to forget, plenty of new investigations from Mueller.
Every day we come closer to the abyss.
1
On top of everything else, the CU ruling is resulting in economic waste. In political races, one candidate is going to win. In the wake of CU, far more money is being spent to achieve the same outcome. It is a rat race consuming a tremendous amount of resources that could have been use more productively. Billions of dollars flowing to political operatives, ad agencies, and media companies to push out a product (attack ads) that has negative entertainment value and in most cases leaves the American public less informed and more cynical.
Given that each justice who ruled for CU was a Republican appointee, I'm surprised Democrats haven't done more to run on the issues created by CU, particularly the increased influence of the ultra rich and corporations. Who wants more of that?
58
@Cy
Are you aware that spending on Halloween exceeded spending on the 2018 elections? If we are going to tout each election as "the most important in our lifetime", how can we conclude that we are spending "too much" on elections?
https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/halloween-spending-reach-9-billion
https://nypost.com/2017/11/02/america-just-spent-more-on-halloween-than-on-all-2016-elections/
1
Fortunately, based on everything we know about Citizens United, the forces behind it and the results they continue to achieve, it's amazing that there hasn't been blood in the streets here as there would have been in most banana republics.
Unfortunately, we've allowed ourselves to be too easily numbed by too many irrelevant distractions created by the powers that be to increase their stranglehold on what's left of our democracy until it's too late to have any effect whatsoever.
1
I wonder when the day will come where people, or at least the majority of it, will no longer obey the rulings of a court which is not really interested in protecting the rights of the average citizen but in a corrupted way enhances the influence of those which have already all the power and influence.
1
@W: US courts aren't interested in making any definitive rulings. Such rulings terminate opportunities for lawyers to litigate and collect legal fees.
The reasoning in Citizens United is fundamentally flawed.
Corporations are not people. They can't be drafted. They won't have a pre-existing health issue. They don't have children attending a public school. They do not have the same stake in our policies as real people.
Limiting corporate spending does NOT limit political speech, because everyone involved with that corporation can make individual contributions and speak as individuals or even as groups of people.
By equating money with speech, Citizens United effectively silenced the political voices of individuals, since we are all "drowned out" by the corporate big spenders. Basically, it said that the more money you have, the more political speech you get. The court not only "identified" but created "certain preferred speakers" as being those who had control of a lot of money. It took "the right to speak from some giving it to others."
This outcome was not unexpected, since decades of precedent had established this danger.
2
@Elizabeth
Corporate speech is one thing--there's a fair argument there that corporate speech could be limited in some fashion. I tend to think of it as a corporate governance/agency issue, however. Because if the shareholders have sufficient rights to approve the corporation's speech on their behalf, the fact it is being conducted through the corporation shouldn't matter. After all, a corporation may not be a person, but it clearly a group of people--everything a corporation "says" is said by a person.
But the separate issue is that Sheldon Adelson isn't a corporation. Many critics of Citizen's United want to silence him because he is rich and influential. Another way to say it is: they don't like his views so want to use the power of the government to limit his ability to speak/publish political ads. To me, that's troubling enough to raise First Amendment red flags. The power of governmental censorship in the hands of a tyrannical majority is a greater threat to democracy than a single rich individual's influence.
I want to make a comparison then a suggestion. Roe v wade forbids states to make abortion illegal ... but they can make it extremely difficult. For example each state is only required to have one abortion facility if I understand correctly. Similarly citizens United implies that corporations in particular pacs have the right to free speech. It us unimaginable that this will be overturned. But impositions can be imposed. My question is ... can a federal tax be imposed on pac donations? And I mean the tax is on the pac not the donator. A progressive tax so that if a donation comes in at 1000 dollars or is taxed at. 10 percent and a million dollar donation is taxed at 90 percent ... like income tax rates in the good old days. The amount of money this could bring in to the federal coffers would really make a dent in the deficit. For those in the know ...could this be legal?
@Ron perline: Practicality never matters at the lofty level of sheltered-for-life Supreme Court justices.
Hooray, finally a Times op ed columnists directly addresses Citizens United. Our media mostly ignores the big money influence that infects our politics. It is setting the political norms, and with FOX News, redefining what's left/right/center.
Hooray for mentioning Princeton's Gilens and Page, who have disappeared from media discussion. Their research into congressional records showed that corporate and wealthy donors wield great influence on what laws are considered and how far they go. The citizen majority has little influence on the lawmakers they elect.
This relates to all the problems our columnists discuss, but they mostly avoid tracing cause and effect. And it's totally avoided on cable TV News.
Buckley v Vallejo established the principle that equates spending money with political speech. Citizens United simply said that the government can't limit political speech (spending) within 60 days of an election, based on the First Amendment. Unless we find a solution to the original sin created by Buckley v Vallejo, I think all else is fruitless. Perhaps the idea that the airwaves, and thus the bandwidth, is publicly owned, and can thus be regulated is an end-around to Buckley.
2
Mr Edsall - Your timely thoughts are welcomed.
BCRA §203 (overturned by Citizens United) restricted corporate spending on "electioneering communications", these limitations could have (and should have) been seen as well reasoned in design, and intent.
"The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.". That is a remarkable statement, in that it ignores the lessons of history, past civilizations, and people in power. It is a false declaration of perceived fact that ignores past reality. Weren't influence and access the tools of the Mob?
Influence and access, are well known as the perennial tools used by privileged people, to lever, manipulate, and control government. Average Americans have no access or influence. Have you tried recently to get your congressional representative to answer the phone? Money changes that dynamic very quickly!
Only those born into privilege (such as Anthony Kennedy was), can so easily overlook money as a powerful threat to our way of life. His more recent statement that the "decision stands for itself", is simply rhetorical avoidance of the difficult truth, that Citizens United hurt this country deeply.
The sad results are real time proof that unlimited money has taken our country down the proverbial rabbit hole. Unfortunately for all of us, the bottom is not yet in sight.
2
The result of Citizens United has dealt a serious blow to our democracy. We have moved away (and now with Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, even further) from a Supreme Court that tried to temper man's greed and selfishness with what is best for our country. Libertarians and many conservatives dislike an activist Supreme Court, but many social reforms that were not addressed legislatively (working conditions, child labor, desegregation) occurred only because we had an activist court. The light is getting dimmer as we head down this path of no return.
2
@Sledge: Courts that decide nothing support the densest population of lawyers in the world.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy." (David Frum, Jan/18)
Truth.
6
We need better campaign finance regulation, yes. But the decision in Citizens United v. FEC was correct.
Think of it this way: should the New York Times Corporation be allowed to run op-eds in advance of an election?
If your answer is yes, then it's hard to find a Constitutionally valid reason for banning Citizens United for doing effectively the same thing. Yes, their media is of an obviously lower journalistic (and just general intellectual) standard than the NYT, but is distinction based on quality something you really want arbitrated by the government?
McCain-Feingold, for all its good intentions, was a poorly thought-out, poorly written law. Don't complain about it getting overturned in Citizens United - come up with a better one.
1
After reading justice Kennedy’s decision ... I’m awed by the gobbledygook he passed off as human thought. Geeze!
2
"Allowing government to control who can spend enough to get heard on a grander scale would render freedom of speech illusory."
If I get on the LIRR in the morning, and use a bullhorn to share my views on Socialism, how long do you think my 1st amendment rights will last?
Now if Sheldon Adelson wheels himself into the same LIRR car with the Nimbus 2000 enhanced bullhorn, with Tribe, Dersherwitz, a reanimated Clarence Darrow, and muscle from Betsy Devos' brother's company, I think he could finish whatever he wants to say. Funny how things work in the real world as opposed to Legal Hogwarts (aka SCOTUS).
2
Next to the Bush v Gore (terribly wrong) decision Citizens United is the worst decision in recent times although rescinding voter rights (based on “racism doesn’t exist now” Ha!) decision is on the worst list too. Note: all these BAD decisions were led by and orchestrated by republican nominated judges. And guess who the most (actually partisan and “activist”) justices ARE...? That’s right republican! Starting with Scalia right on through to Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and likely Kavanugh. An odious morally challenged bunch to be sure.
4
We're simply a Banana Republic now. Heading full speed towards a fascist Oligarchy. Look what is happening right now in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Michigan. They aren't even trying to hide their outright corruption anymore.
The Oligarchs don't want a Supreme Court justice on the bench who might reverse Citizens United? They just have Mitch McConnell, their wholly bought and owned prostitute, hold up the nomination. Then they wait until the Oligarch-bought Senate Republican prostitutes (every one of them) can shove through their own Supreme Court justices. No matter how unqualified and unfit to serve on the court they may be.
The Oligarchs don't want anything to change in a state, because of an election they could not rig enough, actually allowed democrats to gain power? Simple solution. Have the outgoing Oligarch-owned and paid for Republican prostitutes rig the state laws on their way out the door to strip power from the incoming democrats.
See how easy it is? Thanks to Citizens United.
4
Absolutely contributes to the dimunition of our democratic republic. Republicans are conscienceless as is many on Scotus.
2
What else would you expect from a group of corrupt plutocrats on the Supreme Court?
2
One person, one vote.
Or, $X, one vote.
It's a disgrace. Believe me. A disgrace. That I can tell you.
P.S. How does one get a casino licence?
1
a clear example of why lifetime appointments are an absurdity.
2
To my mind, Citizens United is another stake in the heart of democracy. It also shows how far removed from the lives and concerns of everyday people Republicans and their appointed judges are. If we can not find a way to stop this ongoing assault on our democratic republic, we will become an oligarchy controlled by the rich and wealthy corporations.
2
This article is all over the place. Citizen's United did not lead to PACs. To the contrary Citizen's United permits corporations and unions to make direct expenditures for political advertising -- bypassing the PACs!
Citizen's United concerned the distribution of a film critical of Hillary Clinton, which is obviously is protected free speech activity.
1
If there's one silver lining to the ability of right-wingers at the state and local level to legally eviscerate Roe v. Wade, it's this:
We now know that if enough people want to, they can figure out ways to eviscerate a Supreme Court decision.
We progressives are convinced that Citizens United is wrong. Now we just have to figure out ways to legally eviscerate it.
Any suggestions?
5
As a kid, I used to love reading novels and watching films about dystopian societies...it didnt occur to me that I'd be living in one.
2
While the Preamble to the Constitution carries no weight in assigning rights, the phrase "promote the general Welfare" should provide sufficient guidance to executive, legislative & especially judicial leaders so their decisions & actions should be congruent with the Founders' intent. SCOTUS decisions, CU in particular, which ignore this broader impact are largely responsible for our present state of affairs. I doubt it was our Founders’ intent that our nation and government should be controlled by the avaricious interests of corporations and the ultra-rich.
In CU our supposedly greatest legal minds, the SCOTUS, showed their distorted tunnel vision and lack of understanding of human nature or our society, not to forget our Founders’ intent. Justice Stevens’ dissenting opinion laid it all out for anyone to see, and the ills he described have largely come to pass. The CU decision is mind-numbing in its rationale and effects, with our Democracy now teetering to survive.
A business entity or association of citizens can have the same rights as citizens only if they too were born from a woman’s womb. Until then, they must be regulated, for they exist, all too often, only to sustain their own existence, generate profits & acquire power, without regard for “the general Welfare” even if this means undermining our Democracy.
2
When automakers are informed of flaws in their vehicles, the vehicles are recalled.
It's obviously now time to recall all of America's dictionaries, as the word 'bribe' has been rendered meaningless.
2
Wow, thanks for this synthesis of legal opinions on Citizens United. To me, a layperson, I see that Adelson's company profited by $700 million from Paul Ryan's push through of the tax cut, and it's "case closed" to me. Verdict: bribery by another name.
I am surprised that none of these opinions challenge the supreme sophistry that monetary contributions through PACs are "speech". What a self-serving deceit! If I give $300,000 to Paul Ryan directly, money is not free speech. But if I launder it through a PAC, it becomes free speech. We have the word "money" for what comes out of our pockets and the word "speech" for what comes out of our mouths because they are very different things.If I tell someone to drop dead, that may be free speech, but if I seek to implement my opinion by hitting the person over the head with a board, I assure you the law would not call that free speech. When elections can be bought, money becomes our King and we no longer have democracy. I like those opinions cited here that pointed out how corporations that are concentrating so much wealth can use that wealth to keep creating a political system that favours the continuing growth of their wealth and power over everyone else. What EQUALITY can there possibly be in a system like this. What a foul deceit and sin against democracy!
4
Squeaker Ryan "wasn't in the room where it happened", so it's ok. Now Justice Kennedy is gone and if any legislation within 100 miles of Citizens United reaches the court, how will Justice Kananaugh rule?
In short, an actual remedy for this travesty will not be available any time soon. But it will find traction if Democrats start playing the long-game strategy so brutally executed by Mitch. Is Chuck up to the task? Evidence on that is not encouraging.
3
We need a fourth co-equal branch of government since we've broken our first three...
3
@Jerry
How about we all put on our Yellow Vests? The French invent everything that Americans need.
When money is speech, democracy is mute.
3
This will be overturned when it hurts the gop
1
Aspiring to take the money out of politics is sort of like trying to take the"i" out of "stupid".
It's effects, however could be controlled. The names of donors and the amounts of their donations, both to individuals and to PACs could be recorded, and congresspeople could be constrained from voting upon legislation directly effecting their donors. A trifle too ambitious? How about every piece of campaign advertising in any form needing to be vetted by an independent panel of fact checkers, whose determination would have to be presented along with the ad, with severe financial penalties for any violations. Too hard to enforce? How about mandating an equal time provision binding on all media, based on the idea that free speech and paid-for speech are equivalent.
Since the law is against us, we should be arguing the facts – which are plain: Propaganda influences voters, mostly by repetition, and most campaign advertising features both character assassination and/or misrepresentation of either the candiate's or opponent's position. It would be helpful to have somebody trustworthy to tell us when we're being lied to.
My point is – it all comes down to well informed voters who are willing to be well-informed.
4
Justice Kennedy will not be remembered well or as a fair and impartial jurist. There will always be questioning asterisk concerning Justice Kennedy. Most judges do not want to be remembered this way. He will be remembered for two actions he took. One is, authoring the Citizen's United's decision and the destruction this decision has done to our country. His writings and speculation on the Citizen's United case did not hold true. The electorate did lose faith in our democracy. The second is, Justice Kennedy's sudden and unexpected resignation last Summer and the farce of the Kavanaugh nomination after. His resignation left many unanswered questions; "Did Justice Kennedy resign to protect his son's role at Deutsche Bank from the Russian Investigation"? It can be argued that Justice Kennedy sold his place on the court to Trump, for his own personal bargain and removed any semblance of being fair and impartial. His perceived actions, diminishes the institution of the court and the rule of law and makes every previous decision Kennedy made on the court suspect. One can wonder. "Why did he vote this way? Was a bargain struck so he would vote this way? What did they offer? Is there corruption throughout the Supreme Court?" These decisions by Justice Kennedy, did not improved America's or the Supreme Courts image. Can corruption across the political spectrum, including the Supreme Court and confidence in our American institutions ever be repaired?
6
Wow. That would be quite the bombshell. Evidence that damaging information on Kennedy’s son was used to blackmail him into retiring. Wouldn’t it be something? But I also dream of winning the lottery...
@Martin
The first thing would be pretty easy to prove, and would only require some tenacious prosecution. The lottery thing involves long odds and chance.
It is my recollection that SCOTUS thought that full disclosure of the donors would reduce the risk of corruption.
Unfortunately neither a Democratic or Republican congress has voted to make full disclosure of donors the law.
So the premise of disclosure preventing corruption has never been tested.
4
I think that the problems created by Citizens United also highlight the weaknesses of conservative textualist and original intent judicial philosophies. To the Founders, bribery was likely experienced mostly (if not exclusively) as quid pro quo; they could not have foreseen the myriad and inventive ways that the American spirit of innovation could find to corrupt the political process. When the Court limits itself only to the confines of the Founders' 18th century imaginations, they overlook all kinds of malfeasance. Similarly, the Founders likely imagined only direct foreign gifts (quid pro quo bribes) when they devised the Emoluments Clause; they could not have foreseen the opportunities for personal enrichment afforded elected officials like Trump by the complexities of 21st century banking, business, and international finance infrastructures. Here is the real original intent - the Founders simply did not want the American government to become corrupt or fall under the influence (or control) of foreign governments. The former has happened and the latter may be happening under the Trump family. The rest is arcane academic argument and legal prestidigitation with an unreasonable amount of deference to the Founders' ability to see the future. It is crucial that journalists keep doing their jobs.
7
@gandhi102
Thank you for your articulate, reasoned, inarguable explanation of what is going on with SCOTUS! I would only add that comments like yours offer valuable background and insight, enriching journalists' efforts, which often fall short of connecting the dots.
And thanks for making me learn the meaning of prestidigitation - what a fabulous word! Though I'm not entirely sure that the "magic" of SCOTUS is all that entertaining... How about "hokum pocus"?
@gandhi102
Thank you - your explanation is crystal clear and inarguable to anyone with half a brain. The rest of this argument is merely smoke. Please keep helping us connect the dots!
Sheldon Wolin, in his book Democracy Incorporated, outlined the inverted totalitarian system that is now US democracy. Money buys political power and wealth for donors, which is then "re-invested" back into the political process to sustain their advantages.
12
President Obama told us this would happen in his State of the Union address. Justice Alito mouthed the words "Not True."
8
Gerrymandering, political contributions by corporations, claims of election fraud, stripping Democrat governors of their power by Republican state legislators, packing courts with Republican justices throughout the state and federal systems, gutting environmental protection as well as consumer protection, all of this points to the extreme corruption of politics, the Republican Party, and our system of Democratic institutions.
We have gone far beyond a vicious cycle to one that is institutionalized and is bereft of moral and ethical values. Lying, falsifying, and bullying of the opposition is now an acceptable sporting event of American politics. I find it difficult to accept than anything clean can live in the White House when much of the administration routinely bathes in the mud and corruption. The infection has spread throughout our government.
Economic and political inequality will only deepen as the Republican juggernaut continues unchecked. We witness now outrage in France that culminated in riots in the streets. Sadly we may soon be faced with similar revolt of impoverished and disenfranchised Americans.
4
Let's face it:
The election of President Obama ushered in CU when the ruling class saw the power and money generated from grassroots organization and fund raising, surpassing the efforts of both Romney and McCain.
The five conservative justices took this problem in hand and decided on shaky legal terms to level the playing field. History will not treat them kindly for it and getting an amendment passed, as some have suggested, is the proper smack down for a Supreme Court that crossed the boundary between justice and politics.
6
While Citizens United is definitely a blot on our electoral landscape it's hardly the only cause of corruption in the system. No matter how tight the regulation those who want to buy influence will find a way. Money has always been in politics, one way or another. Unions turn out voters and so have added sway.
The real corruption comes from voter apathy. Few voters study issues but have one or two hot buttons they will vote for or against no matter the candidate. Some vote as a bloc, as their church tells them. Schools rarely teach civic engagement as budgets are cut back. But most just stay home, letting others deal with keeping up our democracy.
What would be a great thing is mandatory service to the country for a gap year after high school. To clean up parks and beaches, to help teachers in schools, to educate citizens on voting and encourage turnout. To literally give back what was given before marching off to adulthood, hopefully wiser.
That would go a long way to minimize corruption.
2
Well before Trump became so-called president, our democracy had been sullied by a political party that cannot win on a level playing field. With Mad Hatter Trump in the White House, the GOP is smirking wildly with every insult to the American people their Exalted Leader tweets in the early morning hours.
The Roberts Court Citizens United Decision said "Corporations are People" and provided a sea of dark money often targeting local elections where a little money goes a long way. The Koch brothers have been heavy funders of this catastrophic device. So called moderate RINO's have been driven from office and replaced with Tea Party extremists.
Furthermore, many elections have been stolen by the GOP through highly sophisticated computer-driven RedMap gerrymandering and systematic voter suppression implemented by the very same Republican dominated state governments bought with Citizens United dark corporate funding. Karl Rove was been a key figure in both Citizen's United funding of right wing extremism and the management of the RedMap gerrymandering program. Karl Rove, yet another Bush legacy.
Our democracy is broken. Thank you Roberts Majority.
5
Abortion is legal in the US, but opponents of abortion have succeeded in methodically restricting access in all kinds of creative ways so that, although it's legal, it becomes more and more difficult to exercise your legal right to it. Can't someone figure out how to do the same thing with Citizens United and the super PACs somehow? Let it stand but block and restrict it in all kinds of ways. Requiring a lot more transparency would be a good start.
3
Lobbyists and the influence of big donors have ensured that the USA is a democracy in name only.
4
I've long felt that all arguments that campaign finance limitations are somehow a restriction on free speech to logically fall flat. They all rest on the false notion that "money is speech". This is logically flawed. Money alone has no political will or power. Only the person with money has those. Limiting campaign donations in no way restricts an individual's ability to voluteer for, campaign for, and vote for candidates: it in no way prevents an individual from using their right to free speech. All it does it limit the volume they can speak at. Noise ordinances aren't a violation of anyone's free speech. Neither are campaign finance limits. Money isn't speech, it's volume.
4
Apparently mind-numbingly convoluted and illogical sentence structure makes Lawrence Tribe a legal expert. (I agree with him that CU is awful, but don't know why his rhetoric is so lousy)
Corruption, thy name is the Roberts Court.
4
I've been trying to use my speech to purchase a number of items this season, but it does not seem to have the same impact as money.
5
Citizen's United causes companies to solve a simple optimization problem: which sets of politicians forming a majority in each house of Congress is purchasable for the least amount of money? The only other detail involves purchasing a few spares in case some die or go to jail.
4
Despair, suicide, racism, environmental degradation, corruption beyond reason. All brought to you by our GOP.
8
The corruption from the corporate & billionaire classes is aided by Citizens United. But, while not removing Citizens United, the Congress can at least remove the secrecy that allows special interests to hide their contributions. The Democrats offered a law that would require ALL contributions made for political purposes, whether to candidates or thinly disguised SuperPACs supporting specific candidates or issues, be made public. Let the voters see what is now happening behind the curtain of secrecy. There is nothing in Citizens United that would prevent this transparency & at least many of the corporations & billionaires & the politicians who are secretly being bought will be known to the voters. The Republicans, of course, quickly killed the transparency bill. Secrecy about who is buying your political allegiance that should have gone to your constituents is to a Republican, like blood to a vampire.
There's another wrinkle here that shows the bad faith of the Reactionary Five on the Supreme Court. Citizens United turned on the idea that a corporation is really a person, with all rights (but no responsibilities) granted to individuals. Ever see a corporation called for jury duty? Meanwhile, the Hobby Lobby case was decided by the same five justices based on the premise that Hobby Lobby was NOT a separate person, but an extension of its owners who could impose their own personal religious taboos on the corporation's employees. You'll never see Hobby Lobby sitting in a pew.
9
Republican Supreme Court appointments have really been about nullifying separation of church and state since the Bork nomination.
Holy Smokes.
"The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy."
Justice Kennedy's very first sentence here is so wildly wrong and delusional, that anything he has ever said should be reexamined.
Further, the decision was purposefully Plutocratic and Kennedy's thoughts should be examined on this count, specifically.
Finally, Kennedy's "retirement" should be examined by the Democratic house given that Kennedy's very own son was complicit in loaning money to the pariah of the banking world, Trump.
I am shocked a Supreme Court Justice of the United States could say what Kennedy did. It's a purposeful political lie.
9
@Nelly: Judges are the most untouchable people in the US. Say anything bad about them and one is held in contempt of court.
@Nelly
Shocked by subject, as I always am, I forgot to observe how much I appreciate Thomas Edsall's columns.
Always they are jammed packed with the astute observations of others, not to mention Mr. Edsall's own wisdom.
Thanks!
Our country needs to create an inclusive identify for all of the people in the working class--white collar as well as blue. Social progress is also important--but, to be honest, socially progressive platforms don't do very well among the highly gerrymandered red districts. And the thing is: those people benefit from increased democratization just as much as people in metropolitan areas. After all, they are workers.
There is no party for the working people of America. We need one. Only then will our politicians represent the economic values of this country's citizenry.
@BB
I'm starting to think there is no hope of the republican party EVER caring about the working class again. Anti-union is anti-middle class. A party for working people would be decried as communism by conservatives. They don't care about people! Common ground and compromise are heresy to them. How can you govern with people like that?
3
Which is why I can no longer support the ACLU. Their support of this decision is untenable.
1
Buckley v. Valeo (1976) held that money contributed by an individual to an issues advertisement is protected speech. Citizens United applied that principle to organized groups of individuals such as labor unions and corporations. Citizens such as Tom Steyer and George Soros could contribute to issues advertising in reliance on Buckley. Obama deliberately mischaracterized the effect of Citizens United.
You have to wonder what kind of box Justice Kennedy lives in if he isn't familiar with the corruption and erosion of voter confidence in elections. What are his news sources or what could he possibly read to be so out of touch with America today? He's the Justice in a bubble.
6
Did Paul Ryan come visit me or another average American asking for support/donation? No.
Did Paul Ryan go to Sheldon Adelson for his support? Yes.
Why does Sheldon Adelson and the select few like him get a bigger voice in the democratic process than me/average American? Because of their bigger bank balance. And that link was created thanks to Citizens United.
10
Both parties drink from the same well, but each is convinced it would win without the other’s “outside money.”
This is not rocket science: The effect is terrible. Change the laws.
Start by doing a wide-ranging international and historical survey of election financing to look for successful ideas that might work for us.
1
Because the Citizen’s United decision represents a real threat to the rights of every American, with the exception of the tiny rich few whom the decision favors, it is a constant source of amazement that many voters still spend so many political energy and capital on fighting for siloed interests, such as identity politics. But it’s not one or the other, but a question of priorities. I really wish we could come together on this issue and others that affects the things in life — healthcare, equal representation, infrastructure etc etc — that we all share, regardless of whether we are men, women, gay, black, brown, or white. The concepts of commonality and solidarity are out there waiting to be harnessed, but still largely ignored and neglected.
7
Democrats always raise more money for elections than Thomas' political opponents.
Thomas is expected to be proud and relieved at that news, but the ''Citizens United'' bugaboo is such a convenient nothingness of an issue that he has to dregde it up every month-and-a-half.
Political speech can't be limited by any gov't in a free society with our Bill of Rights. It's really that simple.
@L'osservatore
Was there supposed to be an argument in this post somewhere?
Your first sentence just isn't relevant to the article.
The beginning of your second sentence "Thomas is expected to be proud and relieved," is not able to be substantiated. Maybe he actually believes in what he's writing? Just a thought.
The end of your second sentence is just... whining, basically.
Your last paragraph simply re-states the antithesis of this article without addressing any of the arguments made therein. Cool. Cool. Very productive. Highly democracy. Wow.
Alright so time for my argument:
(1) Accurate worldviews are constructed through arguments.
(2) If the average voter has a more accurate worldview in an uncorrupt democratic society, then the policies of that society will better reflect reality.
(3) If the policies of a society better reflect reality, then that society is more likely to be able to fix real problems.
(QED) One way to form a society in which real problems are likely to be fixed is for voters to engage in arguments.
So I implore you: please engage in arguments, as Edsall has in this article. If you do, our society will be more likely to be able to fix real problems.
2
Let's not fool ourselves: there is not a single issue in today's political landscape - poverty, climate change, health care, racism, sexism, gay rights, infrastructure, education to name a few, that does not hinge on this one decision.
In order for any changes to be made that will benefit the common man, we must first take money out of politics. The fact that we tsk, tsk at the corruption of other countries but fail to see our own is remarkable. We are just as corrupt as the Russian oligarch slipping Putin a few million rubles to get laws changed in his favor. The only difference is that it's done elsewhere under the table, while here it is perfectly legal and out in the open.
Nothing in the USA will change, there will be no reunification of moderates in either party, until elections are publicly funded with very modest amounts of taxpayer dollars. Information is so cheap these days - we have the internet to distribute information about candidates at low cost, and there is no reason to be spending millions to educate the public about their choices.
7
"The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy." - Anthony Kennedy.
Utterly wrong! In 2016 I made no campaign contributions, precisely because I felt my meager funds would make no practical difference compared to all the super PACs. SC decisions have "consequences," as they say.
In 2018, watching the USA sliding into authoritarianism, I felt I had no choice; I contributed my paltry $250 out of desperation. Fortunately enough ordinary people nationwide acted the same way - this time - so that the House was flipped. Nevertheless, democracy in America is still hanging by a thread. A. Kennedy's rationalizations are ridiculous; he's done incalculable damage, both to faith in democracy and faith in the Supreme Court.
4
In Michigan, the dark money entities promote the candidacy of judges for the state supreme court and various county courts. The donor class spend enormous amounts to thwart the will of the electorate. The results are that we have special (Republican) interests that control the legislature and the judiciary to pass laws that harm the people of the state. The recent passage of laws gutting the state minimum wage hikes and enabling of sick leave by the Michigan Republican majority legislature is a testament to the strength of the donor class in controlling their agenda.
The judgement by the US Supreme Court favoring Citizens United ruling as a means of protecting the first amendment is simply a Trojan horse for institutionalizing deep political corruption and subjugation of people's will.
4
I note that all of the bought speech that is bad is conservative.
But there seems to be no problem with bought liberal speech, of which there is plently.
No mention of the likes of Steyer or Soros.
@dick west
Bought speech? It's a bad argument. I picked apart the argument below. See for yourself.
The Supreme Court has become a dark shadow of its former self. The current Republicans have embraced a group of ideological belief that they absorbed through their indoctrination in the Federalist Society. No longer do they see themselves as adjudicators who protect the Constitutiional rights of humans for whose benefit the Constitution and its Amendments were enacted. Instead, they have extended human rights of speech, guns, religious dogmas, and political rights for corporations to control and corrupt our political life.
In essence, they should rename the Supreme Court to be The Supreme Court of Justifications."
4
So if you don't like your government vote in another...?
The national interest in promoting honesty, institutional integrity, equitable income distribution and opportunity, environment and social safety nets defines a broad ethical ideal. Hence it starts with a HUGE organizational and fund raising disadvantage. Organizing grass roots is a slog. Overcoming big business and the rich with their narrow vested interests, well defined legislative agenda, media control and vast treasure? --good luck America.
It is a vicious cycle. Rich vested interests distort campaigns and give unfair advantage to candidates willing to take donations and do their bidding --regresssive legislation and a GoP majority Supreme Court. Despite the trump presidency. Despite national malaise and international decline.
Social Darwinism wed to bigotry, greed and narrow vested interests. Follow the money.
How amazing that America persists, struggles to overthrow its oligarchs. Is clawing back its integrity and moral leadership against these odds. Despite GoP corruption and big money. How amazing America! Voting in another government!
2
This sentence is utter nonsense, "By definition, an independent expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate that is not coordinated with a candidate." Lawyers are good at constructing mazes of phrases but truth is sometimes elegantly simple. So... yes Paul Ryan solicited and received a contribution - with a magicians misdirection so it was not seen.
3
John Roberts and his Conservative clones on the court will have no one to thank but themselves for the loss of faith in the Supreme Court. As Trump knocks the barriers of civility over, the Court is busy allowing Democracy to be bought by the unscrupulous rich and foreigners who do not have our best interests at heart.
7
Since the birth of the Republic, indeed almost within the last generation, a new and powerful factor has taken its place in our business, financial and political world and is there exercising a tremendous influence. The existence of the corporation, as we have it with us today, was never dreamed of by the fathers…The corporation of today has invaded every department of business, and it’s powerful but invisible hand is felt in almost all activities of life. The effect of this change upon the American people is radical and rapid. The individual is fast disappearing as a business factor and in his stead is this new device, the modern corporation. --Wisconsin's very own "Fighting Bob" La Follette, “The Danger Threatening Representative Government” Speech (1897)
5
"Money is the root of all evil."
Until we make private political contributions completely illegal we will have to live with the fact that our representatives must spend all of their time collecting campaign contributions and serving the interests of those contributors simply to get elected.
Representative democracy should not be a competition to see who can come up with the best funded advertising program; rather it should be a competition of ideas.
Something else we should do is to go back to the days when political lobbying was called bribery and punishable by imprisonment for both the briber and the bribee.
5
Dangerous result of Citizens United allow for one person to influence foreign policy such as Adelson giving 50 million to GOP and requesting USA move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Organizations like the NRA and others that allow for secret donors. That could mean Putin could fund a campaign to end sanctions perhaps 100 million to the Ivanka fund help or MSB giving 500 million to the Jared fund for affordable housing in NYC. Income inequality will increase causing social unrest and presidential administrations will become kleptocracies featuring nepotism where we may now be.
2
As an old, recently retired litigation attorney, my reaction to the convoluted sophistry being used to defend Citizens United and the extraordinary amount of corporate cash pouring into elections on specious First Amendment grounds is utter disgust.
Is there any surprise that average Americans distrust our election processes?
Is there any surprise that average Americans hate lawyers?
We should demand that self-important legal scholars stop referring to former Justice Anthony Kennedy as “naïve,” when it is clear that he fully understands the Republican goal of giving rich people and corporate boards a vast advantage in every election.
These same scholars have no right to bestow a benign ideological purity on the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts, who gutted the Voting Rights Act, and on Associate Justice Samuel Alito, who flaunts his partisanship on every occasion.
The American people are not stupid. They know corruption when they see it. They see these activist judges destroying our democracy. They see right-wing pastors doing the same thing and having the gall to expect taxpayers to finance the corruption by claiming tax deductions for their politicking.
If this doesn’t stop quickly, fair and clean elections in America will be a distant memory.
6
I think it is good. Transparency of any kind is better than shell games.
Edsall once against advocates for censorship.
The objection to Citizens United boils down to exactly one thing ... silencing political opposition.
How can this be? Apply a simple standard. Does it help Republicans? If the answer is yes, all discussion about legal, ethical, moral, etc is simply a waste of time.
2
One step in putting the brakes on the Wealthy Citizens United scam: pas a law that makes it mandatory to DONATE AN EQUAL AMOUNT OF $ to the OPPOSING PARTY CANDIDATE.
So if Mr. Adelson gives a $1K to a Republican, he must make an equal donation to a Democrat candidate. And if there are several candidates (as there are in primaries), each should receive the EQUAL amount of donation. That goes whether a donation is $20 or $20K...no matter the amount, it levels the playing field.
The same approach should be mandated for ALL MEDIA companies. Every $ that buys media time should be matched by giving equivalent FREE time to competing candidates. In other words, ALL MEDIA companies should be mandated to provide FREE or LOW COST advertising as part as their PATRIOTIC DUTY in exchange for their privileged license to operate (supposedly for the "public good"--remember that??).
2
To me the biggest problem with Citizen's United is the fact that there is no disclosure from where the money comes from. That is how the Russians, the Chinese, whoever, can funnel billions and not be found out, at least right away. It's funny in a way, that Jesse Ventura ( of all people ) called it in an interview I saw from years ago. He said a foreign power could buy and sway an election for their own interest and we wouldn't know. And look what happened. The Russians with the help of the Republicans & the FBI helped sway this election.
And Kennedy, just a horrible old corrupt man. His son helped Trump out with loans, ( when no one else would ) from Deutsche Bank when he worked there. That is why he retired so abruptly. He knows Mueller will bring this out.
Right now almost all of our institutions are corrupted. It's hard to have faith in any of them anymore. I feel like we have become a big El Salvador. It will be hard to come back from this.
5
Enjoyed the column today Mr. Edsall. Now write another on Chief Justice Roberts saying, "Our country has changed." Just before striking down a key part of the Voting Rights Act. Followed by a massive Republican terrorist attack on voters in over 20 states.
Or Alito shaking his head at Obama before we realized that money from out of the country could go to the NRA or even the Chamber of Commerce before being used for campaign contributions.
Or go back to the beloved Scalia saying about affirmitive action that "...black students do better in a slower track."
But if you could get around to these columns please leave out some of the legal gibberish and convoluted legal three-card monte of so many of our finest legal minds.
4
But allowing unions to collect money from employees and then using that money to campaign for the Democratic Party leads to no corruption? I've got a bridge to sell you.
1
@older and wiser That was one of the limitations of the laws that Citizens United overturned. Corporations and UNIONS were limited. Not anymore. Now anybody can pay to play, including the Israelis and the Russkies.
1
Of course, the rich are more equal, & then some. If we had the time, humanity could adopt some form of communism to solve our political & economic problems, but the climatologists have warned us, over & over, that equality is the least of our worries. I, personally, intend to take it easy.
3
That a co-equal branch of government can become so out-of-step with society, and reality, reveals the danger of lifetime tenure.
4
@Bill
Luckily, the people have voted to LIMIT the out-of-step Democrats in Congress with GOP Senators and Presidents.
This arrangement seems to be working just fine despite the lifetime tenure guranteed to liberal Senators from lockstep-liberal states.
The assertion that the conservative majority of the Roberts Court failed to have a clue of the consequences or were naive in assessing the outcomes of Citizens United is at odds with the Court's long history of privileging corporations and capitalists over average citizens. Roberts et.al. knew exactly what they were doing and crafted an opinion that would have precisely the results they wanted. There isn't even an iota, let alone a modicum of concern for the broader, more nuanced concerns expressed in this essay.
9
This distortion of U.S. politics to favor the wealthy and corporations is a large contributor to wealth inequality, inaction on Climate Change and the rise of populism/nationalism that produced the President we have now. I wonder if our democracy can weather the current situation for long.
9
The 1980’s and the Reagan administration started the change of America from a country of the people to one of the corporation. It’s been evolving more and more in that direction ever since.
The Supreme Court finished the job with their Citizens United ruling that corporations are people.
Hence a government of the corporation.
7
@Thomas: Reagan was grown as if in a Petri dish by General Electric.
2
Excellent discussion of the vanishing of Democracy enabled by Citizens United.
10
It would be interesting to see the 2028 elections if the Sup Ct were to rule that the penumbra of free speech and equal protection allows corporate candidacies for political office. Corporations are ultimately controlled by natural persons, so don’t worry be happy. The corporate form was created by law to promote ventures while limiting individual risk, but so what?
Perhaps the voters will favor the idea of President Burger King. Taxes and regulations can be tiresome. Instead, have it your way.
Many may be attracted to the idea of President L’Oreal because, after all, they’re worth it. But the patriarchy may not allow this when all is said and done.
Traditionalists may favor a President General Electric. In these troubled times we need a president who will bring good things to life.
But others may hearken back to the 2016 campaign and prefer a President Dr. Pepper. What’s the worst that could happen?
11
Below are the 5 top campaign contributors of the leaders of the Democratic Party
Charles E Schumer, Leader of the Domocratic Party, US Senate
Top Contributors, 1989 - 2018
1 Goldman Sachs
2 Citigroup Inc
3 Paul, Weiss et al
4 JPMorgan Chase & Co
5 Credit Suisse Group
Nancy Pelosi, Leader , Democrats House
Top Contributors, 2017 - 2018
1 Facebook Inc
2 Salesforce.com
3 Amazon.com $
4 American Hospital Assn
5 Blue Cross/Blue Shield
6 Alphabet Inc ( Google)
1. None of these contributors has an economic interest in lifting the wages of US workers.
2. In Pelosi's case, none has an economic interest in a health care reform that would reduce the profits of the Insurance Companies.
The campaigns of the leaders of the Democratic Party, once the party of working American, are financed by Wall Street and and Silicon Valley
That is a problem. Ever wondered why none of the Wall Street bankers was prosecuted ?
" Look, with even a few mild words of reproof, Obama has lost a huge funding source from Wall Street"
Paul Krugman
Having Lunch with Martin Wolf, CBE, Chief Economic Commentator, Financial Time of London. May 25th, 2012
https://www.ft.com/content/022acf50-a4d1-11e1-9a94-00144feabdc0
5
@Woof - Then why are the leaders of the Democratic party strongly pushing for campaign finance reform?
From Hillary's fact sheet:
"End secret, unaccountable money in politics. Hillary will push for legislation to require outside groups to publicly disclose significant political spending. And until Congress acts, she'll sign an executive order requiring federal government contractors to do the same. Hillary will also promote an SEC rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose political spending to shareholders.
Amplify the voices of everyday Americans. Hillary will establish a small-donor matching system for presidential and congressional elections to incentivize small donors to participate in elections, and encourage candidates to spend more time engaging a representative cross-section of voters."
As to why they have not done so unilaterally, I would ask Mr. Woof if he would bring a knife to a gun fight?
3
@Woof
Your logic is flawed by pointing out that everyone does it, therefore it must be okay. CU is bad for everyone, of any political party, Democrats included. That's why an amendment to the Constitution is needed to eradicate this political Supreme Court finding, making sure no single political party or cohort of corporations dictates the terms of our democracy.
3
Simply stated, Citizens United, will be the ultimate unraveling of our democracy as we know it by substituting -"of the people, by the people, for the people" from the Gettysburg Address - to "of the corporate interests, by the corporate interests, for the corporate interests" if Americans do not wake up and realize that, in part, the current Occupant in the Oval Office was installed there by corporate and Russian interests with absolutely no ceiling or cap on campaign contributions.
7
It seems to be that Mr. Edall is ignoring a major concept here that played a critical role in the decision of our forefathers to declare independence from England-the principle of no taxation without representation. A process that does not allow a person, including a corporation which is composed of people and which has historically been treated as such in our legal system, to use any and all resources at its disposal, to influence elections which determine who gets elected to office and ultimately which laws get adopted, including laws that directly impact on that person is in effect taxing without representation, regulating without representation, etc.. It is thus in fundamental conflict with a basic principle upon which this nation was founded. As long as corporations are taxed and regulated they should be allowed to act in a way that increases their prospects of being represented. By elementary logic this concept extents to corporate shareholders.
@John Eley - Your argument is beyond wrong. It is silly. A marching band of composed of people. Does it therefore have the rights of people?
Could it be that corporations do not have representation because there is no way for them to vote?
If they are the same as people why can they not be punished by putting them in jail?
In the unlikely case you are interested in knowing why a corporation is taxed, here is an explanation:
The purpose of a corporations is to shield the shareholders from the actions of the corporation. If I am a stockholder of a company that releases poison gas and kills 500,000 people, I can lose my investment in that corporation, but the rest of my wealth is shielded. There is a legal fiction that a corporation is another legal entity, and I am not responsible for his actions. Therefore that corporate entity pays tax and when he pays me I pay tax.
On the other hand, if I am a partner in a law firm and one of my partners steals $100 million from our clients, I can lose everything I own.
As Ambrose Bierce put it:
"A corporation is an ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility."
You can think of corporate taxes as a fee shareholders pay to avoid that responsibility.
@John Eley
At least some people still know how to drop some good satire/sarcasm into the debate! Watch people start responding with fire because they don’t get the humor.
Well done. I need that laugh, thanks John.
1
@John Eley
I see you're concerned about corporations being represented. That's quite an admirable goal. Some folks are concerned about poverty or violent crime. But you've raised a more important issue: who is sticking up for the most vulnerable among us, the corporation? They've been left out! No taxation without representation, you say. I agree fully.
By your own admission you want something elementary and logical. I fully agree, and I'm here to help make the argument more elementary, and more logical in support of our beleaguered corporations.
Corporations are people, correct? They are taxed, correct? Then they should be allowed to vote. One person, one vote. One corporation, one vote.
Citizens United constructed a formula ratifying privatized mercenaries as more than acceptable participants of taxpayer funds for services rendered.
So not only do we rely on invoices presented within privatized medicine from privatized services twice the amount that social friendly countries expect for health services, this extends to invoice writers such as Erik Prince who presents taxpayers with invoices for his services rendered to oil companies we pay.
What we are talking about here is corporate welfare legitimized and institutionalized as the rule of the land. Right now Wisconsin and Michigan are looking for a judge to hear and rule on their legislation. So not only on a federal level are we instituting corporate welfare, contractors and subcontractors are drooling over the prospect of it on a state level.
1
Citizens United has been the most detrimental Supreme Court decision in living memory. It not only facilitates bribery and the unchecked rise of "Pay to Play" in our government, in fact the decision has institutionalized it. Even elected officials not inclined towards corruption must spend the majority of their time fund-raising instead of doing the people's business. This means that only those with the deepest pockets are likely to be considered when setting the legislative agenda. Last year's heinous tax cut for corporations and the uber-rich was a direct result of this ruling. Our government cannot be cleansed of corruption until Citizens United is overturned. Sadly, with the conservative majority on the SCOTUS, the decision is likely to stand for along time to come.
10
@BassGuyGG Bush v. Gore is a close second.
Thank you for reviewing history. It's helpful.
If you really want to do our county a service write about corporate/the wealthy/elected politicians' quid pro quo legalized corruption and what the electorate can effectively do about it to force change and hold them accountable.
Voting to change party control isn't the answer - they are all complicit, with very few exceptions!
3
Citizens United expressly held that this spending was not corrupt, and that it did not even give the appearance of corruption.
That is wrong. That fundamental disagreement is the real meaning of this column.
Of course it is corrupt, and it certainly obviously looks like corruption too. Only if you deny that does the case holding make any sense. And denying it is absurd on its face. The case holding is absurd on its face.
What can we do? If the Supreme Court does an utterly absurd thing, plainly wrong on its face, what is the remedy?
Does the balance of powers apply to the Court too? Can the other two branches say, "That's absurd" and just stop it? Maybe. We need to find out.
7
A very good critique of our Supreme Court. IMHO, the Citizens United decision did a great deal to damage the standing of American Citizens, specifically individuals who are primarily taxpayers and not corporations.
The US Constitution does not mention corporations, they are not people. They are (or should) be governed by laws made by our elected representatives, and not granted rights by the high court.
The Supreme Court needs to be called out on an issue like this. Please keep up the pressure from all angels.
13
@Grain Boy I love the final word typo...it's exactly what's needed!
@Gary Schnakenberg, and Grain Boy: LOL -- yes, we may need the help of angels -- lots of them if not all of them! -- to get out of this perilous situation.
in between teaching classes -- so not reading as carefully as i should -- why is capping the amount spent by anyone/anything unlawful? if individuals can give an unlimited amount, why not just cap that and say that corporations cant give more than individuals. if the max donation is $100 for an individual, for a corporation -- then it seems to me the quantity of donations would matter. i can't help but think if someone /some corporation has 30 million to give that there are some charitable causes with more to gain from the other $29,999,900 than a political candidate.
4
In the recent election, my state assembly district had two Democrats running. No Republican qualified for the fall ballot due to California's practice of having the top two candidates in the primary run in the general election regardless of party affiliation.
The two candidates were virtually tied in the primary. Both being Democrats, they agreed not to accept funding from the party, but by the time the election was over one had reportedly received approximately $90,000 in funding for her campaign; the other over $500,000, much of which reportedly came from outside "people" including AmBev (Budweiser.)
Either candidate would have made a good choice for the district, but it would be naive to think that these outside financing sources didn't have a major impact on the outcome.
If we are truly to have a democracy the Constitution must be amended to clarify that money is not speech and corporations and other institutions are not people. Clearly, this was not intended or even considered by the Founding Fathers, and if the originalist judges on the Supreme Court had a modicum of common sense this would never have been an issue.
10
This column entirely overlooks the fact that small dollar donations overwhelmed SuperPAC money in the midterms. Donations made directly to the candidate are also more valuable, because of limits on political advertising in tv ads.
We don’t need to overturn Citizens United. We need to make it irrelevant. The key is continued civic participation.
2
@Mercury S silly...a single large contribution has much more leverage than many small ones equal to that large one.
2
All of which leads one to conclude that ALL "private" money MUST be excluded form the election process. ALL election campaigns, especially national election campaigns, MUST be funded and LIMITED by the state. However, the only way for this to happen is for the states to initiate and drive the process
as, obviously, federal legislators are too hopelessly "compromised" (read corrupted) to affect this change at the national level. And good luck to us.
5
@Slann
But unfortunately Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Attorney General of Montana has already forced the principles of Citizens United onto the states as well.
2
I firmly believe that although I do not like a publicly owned corporation spending money for a certain party, because even if I have stocks in such company they don't ask me how to channel it, I can live with it under "Free Speech".
The worst problem is "Anonymous Speech". Many of those donations would dry up very quickly if a donor for certain causes had to put their face where their money goes. And nowhere in the Constitution protects anonymity. Even in a trial, an accused has the right to know who the accuser is.
7
This was entirely foreseeable from the moment that misguided at best decision was issued.
9
@Working Mama I had not realized the section quoted had been authored by Kennedy. I had always presumed Alito and Roberts were the culprits.
4
@Slann Kennedy is as corrupt as they come.
Campaign contributions by businesses and wealthy individuals often earn the donor more than they cost (case in point are Sheldon Adelson’s $113M in contributions in 2016 to Republicans which saved him $700M in taxes). As such, they are more accurately seen as economic investments, not political speech.
14
@Scott Macfarlane: Some things that happen in Vegas can stick to people for life.
@Scott Macfarlane otherwise known as a bribe!
1
Under the First Amendment, speech is free, but it's that penumbra of cash that really talks.
4
@617to416: There is no freedom from one's own words coming back to haunt oneself.
Just think if corporations can give millions why not allow Foreign companies or governments to spend billions. In reality you can funnel the foriegn companies or governments money through American companies and individuals. In fact Adelson makes more money in China and overseas than in Las Vegas.
4
@dave: Casinos are the most lucrative laundries there are. They wash money.
Spending $1 or 2 billion for election campaigns every two years is not excessive in a country of our size.
To give some context, every 2 years we spend about $1 billion on Holloween Costumes for our Dogs and Cats.
Over a two year election cycle, the Federal government will spend over $8 trillion. So campaign spending of $2 billion is only 0.025% of what government will spend in two years.
The bigger failing in our elections is that the major news sources do a terrible job informing voters on what policies the candidates want to bring to governing, and what would be the likely result from those changes, where the likely results are presented from both the perspective of the left and the right.
2
It does not take a genius to know that money talks as it did to the 5 Justices who voted for Citizens United.
How they can look themselves in the mirror after that notorious vote is beyond me. Kennedy basically wrote an opinion that sold our Democracy right down the river.
Isn’t it the duty of the Supreme Court to protect our Democracy?
Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy should be removed from the Court for dereliction of duty.
10
The majority in the SCOTUS have willingly closed their eyes to truth. How can they not see the current path our country has gone down with Citizens United having resulted in disproportionate representation for those who can afford to supply unrestricted funds to representatives by means unavailable to the rest of us? This willful "ignorance" completely ignores the will of the majority of the people and their accelerated loss of faith in our Democracy. Between CU and gerrymandering, we are losing our Democracy at a pace that will soon outrun our ability to get it back. We must stop this and stop it now.
5
There's no doubt that Democrats could not have taken over the house without the nefarious influence of big money unleashed by Citizens United.
2
@J - Total raised for all house candidates in 2018
Dems $390,233,927
Repubs $498,899,823
https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/index.php?cycle=2018&display=T&type=M
The only question left is to what extent the military will cooperate with the Republican Party to suppress the mass protest to come.
1
"Unconstrained outside spending on elections is corrosive to our democracy."
Capitalism is about making money.
Apple, Google and Facebook, like Putin, Trump and Xi, are only interested in making money.
Democracy just gets in their way.
6
I'll say it the only way I can; Citizen's United, Right To Work, and Political Correctness are neither.
Except, "PC" never took a dime. Not yet, anyway.
1
Supreme Court case Buckley v. Valeo. 1976: Money is a form of speech (first amendment justification), and therefore spending money on things isn’t bribery or payment, it’s just exercising your right to voice your opinion.
Supreme Court case Boston v. Bellotti, 1978: Corporations and companies have the same “free speech” rights as human beings; they are indistinguishable from people.
Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC (Federal Election Commission), 2010: The government does not have the right to limit campaign spending.
Supreme Court case McCutcheon v. FEC, 2014: Limits on monetary contributions to campaigns/elections are removed.
We legalized bribery, and wonder why there's growing inequality and corruption.
8
If Sheldon Adelson or George Soros need free speech, fine. Let them appear in person on camera to speak what they wish, not to hide behind "Americans for Apple Pie and Motherhood".
3
This crimes and corruption in politics is unforgivable and I strongly believe our right wing political hack Supreme Court judges are responsible. Now our all branches of government are in auction block. The government is by the rich, of the rich and for the rich. Life time appointments of judges should be abolished. They think they are god .
3
This issue is central to the survival of our Constitution, our form of government and even our free enterprise system. If we have no equality, we have no freedom. Our partisan and corrupt Supreme Court however, claims to believe that Constitutional perogatives give corporate citizens the right to kick independant citizens in the teeth with impunity. Obviously that is not "freedom" by any stretch. It is tyranny. Our founders took down their long rifles and shot holes through the bright red coats of the King's men for much less. We can have real citizens or the corporate citizens who are rapidly becoming our masters. We cannot have both.
Corporations can be a proud and productive part of our economy unless they choose to own our government and our courts. If that continues they will surely own us as well. Since the 1980s the status of American citizens have fallen toward that of peasants in a third world country. This is due to irresponsible wars, trickle-down economics, the corruption of the campaign finance system and the slow death of the New Deal. Meanwhile Rush, Fox,Trump and the GOP have led us to believe that it is all the fault of unwed mothers, illegal aliens, the fake news and corrupt scientists. Wake up America before it is too late.
4
As it is today, we have representation without taxation.
Filthy lucre knows no international boundaries as well.
Groups with innocuous sounding names could be anybody.
'Americans Who Promote More of the Same' (or whatever) could be from any place, supported with questionable, possibly ill-gained, financial resources.
Nonsense.
We live in a divided limited power constitutional republic of united states where the people are the ultimate sovereign over their elected and selected hired help.
The Supreme Court of the United States is the least democratic branch of our republic followed by the U.S. Senate and then the President of the United States. While the House is the most democratic branch limitations on it's disempower more populous states. America was founded by white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men who owned property Men who feared democracy so much that they only intended that men like themselves t be deemed divinely naturally created equal persons with certain unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
See " An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States " Charles Beard; "Dog-Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class" Ian Haney Lopez
Corporations are not people. Money is not speech. " The law is an ass" Charles Dickens from " Oliver Twist. Both African enslavement and separate and unequal black African American Jim Crow were lawful and legal in America.
The problem is not the SCOTUS opinion in Citizens United. The problem is the cowardly dishonorable unpatriotic corrupt greedy callous cynical hypocrisy of too many Americans misled by the white European Judeo- Christian majority.
3
@Blackmamba
You are thinking the way they want you to. Male vs Female, rural vs urban, black vs white. Divide and conquer. We will never get our country back unless we get it back together.
So, if corporations are people and one starts to create a sub-division, will it get thrown in jail if they terminate the project before it's an actual new corporation?
3
@PassePartoutToo
Or, if one corporation takes over another unwilling one, is that considered rape. If the second one is willing, is that considered "same-sex" marriage? Do we have three sexes: male, female, and coporation? Persons, even the healthiest and luckiest, eventually die. What is the lawful lifespan of a corporation?
The whole concept of corporations as people is terribly fanciful. How could reasonable justices ever have conceived it?
1
A physical analogy might help. Recall please the Tacoma bridge that spectacularly collapsed in 1940. (Search Bing or Google for "tacoma narrows bridge collapse.") The bridge literally shook itself apart. The very same thing is happening to our economic and political systems. They have entered a self-destructive feedback loop. The rich are growing ever richer, and the powerful are seizing ever more power.
All decent, thoughtful and pragmatic Americans must be concerned about the division and distrust associated with recent trends and political activity. We must bring suits that compel the Supreme Court to take this up yet again. It is indisputable: our faith and confidence in our democracy has been eviscerated. Justice Kennedy's prognostications were dead wrong.
Yes, I know. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were nominated because right wing Republicans believed they would not overrule rulings like Citizens United. We must hope against hope that the right wingers are wrong. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh might very well do the right thing once they have been confronted with the facts which are overwhelmingly conclusive.
2
@Robert
The SCOTUS has prove. Itself unable and unwilling to stand up for the political rights of the common citizen over corporations. Only a Constitutional Amendment can once and for all declare that corporations are not people and money is not speech. See Move to Amends 28th Amendment “we the people” and support it.
1
@Cathie
Thanks for your helpful reply.
1
This morning I started reading The Party is Over, by Mike Lofgren, which discusses Citizens United and the windfall to politicians and corporations thru it's passing. Great read!
2
Outside money buys vicious and if not intentionally misleading then intentionally untrue attacks on political opponents. The ads are sponsored by some nebulous sounding group who is not affiliated with the candidate but in truth technically are as the group's are outcrops of the PAC s who support the ideology. Donor disclosure is not required and is exceptionally difficult to trace.
Meanwhile the ads flood the mailboxes and inboxes, not to mention TV time, of ordinary voters who have some opinions but who either do not or cannot take the time to investigate the frightening ads, but they remember who is a scary unamerican when it come time to vote.
This influence buys elections and those voted in are already vetted as anti-government, anti-tax, anti-environment and anti-social welfare. The average American voter is being hoodwinked by so much corporate free speech that they they don't stand a chance of making an informed decision of what is in their own best interest.
Say what you will, but we have the best health care, justice system and politicians money can buy. Although we should really get a refund for current POTUS.
3
Grateful for this article but disappointed that Edsall did not mention the solution to the problem--a constitutional amendment to undo the damage done by decades of poorly reasoned Supreme Court decisions. With Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, we cannot count on the Supreme Court to reverse Citizens United or similar decisions any time soon. That's what constitutional amendments are for. Some organizations like Citizens Take Action are working on this, but they don't have the level of support they need yet. Big money in politics is one of those fundamental problems we must solve if we want to make progress on so many other issues. I just hope there are enough Americans who are willing to prioritize it and put in the work.
9
Can’t we simply rely on common-sense definitions to help save our democracy, and assert that corporate money does not equal personal speech?
3
@Hecuba
You don't expect the self-proclaimed textualists to actually be textualists, do you?
I could never understand why Citizens United was passed as law by the Supreme Court. The resulting government-for-sale seemed inevitable. Now the Adelson-Mercer class are making the laws that will determine the quality of life for me and other pay-check-to-pay-check Americans. Unbelievable.
12
It seems that we will not have a true democracy until all elections are funded from public monies, paid by our taxes. Our country has become corrupted by outside money and the lust for power aided by Citizens United. It would be a refreshing change to have our elected representatives spend their time helping and improving the lives of their constituents instead of focusing on the need for constantly raising money for each election.
10
A simple, but unreachable fix, is to limit the ability of these so called social PAC's to reap tax benefits for the donors. it's unreachable because the millionaire's path to riches in Congress will not allow it.
Another fix would be to use some of England's experience with slander while campaigning, and prosecute those who insist on making false statements about opponents. But the foxes run the congressional hen house. Change will not come easy.
@Zeke27
Isn't it amazing that with all the outrageous and corrupt money spent by Republicans to buy elections, they STILL have to resort to gerrymandering and voter fraud tricks like "losing ballots" in order to win.
What a bunch of losers and is it surprising that they have selected their King to rule over and uphold all their messes?
2
Better yet. Do away with tax dedections for donations to ANYTHING, especially to "churches".
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
3
The law allows the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges. Now, the law again allows the rich and poor alike to buy politicians and judges.
You and I are as free to give $30 million to a politician as is Sheldon Adelson. We are free to pay them to write or interpret laws to benefit us personally, to protect us from criminal inquiry, to prevent millions of other people from voting or to nullify the effects of an election if we don't like how they vote. We can also pay them to appoint or block the appointment of judges who would change this.
Go ahead, feel free.
32
To defeat Citizens United and outlaw its companion monstrosities : partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression, I see no path ahead other than the long slog to defeat every Republican and like-minded candidate in every state and federal election until the majority regains the power to restore government of, by and for the people. Right now, Republicans at the behest of their mega donors are pulling out all stops in the opposite direction - witness their anti-democracy power grabs in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan. 2020 promises a dark storm of oligarchic bribery and illegality to defeat the most popular candidates. We the people made a huge difference in 2018 midterms and must stay the course well into the future. And be assured, stay the course we will.
28
Let's not forget that a corporation's "special interests" can also be "foreign interests." How can we be assured that companies are not donating to campaigns specifically to benefit their foreign customers or investors? How can we know that these companies, like Trump's advisors and legal team, aren't compromised with threats of pulled contracts or closed doors?
In my opinion, Citizens United is both an internal and external attack on our democracy by those not interested in its values at all. Sad to see the five Supreme Court justices join the list of "compromised" individuals.
24
If I have no money (well, not really an if) my free speech allows me to stand on a street corner and shout whatever I want until I get blue in the face. That’s free speech.
Being able to plaster the entire country in ads in support of Big Brother against Goldstein with unlimited corporate cash is something that strikes me as entirely undemocratic.
28
Electioneering is now a 365 day/year job - politicians can never stop campaigning in order to govern, and the media conglomerates will never give up the billions of dollars they receive in campaign ads. CU is the "gift" that keeps on giving.
Oh yes, a representation went out the window a long time ago.
Democracy in America was ended with this awful decision.
8
Justice Kennedy's legacy will be twofold:
1. Citizen's United and thereby giving worms like Sheldon Adelson much more power than millions of other Americans.
2. Giving Trump a free Supreme Court Seat.
26
The only question that now remains: Do we live in a feudal state or a fascist state?
Since that is our new reality we must change a few perceptions.
There are no conservatives in the republican party.
The supreme court is a political machine that no longer uses the Constitution to decide matters, instead the republican majority uses theme papers handed to them by the koch bothers and the adelsons.
Our elections can no longer be viewed as legitimate since we cannot trust those who have gerrymandered voting into a casino game. Remember that the only real winners in Las Vegas are the guys (mostly) who own the games.
Perhaps the only way to salvage some form of democracy will be to break up this huge unwieldy Nation into two or more smaller ones. I see the dust bowl/rust bowl/ confederate states as one country; perhaps we call it Dumnassistan.
The rest of US will then be free to form a more perfect Union.
Thanks for this article, Mr. Edsall.
4
"The fact that a corporation, or any other speaker, is willing to spend money to try to persuade voters presupposes that the people have the ultimate influence over elected officials."
This quote from Citizens United is the heart of its argument. And here is why it's logic is embarrassing:
Justice Kennedy argues that people have ultimate say over the political process, ultimate influence. People are, in other words, at the top of the food chain. Now, how do we know people have ultimate influence? Because if they didn't, companies wouldn't spend lots of money trying to influence them. That is what the highest court in the land is saying. Think about this for a moment. The Supreme Court is saying companies are spending money to influence people BECAUSE people are the ultimate influence, the one's in control--and yet the only reason a company would spend money is to influence the the voters.
In simple logic, the Supreme Court of the United States says, X is the ultimate influence because Y influences X.
Put another way, the people have ultimate power because corporations buy THEIR vote.
And this is from the supposed brightest minds in the country. Disgustingly moronic. I would have gotten an F in law school if I wrote a paper as logically inept as this.
4
The Court has extended a naive view of markets -- that they are self-regulating and self-balancing -- to politics by effectively making political processes just an extension of economic activities and advantages.
Transparency by itself won't help us -- in fact it's usually the well-organized and -funded interests that make the most effective use of transparency provisions, employing them to make sure their financial recipients "honor" (let the irony of that soak in...) their sides of the deals, explicit or implicit, that brought in the money.
A first step back toward sanity would be for the Court to read its own ruling in _Buckley_, back in 1976, in which it justified a federal role in regulating political money by the government's fundamental interest in controlling corruption **or the appearance of corruption**. Those appearances are the most damaging consequence of all, for many citizens believe they and their values are routinely crowded out by political big spenders. The credibility of democracy is eroding here, just as it is in many other countries, and yet the Courts don't seem concerned by that -- and our newest Justices are even less likely to see the light.
4
There are some simple human tendencies that we must not ignore. Humans who achieve wealth and power are not their brother's keeper. That is, CEO's cannot be expected to run their companies for the benefit of mankind, the less advantaged, or to ever put anything above profit. We should not expect or demonize them because of this. We need regulations that recognize the human tendencies and pass laws accordingly. This is the major reason for government and a rational reaction by a species the hopes to exist. Our "meteor" that destroyed so many of the powerful species, the higher food chain beasts, is the fall of Democracy, and yes the embrace of plain old corruption. We will sicken and poison our species and our world by ignoring climate change, we will explode each other by massive weapons and continual wars between super powers, and/or we will enflame the "masses" to revolt and repeat history, but with more destructive consequences. We have the ability to enable government to regulate so that these things do not happen. Can we overcome our human nature before we diminish so greatly our ability to survive as a species? Or merely have most of the people, who do survive, scrape out a miserable existence. Where has the "goodness of man" gone? It is submitting to plain old corruption. And we have seen this cycle for eons. Now, however, with technology and AI, and it all being quite ubiquitous, the potential consequences for the planet are far greater.
4
Meanwhile, it's "THE HOLIDAYS." Spend, spend, spend, everyone! And don't dare wipe that smile off your face.
Citizens United is just another example, though extremely important one, that Republicans MUST weaken democracy in order to win.
With the deciding justices appointed by Putin / Trump, America's Supreme Court's disdain for the democracy of actual citizens (humans instead of corporations) will only grow.
This Supreme Court is a travesty in which the majority will be imposing the view of a minority of Americans through an extreme ideologically lens.
2
I believe the same can be said for perhaps the biggest slush-fund in the history of slush-funds - - - The Clinton Foundation. Thank you.
1
@Southern Boy
The Clinton Foundation is not the U.S. Supreme Court which has allowed the corrupt travesty of the Citizens United ruling to infect our elections.
2
@Southern Boy
Lame whatabboutism shies away from acknowledging the hypocrisy revealed in this article; the disrespectful, destructive gaming of our democratic republic. Do you believe Adelson and his minions give one tiny whit about your and your family's well-being? Yup, you're right.
Courts can and do lose all credibility by issuing surreal decisions or none at all. That's where am from my own experience with courts.
1
RE." The crucial section of Citizens United reads as follows:
The fact that a corporation, or any other speaker, is willing to spend money to try to persuade voters presupposes that the people have the ultimate influence over elected officials. This is inconsistent with any suggestion that the electorate will refuse “to take part in democratic governance” because of additional political speech made by a corporation or any other speaker."
This bit of logic 'presupposes' that voters are able to discern relevant information even when bombarded with oceans of propaganda. Therefore, voters would not be harmed by knowing who is giving money to those propaganda campaigns.
The next lawsuit should then be challenging the laws that keep secret, the identity of donors to super PACs
3
Citizens United is simply another decision by a corrupt SCOTUS, that is in under the control of a corrupt political party, which represents the interests of American oligarchs, whose purpose is to protect them from the dangers of democracy. It is in the same vein as the effort by Republicans to disempower incoming elected Democrats in Wisconsin, Michigan and earlier North Carolina.
8
This is a fine summary of the march toward oligarchy in the US that is now nearly at its goal. Or should we call it the Caravan of the Special Interests? Under Justice Roberts (no relation, thank God), the Supreme Court has perfected Orwellian logic and speech to turn our noble ideals upside down, using the First Amendment as their lever of choice.
8
A remarkable analysis of the situation we find ourselves in. I don’t know what sort of workaround can be done to undo the damage of both equating money with speech and with corporations as people, but until corporations can be fully held accountable as human beings for malfeasance we are in a perilous position.
We industrialize everything that should otherwise be declared a public good: education, healthcare, and political campaigns. Until the restoration of the power and primacy of the “electorate”- which excludes(for now) corporations, we will continue to spiral apart into the stratified and ossified societal structure that the Founders of our nation fought to extricate ourselves from Great Britain and its social rigidity.
The “electorate,” the living breathing voting citizens of this nation needs to be given priority over the concept of money from any entity as speech. The CU decision is either hopelessly naive or worse, a cynical concession to the monied interests now writing legislation to cement their power. Already the damage is done, as many see their votes made impotent in the face of the reality of the overwhelming power of the corporate interests.
3
This article makes a persuasive case that Citizens United has been a major reason for the increase in the cost of political campaigns. But I fail to see how it connects this additional money to specific policy changes. Regulations went up under Obama, down under Trump. Is campaign finance responsible? True, we lowered the corporate tax, but mainly because so many other countries had already done so. I would agree that Buckley v. Valeo was a very poor decision, akin to price controls on prostitution, and that has probably changed the make up of the political class. You have to be good at and enjoy fundraising to succeed at politics. But if I am right about that, then Citizens United, by opening the flood gates may make it easier for candidates to get the money they need through these other "not coordinated" groups. Which is a good thing, and not completely different from public campaign finance. Anyway, interesting article, but fails to persuade, at least in my view.
And of course it’s the same conservative bloc on the Court that sees no problem for our democracy in pernicious Republican legislation that aims to make it more difficult for certain (mostly already disadvantaged) Americans to vote. Assuming they’re one of Anthony Kennedy’s imagined Americans who still thinks voting is enough to overcome the influence-peddling he calls free speech.
5
We should not underestimate the economic aspects of CU. Best example: We will never have a decent or cost effective health care system in this country until CU is reversed. The various interest groups that now run the health care system (i.e. drug companies, insurance companies, hospitals, professional medical associations, etc) will just spend their "speech" money to prevent it. We are all second class citizens to corporations now.
13
Nowhere in the Constitution does it equate money with free speech. Having seen what money and privilege do to democracy, the Founders went to great lengths to devise a system that would protect the rights of everyone, from the richest to the poorest, and not favor one class over another, so why would anyone believe there was any inference that limiting campaign contributions infringed upon free speech?
Simple: those who could be influenced by lots of money.
In 1976 seven Justices of the SCOTUS ruled in Buckley vs. Valeo that it was unconstitutional to limit spending on political campaigns; subsequent SCOTUS rulings up to and including Citizen's United furthered and expanded this interpretation, thus giving it the force of legal precedent. In essence they said "Since it costs money to communicate, limiting access to that money restricts a person's ability to communicate". But what they ignored was the opposite effect of money: drowning out the voices of those without money or lesser amounts of it. THESE voices are the ones harmed, and have no recourse.
The SCOTUS have gone down an un-democratic, and un-Constitutional path by their decisions. and America is suffering the repercussions of that. When those with unlimited money and power are allowed to rule over the majority, that isn't democracy, it's tyranny, and tyrants never willingly cede power. But when the People come to believe that their voice is no longer heard, they will turn to other means.
13
@Kingfish52
The connection between money and the First Amendment comes through freedom of the press.
The press is using resources, that requires money to acquire, to publish, broadcast and otherwise communicate that speech to a wide audience. The broadcasting of speech is not limited by how loud you can shout on a street corner.
Freedom of the press is not limited to corporations like the NY Times. Individuals and groups of individuals also have that right.
The issue SCOTUS addressed in CU was whether the federal government could ban a political movie before an election. In oral arguement, the government even argued that the government had the power to ban books as well as movies before an election.
1
@Kingfish52: No amount of sanctimony can perfume-away the fact that the US Constitution is a tortured compromise with the presumption that some people have a divine right to enslave others.
1
@Steve Bolger So move to a country with a less sordid history. If you can find one.
Citizens United did something startling to me, a business entity lawyer. I simply see no legal analysis that reasonably leads to the conclusion that today's publicly-held corporations are entitled to be deemed "persons" shielded from governmental control of rights granted under the First Amendment. Certainly, for any perspective attached to Originalism, the Constitutional Convention could not have had corporations in mind as recipients of the Bill of Rights. In 1788, a corporation existed solely solely by being created, each alone, by a specific law passed by Congress to grant it a charter as a corporation. I see PMBrig's comment with the same point issued a few minutes ago.
7
@Sterling Minor: Shareholders are the constituency of corporations. Every year there is an election of directors. Most proxies are voted for the management slate of directors, but sometimes there are proxy fights.
@Steve Bolger...I don't get the point of your comment.
1
If one is free to speak then why do some hide their voice behind some sinister super PAC that does not have to disclose the names of the donors?
If ‘Ed Red’ wants to spend tens of millions on getting people elected, then the public needs to know all the causes and candidates he/she supports!
CU is in the top 3 of the worst Court decisions ever adopted!
9
It is foolish to become snared in the briars of analyzing whether the Citizens United analysis holds up. The Court simply decided to allow unregulated corporate political spending. The written decision is merely a tortured justification for the Court's support of their (elite) corporate constituency. We don't need a review of the decision to know that unlimited corporate political spending our undermines democracy.
8
As a foreigner I am not use to all of these "corporate" dollars filling the coffers of politics. Money buys votes. There is no doubt. Thus, those with the most money can purchase the largest vote. Theirs.
When will elections and voting get back to one person. One vote. No monies involved. Limits as to what any one person or "corporation" can donate, give, what ever. Set a number that everyone has to use as their top dollar and see how they utilize it. This would be a dynamite test as to how well they would serve us once they are elected.
Get money out of politics!
8
Tom, this is not an un-Supreme Court issue, nor a Citizens United issue — but a disguised global capitalist Empire cancer upon our former country.
When America was formed in our initial American “Revolution Against Empire” [Justin du Rivage] our founding fathers and even the average people (like those who dressed-up like Indians and dumped tea into Boston harbor) knew that corporations, like the British Empire’s East India Royal Chartered Corporations, were anti-democratic, dangerous, and should never be trusted except for limited timeframes, and public ‘common interests’.
But now as clearly proven both by vast looting, damages, bribery, and dumping of hidden ‘negative externality costs’ allowing massive inequality of income, wealth, opportunity, and failure of democracy, the non-human/humane structure of an Empire of corporations and the UHNWIs who control them is beginning to be understood by of citizen/‘subjects’ as needing to be corrected through a continuation and completion of a peaceful people’s “Revolution Against Empire”.
5
@Alan MacDonald
I suppose it would have been easier and far more eloquent if I had just paraphrased the famous Louis Brandeis quote:
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.”
With something like, ‘we can have a people’s public democracy, or we can have a private corporate capitalist Empire, but we can’t have both.’
1
I first heard that "corporations are people" when Mitt Romney was running for office. I thought he was taking leave of his senses. But, no, he was expressing what the Supreme Court and Justice Kennedy concluded was justice.
Corporations are not people. They are fictitious entities that have advantages over businesses like partnerships for making money and limiting liability. Citizens United threatens our democracy by allowing dark money into the political system. Connect the dots. Corporations were threatened by the formation of the EPA in the 1970s. The GOP had to find a way to limit this threat. They strove to entitle corporations with unlimited ways to use their money to gain power and control elections. Citizens United was passed into law to achieve this. Justice Brandeis said correctly that you can have a democracy or you can have a system of government controlled by a few.
Citizens United was what Brandeis cautioned against. Until we repeal this decision, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can never happen for the middle class.
The recent example of Adelson being the top donor for the GOP probably had something to do with Jerusalem becoming the new location for the American embassy, thereby making Israel a Jewish state. That was the quid pro quo for his generous contributions to Ryan and a super PAC.
7
@Donald Coureas - the same logic about a corporation's right as a "person" has led to other harms to the public.
Companies are now allowed to force the religious views of the people at the top onto employees. Access to birth control, as in the ACA law, can be simply wiped away by some person's decision that their business organization takes to its knees in a pew every Sunday.
Hobby Lobby is one example, where the owner's so-called piety means female employees lives are run by his morals. His morals, though, allowed him to spend $3 million to smuggle stolen artifacts from Iraq for his Bible Museum. I hope that's on a message board.
The Little Sisters are just as bad. Presented with the one-page form that says they don't approve of contraceptives, all they needed to do was sign it and a legal channel would have provided employees with contraceptives in a different way. Heaven forbid! They lawyered up and forced their personal decision onto their staff.
So we face corporations, and especially the corporate-theocratic complex. Wait until they start pushing their "personal" second amendment pleas.
3
The utter stupidity of equating money with speech is at the core of this exercise in legal bribery. Its right up there with the claim that corporations are people and therefore corporations have religious rights. All of this twists common sense into uncommon insanity. The Roberts court will, in the future, be seen as the most corrupt Supreme Court in modern history with Republican party apparatchiks generating decisions that promote feudalism and plutocracy rationalized only by fantastic "original intent".
6
While we're on the topic of Kennedy and corruption -- I think the retired Justice bears a closer look. His son is at Deutsche Bank, money launderer to the world, a banker to the Trumps; he negotiated his departure with Trump to ensure a conservative replacement, and then specifically negotiated for our bro Kavanaugh. This was all way too unorthodox and cozy for my liking. This is NOT how the country was meant to work. There are too many whiffs of an unpleasant smell. Roberts needs to protects the few remaining shreds of respect and legitimacy that the high court holds. It's slipping faster than he realizes.
4
Simple problem to solve if we reject two legal truths that are ridiculous: corporation are people and money is speech. Absurd. And we wonder why humans are destroying themselves and our body politic.
6
Dickens might as well have read the reasoning that the majority put into Citizens United right before writing the following:
"If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass — a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience."
Dear Congress. Please use your experience of the real world, something that Kennedy et al appear to have entirely forgotten, to undo this very bad decision.
I know, I might as well wish for a pony, but this decision is one of the worst in a very long time.
5
I believe the whole thing boils down to this: The Supreme Court says its Citizen United ruling does not allow "quid pro quo" corruption - the only type of corruption that matters in their eyes in this ruling.
I say it's blatantly obvious to your average Joe, that not only does CU not prohibit quid pro quo corruption, it legitimizes it, encourages it, and serves as the basis for an entire ecosystem of corruption. Instead of running around the country with their hands out (which they still do), they monitor the money being donated or spent on their behalf, and do the bidding of the biggest contributors. It's all hidden behind this giant legal facade that fools nobody.
I'm not a legal scholar, and I'm not a college graduate, but I am an everyman who takes care to keep abreast of political developments in my country. Citizens United is legalized bribery. I know it and everyone else I know knows it. We also know there is very little we can do about it given the money and dark forces arrayed against us.
If that's not the electorate losing faith in the the democratic process, I don't know what is.
496
@Barbyr I agree completely. I would also add that "quid pro quo" does not have to be defined as a specific act in return for another specific act. There are now donor organizations that publish "scorecards" for politicians, and use those as a measure for how much money to donate to them (or their opponents). There is no backroom handshake involved, but it is essentially advertising pay for play.
You are right to say that legalized bribery is alive and well, although those caught up in the system would tell themselves differently. The big error in the thinking on this issue is, in my opinion, an overestimation of human beings in general. Most people given a taste of money and/or power can rationalize almost any behavior if maintaining their status depends on it. By giving them the impression that they are behaving properly as long as they are not being handed an envelope of cash, we are merely reinforcing that rationalization. A better approach would be to do away with the ridiculous notion that money = speech, and admit to ourselves that succumbing to the temptation to skirt the rules as a means to an end is a dominant feature of the human psyche.
If people (supreme court justices, in particular) would just accept and acknowledge the inherent susceptibility of humans to corrupting influence, we could then begin to construct a fairer system.
44
@Barbyr Excellent, Excellent! Citizens United is against Citizens, against Democracy. It is mocking us by that title.
The politicians they buy do not care what we want, they are paid not to care. Our voices have been silenced. Why don't they just cut to the chase and swiftly kill all of us they do not need. More humane.
These desperate rich people and corporations who just do not have enough wealth need it all. All!
Citizens United is a traitor and enemy to the United States, just as the South was in the Civil war. Just would not give up their precious slavery. We my fellow Americans are the new field hands. Only difference is they cannot get a fair price for us so most of us are in their way. Think I am kidding?
Look how Citizens United tries to smear all the politicians who will not be bought. Let us stand with them, they hear us, they want to actually serve the people. There are organizations trying to get money out of politics, let us volunteer for them. Citizens United will do all in their nefarious power to destroy democracy, let us not let the slave masters win this civil war.
39
The Court declared unconstitutional large parts of Congress's attempts to clean up its own elections with restrictions on its own members' ability to raise unlimited campaign contributions. But then the Court turned around in Caperton v Massey Coal in 2009 and allowed itself to clean up judicial elections by requiring recusal for judges taking are amounts of campaign cash form litigants. The Court therefore protected the judicial system from corruption but did not allow the Congress to protect the legislative branch from corruption. Double standard.
2
But what can be done. It's grand of Edsall to lay out all the reasons Citizens United is fatally flawed and bad for the country. But short of a constitutional amendment to maybe define citizens as biological only, and to limit the Bill of Rghts to biological persons only, (which will never pass) there's nothing that can be done. It's lovely to shout at the waves, but the waves won't stop.
2
If the elites will not get their corruption in check, there will be candidates elected by the populace that will. It is coming.
6
@PLH Crawford
Hopefully. But with most American's not paying attention, things may have to get really dire before they do anything.
1
SCOTUS's ruling on Citizens United build on a long history of increasingly allowing corporations to function as "persons" under the law. That decision that money = speech as extended to corporations was not a sudden reversal of precedent, it was the logical conclusion of a fundamental mistake. The right of free speech should never have been extended to corporations in the first place. The right of free speech was always implicitly tied to the right to vote — it was safeguarded in large part to ensure that information and opinion about political action was not to be restricted, so that citizens could make unfettered and informed choices at the ballot box.
People who can vote should have free speech. Since corporations are not accorded the right to vote, the nature of their "right to speak" should be subject to reasonable limits. Unfortunately, this horse left the barn a long time ago. We are left with a crazy and nonsensical political system in which there is no effective check on big money at all.
10
For his work on Citizens United, ex-Justice Kennedy will go down in history as one of the greatest architects of American fascism. His legalistic denial of the power of money to overrun the democratic will of the people, whether simply naïve, senile, or intentionally subversive, was despicable and gut wrenching.
23
I agree with Kennedy. It’s free speech. Haven’t you ever heard, “money talks”?
@Wendy, very funny, I hope you got good shoe leather, I know I do.
Hands down, the worst SCOTUS decision in the last 100 years.
9
Blah blah blah! This is all a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo attempting to obscure the simple fact that these justices believe the rich (individuals and corporations) should control the country. Money buys access and influence. Period. Money is not speech. Period. The idea that people with more money should get more "speech" is absurdly undemocratic. Money corrupts. Period. Fully publicly funded elections are the only solution.
10
I have never forgotten the comment from Mike Mulvaney, a member of Trump's cabinet, that "If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/mulvaney-consumer-financial-protection-bureau.html
I don't for a moment think he's the only person in Congress who had this standard. I was just shocked that anyone would say it in public--in this case to a conference of bankers.
That is as close to quid pro quo as we will ever get.
7
No surprise that the US is now considered as being a failed democracy ranking lower and lower in democratic standings (references below).
As to Citizens United - dreadful and shameful. It's a no brainer - money corrupts. It's an age old saga.
This study shines the light on it:
Gilens and Page tested those theories by tracking how well the preferences of various groups predicted the way that Congress and the executive branch would act on 1,779 policy issues over a span of two decades. The results were shocking. Economic elites and narrow interest groups were very influential: They succeeded in getting their favored policies adopted about half of the time, and in stopping legislation to which they were opposed nearly all of the time. Mass-based interest groups, meanwhile, had little effect on public policy. As for the views of ordinary citizens, they had virtually no independent effect at all. “When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,” Gilens and Page wrote.
The fall of the once great American experiment.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/america-democracy-rated-donald-trump-not-fully-democratic-us-president-report-the-economist-a8195121.html
https://thinkprogress.org/democracys-lost-decade-fca7ff06f064/
11
I wanted to comment on the Handmaids waiting at the Houston airport.Wanted to also comment on The Harry Weinstein email.But I guess this will do.Yes our country taken over by money.Every person needs to vote.Can we recover from the Sheldon Adelson's of the world?Yes I think we can.But all of us need to speak truth to power.Vote like your life depends on it,because it does.
3
The U. S. is no longer a democracy but a plutocracy and looks like sliding down the path of Hungary, Poland and worse
9
Citizens United destroys the power of my single vote.
3
' Citizens United' is a most stupid ruling by politically naive and inexperienced judges, rendering a true democracy an impossible task. Have they forgotten that we humans are essentially corruptible, and that all that remains is to discuss the price we are willing to sell ourselves for? Corporate corruption, when allowed to spend whatever they see fit to buy elections is O.K., will spread indiscriminately and elect the least representative and one with the largest social distance to recognize,let alone satisfy, the needs of their constituents, a self-serving proposition. This is not democracy, plutocracy instead; actually, due to the benefits of corporate welfare by prostituted politicians doing their bidding, a klepto-plutocracy a la Trump". Ugly indeed. And in need of urgent reform if we have an ounce of decency left, and pragmatic about human resourceful twisting the truth. I just wish somebody came along and convinces me of my error, that 'money does not speak' for the 'rich and powerful'. How about a paradigm, having the government establish a generous equal amount of funds for each candidate...while prohibiting private corrupting financial influence in our elections? This, if we are serious about having a true democracy, may be a first step. We all ought not be trusted carte blanche.
1
It is about free speech. We all know, “Money talks.”
1
Why are you so excited? The GOP Supreme Court will continue this type of rulings... The GOP is for sale to the highest bidder!
2
Soooooo
How do voters without a war chest stop this train wreck killing the voters value and freedoms. ?!
The summary is: Those with money can shape the laws to give themselves more money. Bigly.
2
It became plain old corruption long before Donald Trump, the epitomy of corruption, became president. We cannot call our country a democracy when those with the deepest pockets control the reins of government, and are allowed to do so by a politicized judiciary handpicked by a party that cannot win the popular vote. Sheldon Adelman got more than a medal for his wife when he spent $50 million getting Trump elected. He got our embassy moved to Jerusalem. And Putin got even more while spending less on hacking the presidential election. He got a useful idiot to do his bidding in the White House.
2
Plain old corruption: Citizens United and the Clinton Foundation.
Money aside the real problem is stupid voters who believe anything they see or read. I do believe this was a poor ruling but it was purely republican motivated they support mega rich and in turn they get their pockets lined. Republicans are dirty and seemingly will stop at NOTHING to stay in power. The nation needs laws governing the out of control nasty ads. There should be no way of lying to the public in theses Willy Horton ads.
Republicans have destroyed American democracy at every opportunity to enrich themselves. They continue opennly with help from Russia.
So, now we have a twisted gnome like Adelson, through his bribes, essentially determining our Middle East policy. Any deaths, Jewish, Palestinian, or American that occur because of our misguided recent actions lay at his doorstep.
1
Just goes to show supreme court justices can be as stupid as some of the folks down at the local watering hole who can't understand what my bumper sticker "End Citizens United" means.
2
Let's not forget that Citizens United was decided on a 5-4 vote supported by (R)egressive justices; Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito who were appointed by (R)egressive presidents; (R)eagan, Chickenhawk George and Bush the Elder.
All hail to the pluto-corporatocracy!!
3
I recall, back in the 1970’s, when PACs were introduced to the public. The company that I worked for, as well as other companies, held all-hands meetings to lay out their reasoning explaining the need for, and importance of, PACs and why they should be supported.
It was explained that companies were limited in the amount they could contribute and that by contributing to a company organized PAC was a way for employees to have a voice in issues of concern to our industry and, by extension, our jobs. Of course, the PACs would be administered by the respective companies, in different industrial sectors, Further, if we did not get involved others would and our interests would not be heard.
Prior to this time the amount of money spent on political campaigns was an order of magnitude less than the billions spent today. Soon after enactment of the PACs the political process was awash with cash.
At the time the “pitch” was made this sounded to me like buying votes and a platform for corruption. I declined to participate. Since that time, the messy and divisive political process has not disproven my position. I have never knowingly contributed to a PAC.
If we wish to return to civility and transparency, make PACs illegal, limit presidential campaign contributions to the $3.00 provided by our IRS returns and local campaigns to a reasonable amount directly raised by the candidates campaigns.
1
The Supreme Court has made up some real whoppers to support its decisions on elections and politicis: that disclosure is the antidote to the corrupting influence of unlimited contributions (It might have assumed that Republicans would not change position and block disclosure requirements); and that times have changed and states with a history of suppression of minority voting rights no longer require supervision by the DOJ. At the same time, SCOTUS rejects contrary factual findings by Congress based on hearings and evidence. Am I out of line concluding that our court’s conservative majority simply makes up “constitutional” legalisms as needed to moot alternative facts in the record of the cases?
@Fred Frahm: "Disclosure", when it happens, is typically an overwhelming deluge of information that needs to be processed down by artificial intelligence before it can be absorbed by people.
1
Mr. Edsall clarifies the C.U. decision's missing the need to balance the government's responsibility to protect the health of the democracy with the freedom to use money to express political choice. What has always bothered me about C.U. is that unlike individual citizens, who can bring conscience and concern for the Republic into consideration, corporations are amoral entities, whose sole aim is self-enrichment, without any inherent regard or consideration for the health of democracy.
@LWoodson Also, corporations don’t die, they merge.
Since Citizens United is unlikely to be overturned by the current court, the focus should be on disclosure. Americans are at least owed the right to know who’s paying for the political attack ads they’re seeing and the possible motivation behind the money. I can’t think of a legitimate legal argument against that. Let’s start there. Perhaps sunshine will be a disinfectant and spotlight for Americans how they’re being manipulated by big money interests for disengenuous purposes.
3
Modern marketing methods are much more effective at amassing votes than voting records or candidate programs.
In fact, systematically voting against the interests of the people in one's constituency is not a big obstacle to being re-elected as long as a huge marketing budget is available to run ads that paint a different picture and that can smear the opponents.
US politics are the most corrupt of any Western country.
4
Hard cases make bad law. That is the original problem of Citizens United. CU was a hard case because it involved a movie about Hilary Clinton. It is hard to imagine a type of political speech that is more worthy of protection than a movie about a Senator and frequent candidate for President. If a political organization can't raise money to make a movie about a Presidential candidate, the First Amendment starts losing quite a bit of meaning. As for the whole argument about corporations and their rights under the Constitution, New York Times v Sullivan (1964) settled the question of whether corporations have First Amendment rights. The First Amendment hardly protects press freedoms if you can't sue reporters for libel but you can sue their employers.
1
Did you really mean TRILLIONS or billions? It seem like going from some $200m in 2010 to $1.48 trillion is a huge leap. Just a question...
@Pragmatic That was an error that has since been fixed.
@Jacob Sommer thanks
Thank you for writing this. With the daily clownshow of distraction orchestrated by Trump and the for-profit TV media spectacle, nobody even mentions Citizens United.
1
Oh the plaintive cries of those who realize that the Supreme Court is not there to write laws on their behalf.
You can't be a little bit not-free. Shutting up Citizens United would have meant shutting up unions and other organizations dear to the hearts of progressives. The "understanding", that allowed these fine organizations to have influence when others did not, got overturned by a Court that read the law and the Constitution. Too bad. Move on.
Why has no one looked into Kennedy's son who was handing out loans to the Trumps while working at Deutsche Bank?
And Kennedy retiring when he did and how he did should be part of that investigation into corrupt practices.
6
@Mimi
Wonder that myself.
@Mimi*** exactly .. there was no real reason for him to retire so abruptly. He could ave waited. He knows that Mueller will probably bring this out. Kennedy is a corrupt old man, Trump's good buddy.
Money isn't speech.
It really is that simple. Giving money to a politician always has a quid pro quo that's usually followed by corruption.
5
Reasoning requires a freedom from dogma.
Four of the five right-wing judges have extensive evangelical histories.
The poison of religious indoctrination clouds their minds. Every one repeats the propaganda that the cult of the right created. Like well groomed choir boys, they just what they have been told to do.
Dressing like an adult is not the same as behaving like one.
Money is not free speech, and Corporations do not have religious rights.
3
A wise commentator recently wrote here that he wished we would return to the days when the uber-rich took their money, built big mansions and lavished their wealth on themselves. Those were the good old days when bribes were still illegal and the wealthy more or less, left the rest of us and the government alone to go play among themselves. Today, the corruption is so blatant and shameless, it's almost surreal.
Of course, the recent tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy have made it even easier for the rich and powerful to purchase the government. Adelson's corporation realized a $700 million windfall because he paid for those tax cuts. He will simply use that extra money to buy more influence. If this doesn't strike Americans as downright wrong, then perhaps we don't really believe in the rule of law or in justice.
4
Making the issue some undefinable corruption loses the game.
Making the issue the Supreme Court playing fact finder on a political question and legislating identifies the problem. The same problem as when it overturned the congressional finding on Shelby County. Same as Heller.
What the five right wing Catholics on the Court do is legislate as a self appointed and authorized fact finding body when the five right wing Catholics don’t know or care about the facts because they have made up their minds to meet the legislative goals of the federalist society they belong to and their minds were made up at their confirmation hearings on these “facts” which they deny under oath. Case in point Justice Gorsuch who looks good next to Kavanaugh. Gorsuch hit the ground running in his activism, never before seen from the junior justice, an activism that was only possible because he arrived with an agenda. In contrast not one Roe v Wade judge arrived on the Court with an opinion or agenda on the issue that was the Roe Issue. They judged the issue.
2
When I was a tot, watching the family play poker, I wondered what was meant by, "Put your money where your mouth is."
That 2010 decision, finally, gave me the answer.
I find the suggestion that the Court was (and is) naive about the realities of political fund-raising to be silly. Why not consider the obvious possibility that these Justices prefer the embrace of corporate money in our politics to the demands of the majority of Americans who repeatedly say they want policies about improving health care for all, about electoral fairness, about taxing corporations and the very wealthy at much higher rates, about decent employment, about social security and medicare, and about quality public education from their elected officials? Justices are conservative folks and their naivete serves them well. And, if their ridiculous beliefs about political reality are held sincerely, then they are a danger to our democracy. Either way these Justices are a joke.
@Pecus: Cynics are quite aware that the Supreme Court holds itself high above any suggestion that any of its select justices could possibly indulge their own personal conflicted interests from their own high stations.
Corruption and great wealth often go together. It is why all, not a few, but all, empires fall.
That is the basis of the Republican Party, other than protecting the racist South, and pretty much everyone knows that.
Once upon a time, say just after WWII, the Republican Party stood for something, it represented the great industries and a perspective that independent action and personal responsibility resulted in a great future for individuals and for the country.
Today, it is all about gerrymandering and corruption, to protect the well off and make sure the investor class, who are getting rich on the abandonment of America by the industrial world, get theirs.
Citizens United was and is a lie.
Hugh
2
The utterly naive conclusion of Citizens United that cash flowing into campaign coffers does not constitute quid pro quo corruption would be laughable if it weren't so devastating to government of the people.
Poster Child Number One in this regard is Sheldon Adelson, who owns casinos but whose main business is cash disbursement to compliant elected officials and candidates -- all of them Republicans. To argue that his largesse is not quid pro quo corruptible is absurd. As Edsall notes, Adelson benefited handsomely from his investments in GOP members of Congress from the tax bill. And cash was behind the relocation of the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem -- a pet Adelson cause that he funded for years until he finally found someone who knows nothing about the Middle East (Trump) to do his bidding.
To paraphrase, cash corrupts, political cash corrupts absolutely.
4
Five radical Republican Supreme Court Justices declared in Citizens United that unlimited money is free speech. What does that mean: free speech?
What money does is buys organization, workers and materials for a political campaign, but more important it buys the media outlets which bombard the public with messages to tear apart opponents and present propaganda favoring its beneficiaries.
Since 2010 the amount of independent expenditures, outside money, has increased 726,000 percent. While we, the average citizen, contribute less than $100 to support our candidates, the wealthy and corporations secretly contribute millions; in total billions, now exceeding trillions of dollars. Think your voice is being heard?
Carry that thought to its logical end. In another eight years the wealthy and corporate interests may buy up every media outlet in the nation to support their candidates and destroy our candidates. Buying up all media means an opposing candidate loses his voice along with the people who support him. That's Anthony Kennedy's definition of free speech.
Mr. Kennedy (hardly deserving of the title Justice) is happy with Citizens United. He says the decision "stands for itself," but he admits he is a little bit surprised that disclosure of who is contributing the money is “not working the way it should.”
Wow! How naive? Or how blind!
The radical Republicans on the Supreme Court are turning the First Amendment of the Constitution into a democratic republic suicide pact.
3
I hope enough clues are uncovered by Mueller to possibly investigate the connection between trump, Kennedy and Kennedy`s son. This is just to obvious to be passed off as a nothing burger. After the boondoggle of SCOTUS appointments it is time to study and evaluate the presents given by the SCOTUS to the Corps and 1%. Specifically who bought the gift and who did the wrapping and which SCOTUS members were complicite in the delivery, because I can guarantee Santa didn`t have anything to do with it.
2
"Surely the justices are not benighted enough to believe that Paul Ryan and his ilk have no idea what they are doing."
Au contraire, Mr. Edsall. The conservative (Republican) majority on this corrupt John Roberts Court know precisely what was intended when they (5-4) voted to pollute the campaign finance system. They themselves benefited from their long, slow elevation to the Court by the very politicians who put them up for federal judgeships. This is the "quid pro quo," the dirty little secret that is the jumping pulse of Citizens United.
Conservatism has always been successful at hollowing out the rich (pun unintended) marrow inside the bone of political corruption. They begin, a priori, at a point in which the first and only consideration is, naturally, a human one: "what's in this for me?"
They then, with their built-in financial advantages from industry or banking or commodities (or gains arrived at by corrupt, shadowy means), construct an argument or "logic" around their starting point with the idea in mind of limiting its application to anyone not in the in-group. And by the crafty utilization of what's known as "culture wars" (race, gender, class, labor, etc.), conservatives galvanize a backlash in the electorate that wins on Election Day.
"The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy."
The translation of this willfully ignorant reading of law and custom is this: "Politics is for sale. So What?"
1
Plain and simple, allowing a corporation, or wealthy donor to use unlimited sums of money to stand in as speech negates my right to free speech. Our seeming inability to address significant problems is due to this corrupt system... climate change, virtually unlimited access to guns, inadequate oversight of our financial system, outrageous healthcare costs, inadequate pay, runaway higher education costs, indeed, income inequality itself... these are all problems that could be solved, these are all problems that the majority of us who have REAL speech abilities WANT solved. But ideological Supremes twisted the First Amendment to give wealthy folks a bullhorn and to effectively gag the rest of us.
2
@Zack How is exactly plain and simple that a rich guy buying ads "negates" your right to free speech?
It sounds like you don't want "free" speech but a system of controls where certain speakers are handicapped based on wealth or influence.
Should those controls apply to the New York Times when the Republicans are in power and Fox News when the Democrats are in power?
Isn't the First Amendment intended to insulate speakers from those sorts of top down controls and constraints?
1
@Mmm
Did you ever try to compete with a bullhorn in a crowd? Try it and then let us know.
3
The law, in its majesty, allows the rich and the poor to bribe politicians.
1
I am neither a lawyer nor scholar and feel increasingly marginalized as a citizen for it. Paul Ryan left the room so he did not want to be party to a crim and evaded any culpability.
You are guilty if you plan a bank roberry but leave the actual heist to others.
1
It appears that every dollar donated, one way or another, as a result of Citizens United is in fact a vote. So a million dollar donation buys a million dollars worth of influence.
No wonder those who don’t contribute feel disenfranchised. Their voices are rarely heard or acknowledged by those who are elected to represent them.
Really, try getting through to your congressman or senator if you have no “ name recognition.” Or if your corporation hasn’t donated to their campaign or PAC.
It’s impossible. Try it.
What you get after writing a letter or talking with a low level assistant is a form letter outlining all their accomplishments.
Citizens United is definitely free speech...but only for those who cough up the big bucks.
1
If money = speech, then those with the most money have the loudest voice and those with no money have no voice. That's an accurate description of how the right has weaponized the first amendment to corrupt our political system.
1
I do not believe that when the Founders wrote the first amendment they wanted the rich to have megaphones while the rest of us can only speak in whispers.
2
Citizen United is the worst thing that has happened to Democracy
1
Citizens United is quite simply the one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever made and it was obviously politically motivated.
If that isn’t corruption of one of the pillars of our democracy, I don’t know what is, except of course for what Trump and his enablers are doing to the executive branch which is also as plain as day.
1
The "appearance" of Sheldon Adelson's actions do not pass my smell test and I live within walking distance of my county's landfill. I believe that Citizens United was the worst Supreme Court decision in the history of that august body.
1
Corporate personhood is the infection which has sickened our government and made capitalism synonymous with corruption.
Until it is abolished there can be no real change. Unfortunately, the politicians who benefit from it are unwilling to remedy the situation, and the financial advantage of corporate subornation prevents progressive challengers from dislodging those politicians.
With our current representation there is no way for the people to wrest control of our government away from big business. Our only chance is to elect a presidential candidate in 2020 whose central campaign promise is the revocation of corporate citizenship. Then we have to hope they keep that promise and can get it done.
We're doomed.
1
We all sit idly by and abide politicians blowing smoke about "overturning" Citizens United. Another phony goal to smokescreen the reality of money-bots financing shadow campaigns that crooks like Trump just love. (That's right, the guy who claimed he didn't need OP$).
So why don't we do what all, money-hungry fiscal engineers do in this situation: TAX THE PROCEEDS!
If I give $45,000 to the homeless guy on the street, then I'm going to pay a gift tax. Why shouldn't Boeing's PAC pay the same kind of tax, when it shovels money into the campaign of a politician who will influence-peddle military contract Boeing's way? And why not tax the religious nuts, who shovel money into a PAC to elect politicians who will set about Jesus-nagging me through the law, contrary to the First Amendment?
Considering the amount of money being shoveled into these campaigns, perhaps we could stabilize Medicare and Social Security with this money. A 30% tax on that dough would go a long way toward fiscal responsibility.
Oh, and by the way, there's no reason you have to vote for the beneficiaries of this bribery. Whether it's giving speeches to Goldman Sachs or lying to the New Jersey Gaming Commission in return for dirty money, there are other choices. What? They can't win?
They can't lose, of only you'd vote for them. Why kvetch about Citizens United, when it's you who is the problem?
2
Dems need to come out with a legislative solution to this problem with the 2020 platform.
2
Independent expenditures were $1.48 trillion in 2016?
After carefully re-reading the text 1.48 trillion was in reference to expenditures since CU, not that it makes much difference to us serfs.
No one need doubt that Citizens United contributed to this country's Reublican politicans kowtowing to Donald Trump.
They understand they can get elected without concern that their constituents may not provide them the financial resources they need to win at the polls.
As bad as it is that Trump was elected, it is worse that the remainder of the Republican party supports him.
1
The absolute politicization of the highest court in the land is dismally exposing its dark underbelly....this trend is doomed to continue to undermine the very heart of democracy....
The reality of the demise of honor and values in the judicial branch leaves one shaken and hopeless...
The ugly corruption of those in power is victorious and, sadly, seems to know no limit.....
Where are the protectors and heroes?
1
In 2016, independent expenditures totaled $1.48 TRILLION????
No, no, no. That adds several zeroes to the total. The OpenSecrets estimate is $1.48 BILLION.
To put things in perspective, $1.48 billion is less than 24 hours at Wal-Mart.
1
"In 2010... $203.9 million; in 2016, it was $1.48 trillion."
That's an increase by a factor of seven thousand, or seven hundred thousand percent. Do you really mean $1.48 BILLION?
Some very smart people have been able to turn the meaning of freedom of speech into a convoluted mess. I am no constitutional scholar, but I know a thing or two about a thing or two (thanks for DeNiro's line in the movie This Boy's Life):
Corporations can't talk and they aren't humans, duh. A corporation is a bunch of buildings and papers and factories and offices.
How about a little First Amendment common sense: a one thousand dollar contribution limit per living, breathing human being. Period. And the candidate may NOT spend his or her personal fortune to inflate that figure.
A black bag full of cash in the middle of the night gets you 5 years in jail.
Easy as pie and therefore, never gonna happen.
What a sick, sad, depressing joke this has all become.
1
Excusing the Supreme Court for its ridiculous judgements because of impractical abstractions or political naïveté is asinine. The simplest among us recognize the importance of deep pockets in funding propaganda to manipulate public opinion.
“Coke or Pepsi?” is a an advertising war over nothing that both corporations understand as a battle won by dollars that neither party can ignore.
Unfortunately the choices promoted by Citizens United are more consequential, being tantamount to enabling Oligarchy.
5
We're living in one of the most corrupt times in our nation's history. I hope future historians put the blame squarely where it belongs - on the shoulders of the right flank of the Supreme Court. Roberts, Alito, Thomas, all of them. They continue to narrow the definition of corruption.
When Gov McDonnell (a Republican) came before their court after receiving multiple gifts in excess of 10,000, multiple Rolex watches, etc., in exchange for peddling his friend's vitamin oil (or whatever it was), the court said, "I can't see the pro in the quid pro quo here." Are you kidding me??? Roberts and the rest of them have essentially sanctioned corruption. They are at the heart of the current rot of this country.
2
Shortly after Ryan's Vegas bonanza, Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Adelson's wife. They're apparently for sale too.
5
Well and succinctly put!!! And that is a contribution in itself.
"The Roberts majority on the Supreme Court has consistently failed to have a clue about the consequences of its campaign finance decisions" says Fred Wertheimer.
I think in reality the Roberts majority knows full well the corrupting influence of Citizens United. How could they not? After all, Citizens United gives a rich person a heck of a lot more 'free speech' than a poor person.
2
According to the Court, Corporations are people and money is equivalent to voting. And these Justices are supposed to be the best and brightest our legal system can offer. In reality, they are simply politicians with a lifetime job and answerable to no one.
2
Tell me, what hope is there in a system where a President can nominate a wholly unqualified candidate for the Supreme Court and the Senate rams him through without preamble or addressing the concerns of the people?
What hope is there when an outgoing legislature flouts the will of the people and undermines a newly elected governor because they are of the opposite party?
Its embarrassing and frightening what is going on in this country. Republicans have a death grip on the wheel and nothing short of complete eradication is going to deter them in their unfathomable craven greed.
I've never seen the like of it. It takes my breath away.
415
Expenditure limits are much too broad of a brush to achieve the government interest in preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption in elections. In Constitution terms, dollar limits are not "narrowly tailored".
Because stripped down the argument presented is this: a private citizen shouldn't be able to indirectly contribute to campaigns or take independent action that looks like that person is contributing to campaigns (because some people may view that -- rightly or wrongly -- as corrupting elections), so we should limit the amount of ads that person can buy.
To me this is unconvincing because there are multiple different ways to get to the same policy goal of eliminating corruption (or the appearance of corruption, conceding for the moment that is a sufficiently important policy goal) short of dollar limits on political ad buying.
Like we could easily legislate against the kind of meeting that took place between Paul Ryan and Adelson by just expanding the notion of coordination to include meetings or communications by agent or proxy.
The point is you don't have to throw the Constitutional baby (Free Speech) out with the bathwater (regulating coordinated expenditures).
And by the way, Tribe's concept of an "egalitarian streak" in the First Amendment is complete nonsense. The First Amendment does not permit discrimination against a class of speakers because they are rich. I don't recall any case permitting differentiating speakers by income or wealth.
1
When sitting on the bench, one must be careful to avoid results which fall into the category of "activist legislating" -- which covers the area of trampling upon the legislative preserve of fact-finding outside of the courtroom process.
SCOTUS clearly was making up "facts" when it decided Citizen's United, just as it did when it ignored that Congress had actually done fact-finding on its last re-enactment of the Voting Rights provisions.
6
Citizens United had nothing to do with Sheldon Adelson's personal contribution to the Congressional Leadership Fund. It didn't enable it or restrict it.
The Citizens United case addressed the entirely different issue of whether the McCain-Feingold Act's bar on independent expenditures by CORPORATIONS violated the First Amendment's free speech clause. That law made it illegal for corporations to spend general treasury funds in support of a candidate or in opposition to a candidate for Federal office for 30 days preceding a primary election and for 60 days preceding a general election. Justice Kennedy wrote the Court's opinion finding the ban to be unconstitutional.
2
The power a person like Adelson holds is directly related to the fact that he has lots of money he wants to throw into the Republican Party. That isn't free speech that's brazen use of his wealth to undermine democracy, one person one vote. Adelson not only gets his political views put at the top of the Republican agenda he made 700 million dollars in the recent giant Republican tax give away. Clinton instead of campaigning would go and get a very rich person to give her a bundle of loot. That was considered hard day at the office. When Bernie Sanders started getting huge support from small contributions that disturbed the Clinton campaign. Trump by his mastery of Facebook's corrupt usage of access and Adelson money is now president. Over a trillion dollars flowed into the last election cycle. Democracy has indeed taken a holiday. Money isn't speech its power and access.
1
Our society today operates more on the principles of capitalism than on the Enlightenment principles that animated our founding fathers. Legal fictions, like "money is speech" and "corporations are people", reflect the transformation.
If money is indeed speech, it logically follows that any restriction on money in politics is a restriction on money's First Amendment rights. That perversion is the essence of the Court's decision in Citizens United.
Edsall and some commentators he cites are being disingenuous when they imply that the Court was simply naive when it failed to anticipate the corrupting effect. They knew what they were doing.
4
The research proving the conservative justices wrong was already out there. One of my professors, Thomas Ferguson, wrote about it in his book "Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems"--way back in the 1990s.
We really need a system that is about the voices of the people instead of the voices of the money. Citizens United made that a whole lot harder.
8
"Citizens United reveals the importance of having a Supreme Court completely devoid of a single individual who has ever participated in electoral politics."
This is why President Obama used an address to Congress to criticize the decision: speaking the truth to 536 people who knew the truth. Justice Alito famously refused to listen.
335
@Tom Farrell
Yes, we remember that moment well. Alito is an ideologue with blinders on 24/7, who has spent a lifetime thinking *he* has it right. A sorry choice for a job with this kind of responsibility and impact.
56
@Tom Farrell Obama was absolutely right and Alito's reaction will be his lasting disgrace. Anthony Kennedy was a Scalia in sheep's clothing. An mean, greedy old man.
23
@Tom Farrell Alito and Thomas are certainly the lightweights on the court.
3
The Supreme Court's Buckley and Citizen's United decisions have not only badly eroded public trust and confidence in the the Court and our political system but are intellectually incoherent in view of the Court's lenient stance towards government time, place & manner restrictions on flesh and blood citizens free speech rights. The Court itself prohibits citizens from demonstrating or otherwise engaging even in core political speech on the plaza or steps of the Court building itself, finding this to be a reasonable such restriction. Yet engaging in public protest is far closer to verbal or written speech (after all, protest usually includes both of those, chants, signs, etc.) than is merely writing a check. Spending money is conduct, certainly much more 'mere' conduct than engaging in in a protest or demonstration. If the Court were following and fairly applying it's own precedents and jurisprudence political spending should be subject to reasonable restrictions and regulations analogous to time place and manner regulation. Since the Court has or at least the Republican majority of the Court has, treated rich American's speech-related conduct (spending Money) so differently from ordinary Americans speech-related conduct (demonstrating), Americans are well justified in drawing the logical reasonable inferences that flow respecting the actual motivations of the Court's conservative majority.
4
@KenC The law treats campaign contributions differently from expenditures on ads and the like.
Campaign contributions can be limited and regulated.
But buying ads is in fact considered protected by the First Amendment; otherwise free speech would only protect yelling on the corner and not modern communications.
Your idea that expenditures can be limited because it is "conduct" not speech is not an argument that is considered persuasive or serious in the Constitutional debate.
@Mmm
Yes, let's talk about that gorilla in the middle of the room - "modern communications". Our Constitution and the First Amendment were written before the invention of electricity and mass communications. It is a different world we live in. Values can only hold if laws take into account that technology has changed.
For the same reason that yelling "Fire" without legit cause in a crowded theater is illegal (restricted exits = danger of stampede), monopolizing the public's available attention span through relentless advertising fueled by unlimited political $ should be stopped. We used to have some protection through the Fairness Doctrine. That is gone. We need new laws that prevent wholesale monopoly of modern mass media.
Agreed, it's a challenging problem, especially when Twitter and FB are "free". It's just the communications scaffolding underlying the constant messaging that isn't. But when you consider that the Constitution and Amendments were written in quill pen by candlelight, perhaps we can muster the ingenuity to address the complex problems of freedom, making the most of our time in the remaining twilight of our democracy.
1
@Mmm
Sorry but Citizens United is not about buying advertisements . Ads can be and are regulated all the time. For example, pharmaceutical ads have to be approved by the FDA before they can be published and securities offerings must be approved by the SEC. The Citizens United debate is about whether so-called independent expenditures, allegedly in support of ideas or policies, but usually really, as Mr. Edsall so ably explained, in support of particular candidates or parties - can be regulated, just as you correctly point out more straightforward campaign contributions are. And the entire Constitutional argument is exactly whether such expenditures are more like verbal or written speech or conduct. The question is simply whether spending money is a form of speech - or something else.
"... But despite some prominent liberal counterexamples, rich Americans tend to support the economic policies from which they have so greatly benefited. This raises the disturbing prospect of a vicious cycle in which growing economic and political inequality are mutually reinforcing."
This effect is known as positive feedback. It continues until instability occurs, then God help us.
I hoped to leave this nation a better place for my children and grandchildren. I'm not sure tha's even possible now.
7
This column highlights the importance of the Republican obstruction of the nomination of Merrick Garland, the confirmations of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and the looming possibility of Trump gaining a third SCOTUS nomination: The Supreme Court is now solidly Republican for the next 20-30 years, meaning there is little to no chance Citizens United will be overturned during this time. Chief Justice Roberts' declaration that there are no politically aligned judges rings more hollow than ever.
8
A British politician, commenting on American elections, recently said that we no longer choose our politicians, our politicians now choose their voters - this is no way to run a democracy and is the very essence of what we have done to our republic through decisions like Citizens United and the unwillingness of the Supreme Court to address the problem of partisan gerrymandering. Mr. Edsall's well-supported essay clearly demonstrates that the Court's actions and inactions have produced results that directly contradict their stated intention (preserving political speech) by opening the door to plutocracy - the creation of an economic aristocracy that rules the nation. Money may be speech, but it is also corruptive. This issue is one in which the Court's actions are crucial as a check on the executive and the legislature - the principle of "money as speech" virtually guarantees that neither elected branch has an incentive to examine or self-regulate its election finance activities through legislation or executive order. Citizens United will stand among the Court's greatest mistakes, assuming the republic survives it.
266
@gandhi102
Money may be speech, but corporations are not people. let alone citizens. Only citizens should be allowed to contribute to political campaigns.
20
@gandhi102 Don't forget another egregious decision by the Roberts Court, which was voiding crucial parts of the Voters Rights Act of 1965 -- on the grounds that minorities were no longer being discriminated against in many of the states/districts covered by the act, so why protect them? In the meantime, of course, precisely the usual suspects once constrained by the VRA have implemented all sorts of measures meant to keep black people and other minorities from the polls.
The Roberts Court--with Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy--was bad. But I fear that with Gorsuch and Kavanaugh it will be worse. After all, they both accepted their nominations knowing full well that the Senate had refused to consider the legitimately nominated and highly qualified Merrick Garland, without holding even one hearing. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are both illegitimate and both beholden to the corrupt party and president that put them on the court. This does not bode well for American jurisprudence and democracy.
21
@Kris: Couldn't agree more.
8
The argument put forward by Justice Kennedy that corruption depends upon whether others buy into that corruption is bogus. Why do the moneyed powerful buy into giving away their millions to political causes unless they have the hope that they can influence an election inordinately? It is the intent on the part of these 'corporate' people that determines their corruption.
Citizen's United has sanctioned the economic disparity between the few rich and everyone else to the point that our democracy is almost unrecognizable. It is ironic that Ryan had to go to the money Adelson shrine in Las Vegas to find approval and cash as our government has become a roulette wheel where the house always has a foot on where the wheel stops and who is the winner. It is also ironic that Trump should honor Ms. Adelson with the Medal of Freedom for her efforts, but freedom for whom? Sometimes on powerful moneyed faction wins and others lose, but the corruption is always there.
129
@just Robert: The USA is Paradise on Earth for con artists, and courts that decide nothing feast on the disputes arising from it.
13
@just Robert
Do you suppose that Ryan and the other "petitioners" are required to genuflect and kiss Mr. Adelson's ring?
7
The entire Gross Domestic Product of the United was $18.26 trillion in 2016. So how is it possible that independent expenditures on political matters were $1.48 trillion? Are you quite sure about this number?
1
Anthony Kennedy could not be more wrong. Special interest hijacking our agenda, against the will of the voters, has hurt not only faith in our Democracy but the Democracy itself. When the interests of a few wealthy donors is more important than anything else, we are all in trouble.
256
@Alk: Dark money dopes the media just as thoroughly as prescription drug advertising.
17
We can dispense with the legalities in this discussion. People such as Gorsuch and Kavanaugh don’t bother to hide their view that legalities are pretexts to reach pre-defined conclusions. The Citizen United decision was taken, because the Republican Party thought it would guarantee their power. End of story.
There’s no standard of reason for decisions on the Supreme Court. All it takes is a pretext, there’s no one to say it’s a lie.
5
@Jerryg: Giving a the Supreme Court infinite latitude to deny standing on all issues it doesn't want to rule on is just another big fat insult to intelligence in the US.
1
Since a Corporation is now defined as a person, why not just limit all individual campaign donations to $2500 and the same for an entity defined as a PAC ?
That makes the Koch Bros., Tom Steyer and George Soros and Sheldon Adelson, Google, Facebook, GE and Disney equal to me.
It’s legislation that requires one typed page of language. Any of our newly elected Congress-persons can write it. It would poll at 90% in favor. Of course Mitch McConnel will never allow it to come to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Let Senators up for re- election run against it.
7
This, I think is the most important issue on our horizon, and like many of our issues, one which is going to be difficult, almost impossible to change, but not impossible to change because no one in our ruling class wants to change it.
It is the root of so many of our other problems. Income inequality, the rush to outsource jobs, the giant mess that is our immigration system, our inability to do anything about global warming, our expensive, complicated and ineffective health care system.
Republicans are the ones who mostly benefit from granting the wishes of the ruling class but Democrats have a hand in the game too--and their own set of billionaires to please. Meanwhile the average person is finding his or her life increasingly difficult.
Is it any wonder that voters are increasingly cynical?
5
What about the NRA increasing its campaign contributions for Trump by nearly $10MM from the previous election cycle (a reported $36MM) and then soon after (earlier just this year) lamenting that they might be near bankruptcy?
Where did this record breaking expenditure come from, especially if they were in such financial distress mere months later? They have reluctantly disclosed the reality of some Russian donors to their organization but why are they courting any international support at any level in the first place?
This story, only one in the wash of dark money drowning our elections, has not had enough reporting.
6
How the American public is robbed and democracy destroyed - first unions are eliminated and the corporations thus freely drive down their costs by sending production to countries with low labor costs, reducing or eliminating jobs and destroying the idea of paying a living wage to Americans. Corporations then drive up the prices of their products in order to provide shareholders and officers with huge salaries and returns. The corporations then pay political parties to support them instead of the public. Taxes are cut for corporations and the wealthy, deficits are increased astronomically and thus support systems for the public must, must be cut. Rules for oversight or limitations on corporate destruction of the climate and fraud on consumers are eliminated. Individual congress people now understand that the party is everything, their source of money and jobs. The people are irrelevant. And in order to reinforce that notion, the Republicans/politicians gerrymander and suppress the vote in order to ensure the ROI for the PAC oligarchs. And so democracy dies.
6
"In 2010, independent expenditures totaled $203.9 million; in 2016, it was $1.48 trillion. In this nonpresidential year, with final reports still to come, independent expenditures totaled at least $1.18 trillion."
Isn't this billion, not trillion. 1.18 trillion divided by a population of 327 million would be spending of $ 3,609 per capita, but 1.18billion divided by the same population would be $ 3.61 per capita - quite a difference.
3
Democracy means government by the people, i.e., government by the majority. Our founding fathers were concerned that, unlike them, the majority of citizens were not wealthy, and were the majority to vote in their own best interests, particularly interests different from those of the wealthy (indeed today to an exceeding degree exact opposite interests), they wanted to make sure, though the form of government was supposedly a democracy, that those elected to make the laws represented above all the best interests of the wealthy minority first.
Eventually, however, now that the vote has been won by all citizens, the wealthy and powerful have had to find other ways to thwart the will of the majority. Such as, with the connivance of five right wing Supreme Court Justices with their disingenuous Citizens United decision, by making it legal for the wealthy minority to use what they do have a majority of, namely money, to use it without limit to greatly advantage and influence who is able to run and get elected, undermining the fundamental principal of a democracy, i.e., one man/woman, and thus undermining democracy itself.
Equating money with free speech is ridiculous. Money can bribe, speech cannot.
167
@ELB: Religion is another neglected interference in the political process in the US. Failure to enforce "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" is key to it.
30
@ELB
How exactly is the will of the majority thwarted by a bunch of political ads on TV?
Are voters automatons who just vote for the candidate with the most ads?
1
@Mmm: In answer to the question posed at the end, yes,bsone voters are automatons who aren't educated in critical thinking. There lies the problem.
11
Mr Edsall,
The "Supreme Court" is simply another branch of the Republican Party. The Republican Party is today's America only business which is to control and gain total power.
The is obvious, everywhere one looks, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, trump and our very own Legislature, McConnell and Ryan. Total power is everything and corrupts totally.
3
What Citizens United and Janus have in common. In both cases money became part of the First Amendment on freedom of speech. In other words freedom of speech=money. And Corporate America was the winner in both cases.
3
@Wilbray Thiffault
Yes. This is a most important point and, to my way of thinking, a fundamental error by the court. It has paved the way for allowing corporations to have "freedom of speech" equivalent to that of, you know, actual human beings. This, in turn, has enabled a growing number of so-called religious freedom cases to be decided in favor of the religious beliefs of the corporations.
2
@Wilbray Thiffault: There are two prohibitions in the first amendment. Congress is specifically denied power to enact laws that incorporate and/or enforce articles of religious faith, or laws that interfere with voluntary adult participation in religious services.
@Larry: These naifs are in denial of the fact that corporations are legal inventions to amplify and immortalize the intentions of their managements. Each is a huge megaphone for its CEO.
As a shareholder, I want to make my own decisions about political donations. In other words, I would like to be treated exactly as these managements wish to treat labor with the added dividends I should get by elimination of the expense to the corporation of political donations. I am also disgusted with this court's failure to appreciate that "free exercise" of religion is voluntary, not coerced. Nobody has the right to force others to participate. Observe that Trump did not recite prayers in the funeral services for Bush. I would not have either.
In the world of science and technology, when a problem arises, the team trying to solve it always performs "root cause analysis". This is a well known process of of asking "why" a symptom occurs until the actual root cause is identified. Only then can the problem be solved.
Apply this tool to the systematic dysfunction of the US government today, and Citizens United will emerge as the root cause problem EVERY TIME.
The US simply ceased to be a representative democracy in 2010 with the passage of CU, and will simply deteriorate into oligarchy until it is overturned.
Climate change is the most glaring example. We face an existential threat that will literally render the earth uninhabitable, but the US government will take no action in the interest of the population. Why? Congress and the Presidency is completely beholden to fossil fuel corporate profit interests. Why? Congress and the Presidency receives overwhelming fiscal campaign support from corporations, not actual citizens (real people). Why? Citizens United, which declares corporations are people, and gives unlimited power to the wealthy. There's your root cause.
Every citizen who wants to save our democracy should read CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE by Jeffrey Clements, and fight Citizens United to the death, because it IS a fight to the death for our democracy.
11
Perhaps the answer to unequal political power created by unequal distribution of wealth, lies in addressing the distribution of wealth, as opposed to the expenditure of those possessing the disproportionate portion of the wealth? The 90% income tax rate ( see the tax rates from the 40's through the 80's a period of historical levels of equitable distribution of wealth) would solve myriad problems. e.g.; political corruption of Citizens United; universal health care; infrastructure deterioration; etc. Yes appropriate taxation could do a great deal of good, for the common weal!
6
@tbs: If an innovator doesn't take the offer of a giant like Amazon to buy their company, the giant will just reverse-engineer it. If the innovator goes to court with the standing of a patent, the patent will probably expire before the courts reach a decision.
@Steve Bolger: What?
The courts have regularly upheld laws and regulations pertaining to anti-trust legislation. It is conceivable that a corporation like Amazon or Walmart would provide the best value to consumers with an unbridled share of the marketplace, but corporations are regulated to promote innovation and competition. It stands to reason that a society would endeavor to limit influence in order to promote innovation and competition in it's political system.
2
"Allowing government to control who can spend enough to get heard on a grander scale would render freedom of speech illusory."
Maybe free speech as a function of political campaigns should be limited. We don't each get unlimited votes, which, if you're working the edges of the problem, are also a form of political speech. So if the rule of thumb is supposed to be one person one vote, maybe we should all be allotted the same amount of financial political speech, if you follow. One vote and five dollars worth of speech, or fifty dollars worth, whatever the number.
Because the flip side is that if money equals free speech full stop, then those with more money get more free speech. And that ain't right.
7
Unless someone is offering me cash to vote a certain way, and that has not yet happened to me at least, then money is not buying votes. All the ads in the world are not going to change my deeply held beliefs, nor will they convince me that a particular candidate will support them.
@mikecody While I recognize your alliegance to your deeply held beliefs, to claim that no one is influenced by what they see on television (in the form of political ads created by Super PACs) is extremely naive and lacking in evidence, whereas there is plentiful evidence to the contrary. You might remember that a campaign ad featuring a picture of Willie Horton, a murderer who was inadvertantly granted work parole, sunk the Dukakis campaign. This year I saw something in PAC ads that I'd never seen before: outright lies about opposing candidates. This kind of negativity and corruption disillusions many and eats at the very fabric of our democracy. Your statement about your beliefs also says to me that you are closed-minded and that despite evidence to the contrary, you will continue to believe as you do, so I don't expect you to admit to the dangers that the Citizens United decision unleashed upon the American electorate.
1
@mikecody
I think the 'Me" in "convince me" is important. Are you the standard by which we should judge everyone?
1
@Nina RT If some group spent millions on ads stating that Citizens United was the savior of our democracy, would you change your mind about it? I very much doubt that it would. That is my point about deeply held beliefs.
There is a reason the Republicans appoint Federalist Society judges and it rarely has to do with their judicial pedigree. The Republican party is bought and paid for by certain business interests. Republicans help them make money, and they help Republicans win and retain their positions. It is a classic symbiotic relationship and also classically corrupting of our government. Republicans see retaining power as their guiding principles and care little that they are elected to serve the interests of their voters and country. Until their voters realize that, things will not change.
17
An item the media mostly overlooks is that the media itself benefits from just about half of the expense pie of the money spent on campaigns.
Why doesn't the media report on this?
In reforming legislation regarding campaign finance law, what about requiring the main beneficiary of money spent - the Media - to provide a certain amount of free advertising.
Interesting that in Norway political ads are banned in the media.
I'd vote for that!
8
The real problem with Citizens United is that as along as it works, nothing will change.
And seeing how this money-worshiping country is not at risk of having too few individuals who accumulate vast amounts of wealth to dispense at their pleasure -- and these days they all appear to have a strict conservative Republican agendas, and how Donald Trump will continue to pack the Supreme Court with those who will only do his bidding, it's all but clear that Citizen's United is going nowhere.
5
"The Roberts majority on the Supreme Court has consistently failed to have a clue about the consequences of its campaign finance decisions".
On the contrary, the Republican justices know exactly what they are doing. Their decisions are not "naive", they are calculated to give maximum advantage to their own party, which is devoted to corporate interests above all. Republicans or "conservatives" have developed very sophisticated networks for getting their people into judgeships - are those for whom these networks operate completely oblivious to what is going on? Do they know nothing of the publications of the Federalist Society and never speak to its members? The decisions of the Republican judges are often radical, not conservative. The idea that corporations have all the rights of individuals was certainly not in the minds of the Founding Fathers.
20
This really isn't really about the law or any principles of fair play. This is about protecting the wealthy and powerful.
24
@Scott
Worse...it is about making the wealthy and powerful even more wealthy and powerful. A full return to the bloodthirsty, authoritarian kleptocracy of the Middle Ages.
2
The article makes this quite: “Citizens United reveals the importance of having a Supreme Court completely devoid of a single individual who has ever participated in electoral politics. This helps to reinforce, I believe, the tendency of the Justices to think in terms of arid formalistic abstractions — including Kennedy’s views about corporations and the First Amendment — rather than address the actual realities of our political system.”
To suggest the Supreme Court has a confusion over abstractions and a greater naiveté about politics than grade schoolers is simply finding an unbelievable excuse for their actions.
What is the real reason for such blindness to reality?
5
My guess as to the Supreme Court’s support of Oligarchy is just that some on the Court do believe in paternalism. - the desires of the “great unwashed” cannot be trusted; like these Judges (in their own opinion), the Oligarchs have a better grasp of what must be done and should be given sway.
1
The fact that corporations can buy their politicians is now being done in the open like so many of the Laws that Trump breaks in the open. If they are done openly, people accept them. We are now a country run by money and corporations, with the “elected” reps as phony stand ins, pretending to serve their country while collecting money to do the bidding of a few.
27
The flawed logic of Citizens United isn't hard to understand: if money is speech then having little or no money is no speech. In other words, some people are more equal than others.
275
@LAO transparently so.
3
If it is unconstitutional to limit these flows of dark money, maybe we should focus on taking the "dark" out of the equation. These donations are flowing through tax exempt entities. We can (after one more election, perhaps) make the continuation of the tax exemptions these entities receive conditional on disclosing the names of donors.
21
@Bob23: Foreign money is prohibited fron US elections, and dark money is the loophole that defeats the purpose of the law.
6
@Bob23 Good idea, but not far enough. We need to make it a legal requirement that any organization which contributes to a candidate or runs 'public service' ads on issues, and any organization which contributes to such advertisers, needs to make their entire membership list public. While we may not be able to eliminate politicians being bought off, at least we will know who is doing the buying.
8
@Steve Bolger
"Foreign money is prohibited from US elections"
But that didn't exactly stop the Russians, did it?
1
"But despite some prominent liberal counterexamples, rich Americans tend to support the economic policies from which they have so greatly benefited." In other words corruption breeds more corruption, not the cleansing that Kennedy and some of the others think might happen. Money is a powerful means of seducing a person. If the person being seduced is an elected official and the sum is great enough one can almost guarantee that the will of the donor will be carried out. It may not be obvious or done transparently but it will be done whether or not it's good for the nation.
We have a democracy being run, not by, for and of the people of the United States but by, for, and of the richest. Those richest do not have our best interests in mind. They have their pocketbooks, wallets, and investments in mind. Money talks. Actually it shouts and its allure blinds us to the downside of taking large sums and attempting to remain impartial.
40
@hen3ry To quote Bob Dylan: "Money doesn't talk, it swears."
2
I think it was Justice Stephens who once said "we usually intend the logical consequences of our acts."
While at the time he was referring to the Equal Protection clause, the same can easily be said about what the court did in Citizen's United.
The divide in the country, and on the court is between competing wings of the ruling elite to first, continue to rule, and secondly to steer the the country through the increasingly destructive oscillations of boom and bust cycles of capitalism.
In 1934 the Democrats under FDR held sway and offered their Keynesian solution. But since then the opposing wing has fought tooth and nail to reverse those policies and replace them with extreme versions of neoliberalism.
Following the Infamous Powell memo of 1972, the Federalist Society was created, and funded by its capitalist wing for the purpose of enlisting the judiciary in this struggle. The court that gave us Citizen's United is the culmination of that effort.
Big capital now reigns supreme and what once was political bribery is now perfectly legal. Capital is not expressing ideas or buying access, they are buying results. As pointed out, Adelsohn's 30 million investment resulted in a 700 million windfall.
The court knew exactly what it was doing and parsing nuances in the opinion will not make that clearer than it already is.
It may take decades to undo this damage. Sadly, it may take another financial collapse, or worse a global warming disaster to steer a new path.
63
@drspock We're being served a global warming disaster right now, yet the party that benefits most from Citizens United and its corruption, the Republicans, completely deny climate change even as the voters who support them lose homes and possessions repeatedly to massive fires and hurricanes caused directly by the industrial pollution created by the corporations that support them. It can't be any clearer that Republicans have lost all interest in the welfare of the American people and have simply been bought by corporations. Donald Trump is a direct beneficiary of Citizens United in that his corruption is tolerated and supported because he enacts policy beneficial to these corporations while doing nothing for those who actually need the power of the presidency to initiate global initiatives to save our dying planet.
3
@drspock
The Wisconsin GOP declaring their gerrymandered majority of representatives trumping the 54% popular majority voting for the Dems as a clear mandate of the people to govern and to strip the incoming Governor of any power, is the same bad faith from private polluter and other robber baron profit greed at malicious work, to the detriment of us, the people.
Still this is also democracy at work, in that it is a perfect reflection of the poor state of the 'swing vote' of our beliefs. Rather mindless loyalty to traditionally inherited primitive religious dogma hell-bent on the exclusivist enjoyment of a 'heaven' they reserve for themselves as the divinely chosen is still steering the popular swing vote, even when largely subconsciously.
The condemnation blab from the Fix It Again Tony's and Capones of FoxNews, and the judicial opinions of their counterparts on the Modern Supreme Inquisition Court doling us our doom, blend in perfectly with the brimstone fire of eternal damnation that pastors pass on with passion.
Another parallel to 'justice' by C.U. or 'Kleptocracy Brett and hyper partisan Butter' or Gorsuch orthodoxy is the form that Morsi sought to impose on Egypt and that Erdogan's judges are imposing on Turkey.
The way our planet gets flown through the galaxy resembles the 4th plane at 9/11. Our democratically chosen pilots have been taken out. The resistance among the passengers is signaling to each other they need to roll to try and prevent the inevitable end.
2
Nothing would benefit our democracy so much as reversing Citizens United and giving each candidate a fixed amount of money with which to campaign.
60
@Howard
So true. And after reversing Citizens United, nothing would benefit our democracy more than getting of the Electoral College.
10
When real people, including Supreme Court Justices, eat and drink from the Federalist Society trough so generously funded by right wing extremist billionaires, their foundations, and their corporations, the natural consequence is to believe that their benefactors are right in their extreme personal beliefs about 'Liberty Over All' and that their money is a form of 'Free Speech' whose sources must be kept 'very private' but not be limited.
It must be something in the water at those meetings.
Could it be "Kool-Aid?"
The corruption of government by "dark" money and loss of public faith in our form of governance is evident in every state, but especially in those states where minority Republicans hold political power and subvert elections and the expressed will of the people.
67
To me, the initial, historic error, was ever finding that these artificial constructs, corporations, have any inherent rights at all. They are creations of governments, either by law or benign neglect. Their rights must then come from their creator- legislators.
To give them rights belonging only to humans- then expanding those rights to include giant megaphones of money, to drown out human voices- to discourage humans from running for office because they can’t afford a larger megaphone- is that bridge too far.
Corporation, robots, self-driving cars, Alexa, computers.....are not people. We created them. And we must control them. Our Supreme Court needs to revisit many past decisions on corporations- or we creators need to redefine them, shrink them, give them, legislatively, limited, regulated rights. That benefit humans, not supersede them.
52
@Jo Williams If corporations are not legal persons, then they could not be sued. If your wheel falls off you automobile, you would need to sue the person who did not fasten in on correctly or the individual who improperly designed it. I do not think that would be a very practical idea, do you?
Is it restricting 1st Amendment rights when disallowing unlimited campaign "contributions" that can purchase the allegiance of the candidate, or, protection of our election system?
True, a balance must be found between the corruption that unlimited contributions can spawn and those constitutional rights.
I do believe that Justice Kennedy had it wrong in his opinion that stated we would not lose faith in our democracy. Many will agree and disagree. However, when viewing our political landscape we see the worst politicians that money can buy winning elections due to the corruption that money fathers.
9
The US faces a serious threat to the foundations of our constitutional system from the Republican Party’s policy and process radicalization coupled with its hold on the Supreme Court. The Court’s highly activist Republican wing has long demonstrated a willingness to overturn a wide range of pro-democracy laws, including on campaign finance and voting rights, as well as policies supported by Democrats and passed by Congressional majorities, such as (in the case of four justices) the entire ACA. All indications are that the Court’s conservative majority has become nakedly partisan. Democrats must seriously consider expanding the Court if and when they next control Congress and the White House or else face a complete block on their ability to pass significant legislation.
11
@Westchester Guy: The Supreme Court is leading the US into theocracy.
3
So, the real problem isn't the money, per se, but that the votes are for sale - and it's a buyer's market.
If voters were able and willing to make informed choices based on policy, the money wouldn't matter.
8
@Emeritus Bean just where do you think the "informed choices" voter would get the information? I agree with you at a top level but when I think about it just a bit I realize that all this money is necessary to publish the information.
@TommyB
There is a grain of a point in what you write, but there are plenty of sources of freely available legitimate, intelligent information (e.g., PBS, NYT, the Economist). Of course, there is also a lot of trash presented as (FOX) news, but that is what people seem to want. Bottom line is that the money is used to give people what they want, which does not seem to include factual information or in depth analysis of the world they live in. Who gets the blame for that?
On issue after issue, polls show that the laws passed by Congress increasingly run counter to the preferences of a solid majority of citizens. Further, members of Congress, that is, those who don't take their seats already wealthy, leave office far more wealthy that when they arrived in DC. Corruption? You make the call. Tribe would make an excellent Supreme Court Justice. Instead we get the ranting partisan hack Kavanaugh.
35
Money buries facts. We know which party has voted consistently to increase the amount of money that pollutes America's political system and government, as well as hide the identity of the big donors, and we know which has attempted to reduce it and open the records.
When there was a reasonable campaign season with reasonable costs, campaigns hammered the opposition and then elected representatives worked together on the people's business. Today they must remain at war with the opposition and in perpetual campaign mode.
Perpetual political campaigns are expensive, divisive and harmful to our nation.
In the 2012 election cycle alone $6.3 billion was spent on Federal campaigns and as soon as the 2016 cycle ended the 2018 cycle began, (soon followed by the even more contentious and expensive 2020 cycle). The result of that much money in politics is the further rise of the Perpetual Campaign Industry, (P.C.I.).
Most Americans would agree that the hate and divisions engendered by perpetual campaigning does not benefit the nation, but does reward those who finance the campaigns; the major media companies with 24 hour TV news stations, blathering talking heads; political consultants; ad agencies; paid internet bloggers; radio demagogues, political think tanks; news papers and thousands of lobbyists.
Political war benefits the American plutocracy, which profits from a divided populace and government gridlock.
30
Others here have touched on how the Citizens' United decision basically indicates that money equals speech, and it is hard to see how any useful campaign finance reform is possible as long as the courts and the theorists make that equation.
I am much in favor in barring all campaign contributions from any organized entity that is not an individual person--PAC's, corporations, unions--and severely limiting the maximum contribution said individuals can give to each candidate during each election cycle to the low three figures. That would have to be done with public funding of elections, which most sane countries have, and would help put individuals on more level ground.
But, I am alive to the argument that other sane countries do not have First Amendment considerations.
So, I wonder if doing something like re-legislating the Fairness Doctrine might be a reasonable first step. It's hard to counter the access and quid pro quo the money buys, but at least we can address the platforms that the money monopolizes by requiring, through law, expanded access to them, mandating that media outlets must allow expression of diverse views and must set aside equivalent forums for them; this would not only include TV/radio/newspapers but on-line outlets, which should be treated like public trust utilities anyway.
At least until we, as Jerry Englebach wrote, get the gumption to sharply limit the power and mandate of the corporation.
21
The idea that the Supreme Court was "clueless" is laughable. The Five Republican operatives on the court knew exactly what they were doing. Furthermore, whatever happened to the concern that Anthony Kennedy's son was Trump's personal banker at Deutche Bank?
42
What is accelerating the perforation of sociopolitical fabric beyond repair? I cannot seek solace in explanations that point to voter apathy; 140 million Americans voted this midterm. What explains CU then? CU is corruption at the highest level (does it get any higher than the SC?), and it reflects who we are as people.
Are we now feeling so hopeless, that what we have turned nihilist and gone straight up East European in our sensibility? I.e., convinced beyond reason that the powerful people should become more powerful so they can kill our neighbors' cows?
Consider the following. It is the people who cannot survive if they miss the next paycheck, and could not put together $1500 for an emergency surgery to save their life (likely about 30-40% of all American households) - who want to make sure that the super rich can get super duper rich by controlling the political process.
It is the people who rely entirely on a government that works and provides law and order, protects their 401K, provides for infrastructure and education; i.e., white collar suburbanites who vote republican - who want CU to gut and corrupt the government. They have bought into the Brietbart-fed notion that we need to destroy the establishment. They are okay with the consequences; i.e., uneducated children, crumbling infrastructure, black skies, and undrinkable water.
Your amazingly researched article is pointing to some deep rot within us.
35
The 4 (Catholic) judges and Thomas are asleep at the wheel, living in an abstract world and if ever there was a case of "legislating from the bench", this is it. Perhaps their patriarchal religious beliefs give them comfort that the powerful an monied will always do the right thing. Perhaps they just want to keep power for their chosen political party (although Chief Justice Roberts has asssured us that politics have nothing to do with any rulings). Perhaps they have been groomed in workshops by the foundations that pluck juducial aspirants from fancy law firms and indoctrinate them in all the boxes they must check to advance with a Federalist Society recommendation.
Regardless of the why (which nary a one will ever admit to) the fact is the what - they have made up a new thoery that corporations are indeed people and somehow the constitution states that money is indeed speech. We wait for these 5 Solomon like originalists to show us the paragraph in the constitution where this is written. Sadly, the Roberts Court will be ragrded by the history books as a sadly misguided group of idealogues.
33
Thomas is Catholic.
@JerseyGirl Thanks. I thought he was educated in Catholic schools but was not sure if he was a full member.
" a Supreme Court incapable of applying either reason or common sense to stop the madness."
"Incapable" is far too mild a term. It is not incapable; it is intransigent. The supreme court, itself, is corrupted by money. They are protecting themselves by protecting their benefactors, and they are free to do so for the rest of their lives. The Roberts court will go down, in whatever history is left after climate change has run amok due to the influence of those same benefactors, as the most corrupt in our history.
I never had any particular feelings about the supreme court until Bush v. Gore in 2000. It has been all downhill from there. Now, I hate the court. It is despicable because it is corrupt and no longer deserving of any trust or respect.
The policies of the libertarians are not serving us. Period. I could say "this will not end well" but it will end and sooner rather than later. Climate change is not slowing down and we are one of the large mammals that will not survive thanks in part to the Roberts court and Citizens United.
27
It does not matter how big the words are or how complex the sentence is that big words are used in there will never be a way to convince this observer that speech and money are equivalent. Speech=money can never be a true statement regardless of how you want to rationalize money with speech. The object of the rationalization as first described in this article is corruption no matter how many degrees of separation you put between Paul Ryan and the donor. It is a surprise that supposedly brilliant legal minds cannot bridge the simple idea that there is no equality between speech and money which is a conclusion that every layman can reach easily without any qualms about being wrong.
16
Can someone please explain to me how Sheldon Adelson and the Jerusalem embassy are not quid pro quo? I'd really like to know how a case can gain standing to prove quid pro quo in campaign contributions. I'm sure examples abound. However, if Kennedy is assuming the absence of corruption, there must be a means to legally challenge that theory. Otherwise, Kennedy was wrong to ever make the decision and the decision is rightfully overturned. The court should have drawn a map before the horse left the barn.
If someone would please draw me a blueprint, I would really appreciate it.
7
Mr. Adelson has been ducking prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for years. the allegation is that he paid money bribes to further his casino interests in China, I believe.
his approach to dealing with the fallout of those bribes is to pay money bribes here in the USA to avoid prosecution, and to further his other interests. he does this because he has a lot of money and because he knows it works. he pulls a variation on this deal in Israel as well.
so, how come Sheldon Adelson, the biggest Republican "donor" of them all, just because he has money gets to have more "speech" than I do?
I think that's supremely unfair.
3
Kennedy defense of rampant corruption is evidence (if any were needed) of just how obtuse members of the supreme court can be. His non answer to a direct question says it all.
19
Given the Supreme Court decision that independent PAC's can take any amount of money from corporations and individuals and even hide the donors' identities with non-profit surrogates quid pro quo corruption is guaranteed and a bidding war for the affections and government decisions of the politicians who run our government proceeds apace. The only solution that avoids running afoul of the Supreme Court's limited view of the First Amendment is unlimited public matching funds for small dollar individual donors at ten times the rate of the individual donations up to the total amount contributed to PAC's that produce advertisements run in any given federal election. The more business funded attack ads the PAC's create the more public funding the target candidates will have to respond.
6
It seems the three branches of the government today are in agreement with one and another, especially in terms of the role that money is playing in every form of our government. The positions reflect the will of the voters, because the voters have chosen the very politicians who represent these values, or more accurately, a lack of values.
It does not seem honest to elect people to office who promise to act in one manner, then to be angry when they do act.
1
@David Kimball
except that those running for office themselves are not honest about their promises.
I not convinced you can call it the will of the people, when they have been manipulated with lies and obfuscation (not to mention gerrymandering and voter obstructionism). On the other hand, it is our responsibility to pull our heads out of the sand.....not allow ourselves to be manipulated by fear or greed, nor to turn a blind eye, nor allow others to be disenfranchised of their voting rights.
The simplest solution would be to allow unlimited contributions to the actual campaigns, provided they are properly disclosed.
The candidate would then be responsible for the contributions accepted, and the content of the campaign. There would be no need for any Super Pacs or other workarounds.
1
the simplest solution would be to allocate a fixed, equal, and very limited amount of money from the government coffers to each bona fide federal candidate, strictly limit the period during which campaigning is allowed, and prohibit any other financial contributions to election campaigns, either by individuals or by corporations or any other entity.
how is putting our government up for sale any different than taxation without representation?
with the sketchy, freewheeling system we have now, what's really to prevent a foreign moneybags, such as Putin or MBS, from "contributing" and just buying our election? it could be as easy as having a young woman "give" $340 million dollars to the NRA, and in turn that august organization contributing it to encourage "free" (eg, expensive) speech in our election process. or, a foreigner could just buy a US company, pump it full of rubles or rials, and then the "business" could make its money is speech bribes. there's a million ways to game Citizens United if you think about it.
and I'm sure or adversaries do.
2
@[email protected] - How would you prevent people and organizations from talking about the election and the candidates? How would you prevent newspapers and magazines from writing about it?
Once you allow this, the door is open to influences of all sort. If an election would have a major impact on everyone's life, then everyone is going to do everything they can to make sure their candidate wins.
Our founding fathers, in their wisdom, decided it was better to harness human nature than fight it. Our system of republican government was meant to distribute power among legitimate interests, not to suppress all interests. Allowing open support of candidates and parties is one way of doing this.
Citizens United didn't open the door to unbridled campaign corruption and influence by corporations, It blew the door off the wall with a precisely placed explosive. This was the conservative majority's intent.
35
Citizens United will eventually be overturned; it’s a ludicrous decision and I’m sure the judges who made it will be lambasted for it.
That said, it may be years and years before it happens.
13
"In 2010, independent expenditures totaled $203.9 million; in 2016, it was $1.48 trillion. In this nonpresidential year, with final reports still to come, independent expenditures totaled at least $1.18 trillion."
This sentence is the whole column isn't? You don't get a trillion dollars for doing nothing. Money in politics to this level makes words like "democracy" window dressing.
23
@Ken Alas, it's a typo. Should have been billion, not trillion. Still...
1
@Ken - stop and think about this for a minute. It's not $1.48 TRILLION (that's the GDP of Australia) or $1.18 TRILLION - this is a typo. It's $1.48 Billion and $1.18 Billion.
1
Would anyone play a family board game with the failed sensibility of corruption espoused by Kennedy? I wouldn't even play for matchsticks with such an obvious slimeball of a cheater. And let me tell you, I can only get people to play with me for matchsticks because I will end up with every one on the table--with out cheating I might add.
Candyland, Shutes and Ladders, Monopoly, and as finally shown this year Mousetrap with immigrant children are the games our leaders cheat their citizens out tax money paid to pay for infrastructure, preserve the economy and environment, and yes they are tightly related. It's the money we all who work paid for education, healthcare, to help when we're to old or disabled to work even more important since we've spent our adult years with no healthcare to speak of.
No one would allow the lying cheating name calling stealing behavior in their homes at family game night. Why do we let our leadership?
I imagine what 700 Million dollars could do for the citizens who paid their taxes and are NOT getting their money's worth having been swindled by Messrs. Adelson and Ryan (and no doubt with the blessing of the likes of McConnell et al.).
Are we going to have to resort to yellow vests by middle aged low level clerks at every rotary and intersection to make the wealthy pay their fair share so we don't have to support them at our expense? And no, this ain't populism. It's fair play.
10
It appears to me that the complaints (mainly from the left) are that their billionaires spend less than the right's. It also seems that corporations themselves are less an issue than the individuals associated with them. It was Adelson, not the Sands that contributed to Ryan's PAC.
1
@kwb: Really, please point one out on this forum. From what I've seen, and I have been reading every one of the comments. NO ONE has said anything about the "democratic billionaires" spending "less than the right(wing) billionaires". WE, on the left despise Citizens United (what a misnomer THAT is). Now, go back and actually read the eloquently and intelligently stated comments (not yours).
1
@kwb
no, I beg to differ....
with the new Money=Speech, it was definitely SANDS that contributed.
and yes, the left is sad they cant get as much money.....those who are cheated want a fair fight
That’s the exact opposite of what this article says.
2
The right wing justices who changed the law in their Citizens United decision knew exactly what they were doing—aiding and abetting the GOP.
These same justices in the Shelby County decision gutted the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act, supposedly because it could no longer be presumed that the States of the old Confederacy would seek to to suppress minority voting rights. Naturally, before the ink on the decision dried, Southern Legislatures were doing just that—closing polling stations in minority precincts, cutting early voting, enacting harsh ID laws, purging voter rolls, making voter registration more difficult. This was, of course, designed to hurt Democrats.
Just last June, in the Janus case, the five right wing justices overturned long standing, unanimous precedent that allowed unions to collect service fees from non members to fund services unions are legally required to provide to those members. It just so happens that unions tend to politically support liberal candidates.
The GOP has become a minority party that increasingly must rely on gerrymandering and other undemocratic fixes to rig the system to retain power. It’s happening now in Wisconsin and Michigan, where GOP legislatures are stripping power from incoming Democratic governors. The Supreme Court majority clearly has become a willing participant in this assault on democracy.
44
The $1.8 trillion dollars tax cut was obscene. One of the main issues for the majority during this election cycle was healthcare. Presently the budget for 2019 is rolling around and cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, other programs have been on the table. Health care takes the back seat. The $700 million Adelson saved is a gift that will keep on coming on for years and for those who least need it. Citizens Àaqdqqq has distorted elections on State and Federal levels, bought policy and those who don't agree on that outcome benefit the most from it. Robbing workers of their rights, the decision on collective bargaining are other corporate gift the Supreme Court has done.
The Court of Kissing Rings is a more apt title.
12
The long term planning which has led to this position is documented in great detail in Dark Money. A process started in the 1980s to subvert, [or train] the legal world to ensure that it would think in a corporate friendly way led directly to Citizens United. But this only after the financial world of trusts and non-profits had been restructured to generate the aimed for flows of mega cash.
Money rules OK is a problem we are having to live with worldwide.
6
"Allowing government to control who can spend enough to get heard on a grander scale would render freedom of speech illusory."
There's an important distinction between speech and currency. Anyone who possess language has an equal opportunity to speak their political position. Not everyone posses the same financial means to adequately advance their argument in currency. I believe this is the point Martin Gilens is trying to make. Money cannot be speech because money is inherently inequitable whereas speech is not.
16
I don’t think the Supreme Court is ignorant of the real world effects of their decisions. I believe that the conservative majority on the Court is very aware that allowing unlimited funding for political speech and allowing restrictions on voting rights benefits conservative politicians at all levels and ultimately perpetuates or expands their power. I believe that liberals on the Court are aware that expanding the electorate helps politicians who would nominate more like them at all levels of the federal judiciary.
The question is which view of America is superior. Do we want - do they want - a broader or narrower democracy? Do we want - do they want - to allow a political minority, once in power, to be able to maintain control or do we want majority rule? Do we want - do they want - more concentrated wealth and political power in America or a more egalitarian country? Do we want - do they want - religion to play a more prominent role in America, including allowing the religious views of one group to be imposed on another, or do we want a more secular society. It’s hard to view Supreme Court decisions as being free from these kinds of influences. It’s hard to understand their decisions except as being personal decisions subsequently justified by very smart people rationalizing in legal language what they wanted to do all along. If you get to decide which laws are valid and which are not, it’s difficult to imagine that human beings wouldn’t pick and choose those they prefer.
7
It may not be 'law' but it is just plain old fashioned common sense to acknowledge that when a person/corporation spends millions of dollars to support a candidate they expect something in return.
The blindness of the Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision has been completely corruptive of our electoral process.
Why even now, Supreme Court candidates wage campaigns with TV ads for support funded by secret (no disclosure requirement) super PACs.
Every election cycle, the voters are confronted with more candidates who are 'Bought and Paid For'. This fact increases the disfunction of our governing bodies. Representatives no longer are free to 'compromise'. They were given money to vote a certain way. Yes, this is vicious. It is destroying our democratic process.
14
What worries me is the influence of big donors on democrat congresspeople. This prohibits them from voting with their progressive mates on heathcare, education, and reduced military spending to fund these and our crumbling infrastructure.
And the most heavy lift of all, fighting big oil, gas and coal in the interest of green energy to head off global warming.
The courts have given these oligarchs carte blance.
13
It is pretty clear that the corporations own congress, write legislation, provide retired and defeated congress people with sinecures when they leave to become lobbyists, heads of PACs, speakers etc.
The Federalist society owns the Supreme Court providing litmus tests of "conservative corporate 1 percent" values before sending them down the road to the path to the Supreme Court via federal courts, federal appeals courts and then to the golden trough where the corporate golden gooses deposit their never ending largess. The gift that keeps on giving.
This is no longer about conservatism. It is about power, voter suppression, keptocracy and whatever else you can think of that is not consistent with democratic values. Transparency and accountability went flying out the window with Roberts et al.
The 1,.1 and .01 percent has been brilliant. The rest of the country feasts on their crumbs.
Vietnam Vet
21
I find all of the discussion around the proper constitutional interpretation of election finance law pretty ponderous at this point. I was always taught that the simplest explanation for an occurrence is likely the best one. Well, in this case, the simplest explanation is that 5 Republican partisans who hold Supreme Court seats saw a perfect opportunity to dramatically enhance the electoral success of their political party, and they took it. All the rest of this discussion, like the nonsense about "the appearance of quid pro quo" is just that, nonsense. We all know corporations own the vast majority of elected Republican officials. As they should, since they paid for them fair and square.
8
These numbers are staggering. An amount in excess of a trillion dollars to elect so-called representatives boggles the mind to the point of being incomprehensible. Governance has gotten so corrupt in my relatively short lifetime, sixty years, that I feel as helpless as a leaf borne on the back of a mighty torrent. The only thing I’m thankful for is that my two children will not be cannon fodder for the coming world war. The horrible news coming from all points of the compass leads me to no other conclusions than the worst possible imaginable. There is no avoiding the fact that due to overpopulation and the subsequent climate change a massive die-off of species is engulfing our planet and will eventually include our own. Chattering about politics, at this point, is the equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns. With all due respect to Mr. Edsall, I could not read any further past the gob-smacking reference to the obscene dollar amount.
7
Expenditure = speech (“an independent expenditure is political speech”) is an interesting concept.
And what constitutes ‘independent’ in today’s world of nonprofit pairs dancing the Potomac Two-Step
may strain arm’s-length credulity.
The amounts are now breathtaking, too. By current measures, Robert Vesco’s $200k donation to CREEP in 1974 would hardly be a hiccup, let alone a speech.
3
Yep, all thanks to liberals electing George W. Bush in 2000 and gifting the Republicans a majority on the Supreme Court. And what did they learn? In true liberal fashion, not a whole lot. They guaranteed a Republican Court for the next 40 years by electing Trump in 2016 out of spite for Hillary. I tried telling every liberal I could in 2016 that the court was at stake, and that a Trump court would destroy everything they held dear. But they knew better! I hope it was worth it.
6
In today's "democracy" Norman Rockwell's iconic painting of a New England Town Meeting showing a single man directly engaging his government and fellow citizens in speech seems a relic of the past. Similarly, today, "Herman would never here the Who."
2
Eisenhower warned about a ‘military-industrial complex’, which is a reality (see the failure of audits to track billions of dollars in DOD expenditures). We now have a ‘media-political complex’. Recall the late 2016 statements by CNN and other media leaders about the enhanced revenue streams generated by Trumpmania. Who is benefiting from the trillion-$ + spent on campaigns? There may be some leakage into the pockets of a few politicos, but that revenue goes to TV, web and written media, campaign consultants, video producers, advertising firms, pollsters, etc. And since campaigning is now a perpetual occupation in USA, it is now a self-sustaining ecology.
There are more jobs dependent on the forever campaigns than on coal. Trump is not the only one to recognize this, and to capitalize on it. We are consumers first, my friends, and in the hearts and minds of our political class, citizens only every other year.
7
Citizens United is not just bad for the democratic process. It is bad for business. Once upon a time, individual electors attempted to use their power to keep employers in their district solvent, so that their voters would have jobs/health care/education/housing. Thanks to Citizens United a few sectors of the economy can take control of the entire economy if they are wily enough. What type of economy favors a casino mogul? A bad one. People gamble compulsively when their lives have no meaning, when their future seems bleak. Tobacco and alcohol also do better when the rest of us do worse. Citizens United allows an unsavory sector of the economy to social engineer us into a recession whenever they need to boost sales of their addicting products. This is NOT good for the majority of US businesses. And for those who say "The candidate still has to appeal to the voters" I point to North Carolina. With enough money and planning, you can select in advance the type of voters who will be allowed to vote, ensuring that the candidate who has been bought with Citizens United money is able to deliver on his under the table quid pro quo.
13
Citizens United provides solid state propulsion to lift off and carry any Moe, Larry or Curly into office. President George H.W. Bush spoke of Public Service as an honorable profession. He talked of it as a calling with humility and honor. That moment has passed on and shall not soon return.
Justice Potter Stewart's comment about pornography applies to monied interests, laundered or otherwise. They that drive the hamster wheels of Washington care not or less.
Let the loot decide the law, the new jurisprudence.
6
My own view is that the only path towards reducing the impact of money in politics is to enact compulsory voting laws in the US. Non-compliant citizens would be fined...as would states /municipalities that don't enforce the law. Seed funding to set this up would come from the feds. No excuses for compliance.
Compulsory voting happens in a number of countries...Australia immediately comes to mind.
Voter ID would be achieved via the Real ID Act that states are scrambling to enforce. It would simply be extended to include all citizens age 16 and older - driver or not - and become the national identification card America sorely needs. The feds would, too, provide funding (Real ID has been an unfunded mandate..part of the problem) to make this happen.
If the congressional Dems want to show they really have game, they would present this idea in committee as part of a voting reform bill and get it on the floor of the House as one of the first things they do in January.
You want representative governments in the US? This is how it's going to happen.
2
The problem is not Citizens United. The problem is a citizenry that has little if any understanding of their responsibilities as citizens. We fail magnificently in supporting the learning and motivation of the people in this country to be owners of their government. Citizens United merely gives rich folks license to take advantage of a means to profit from investment, which is what they do best! Until we get serious about democracy, we will just have to suffer results like Citizens United. The problem is this need to really be democratic may also be existential.
4
The US still leads the way in one area. We remain the best government money can buy.
5
"All men are created equal"
When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, one of his key principles was that all people are equal. He didn't write "All men and political organizations are created equal".
It is blatantly unconstitutional for the Supreme Court, and Kennedy in particular, to equate "people" with corporations. People are people, and have the rights enshrined in our founding documents. Anything that isn't human doesn't.
In fact, giving corporations free speech is double representation. Individuals are granted liberties under our Constitution, including the right to free speech. But when a corporation is granted free speech, that gives the individuals who are associated with that corporation an additional voice in government. Our democracy is founded on the principle of "one person, one vote". So how can that be constitutional? It isn't.
Humans are frail and mistake-prone creatures. Citizens United shows that even Supreme Court justices aren't immune from that. This is a court ruling which needs to be overturned. It's not hard to connect the dots here about why the wealthy don't want that to happen. When a political investor like Adelson gets a $700 million gift from the government, he's getting his money's worth from his donations.
And PACs are typically chartered as 501(c) corporations. How can they continue to be 100 percent political and get to keep their tax-exempt status? Where is the oversight to correct that?
93
@Max Dither
Lest we forget, the IRS did try to determine which of the PACs were actually serving social welfare functions and which were just fronts for political influence. Although they selected both Democratic and Republican super PACs, the right wing media howled that they were selecting only Republicans, unfairly. (Ignoring the fact that there were more of them, and they were coordinating blatantly.) The Republican Congress dragged the IRS managers into hearings where they were castigated and cut the IRS budget to make sure it couldn't pursue wealthy Republican donors for tax evasion. They got a lot of public support for those shenanigans, too.
8
@Max Dither
The founders were so afraid of the power corporations could wield that they intentionally limited their actions and tried to make it very hard to form one.
That changed when the robber barons saw corporations as an easier way to steal from US all.
They then bought compliant politicians and the rest is the end of our history.
1
Americans need to smarten up. Obviously the thousands of dollars worth of political ads on television purporting to be paid for by "citizens groups" are not from real grassroots groups.
Just like the American for-profit healthcare system, obviously not as good as real socialized medicine.
Just like the name brand products advertised on tv. Better than the generics? Or just more expensive to pay for advertising and extra profits?
The American identity involves obedience to a conformist model. The more people adhere to the advice they get from paid commercial and political advertising, the closer we all come to being corporate slaves.
11
The broader problem is the libertarian philosophy that wants to get rid of all regulations in the name of "freedom" (the most abused word in the United States). The result is that guns roam freely on the streets, a lack of taxes means our infrastructure falls apart, investment bankers run wild with little oversight, and corporations and wealthy individuals dominate politics. "Regulation" should not be a bad word. I will vote for any Democrat who openly embraces higher taxes on the wealthy, gun control, regulating the financial industry, and restrictions on corporate and individual donations to politicians.
123
@JS27
Don't forget unlimited pollution or destruction of the common environment.
8
One argument used by many Conservatives is that advertising (money) does not effectively sway elections. They use examples where candidates with lots more money lose to opponents without big war chests.
1) Sure, cases like those here and there can be found. But exceptions do not negate the fact that those spending on this (like advertisers pushing medications on TV) know that in the aggregate their money will help their sales efforts.
2) The exceptions do show that voters can be made aware of false and misleading advertising, and can in fact vote on the basis of issues and can vote for the best candidate to represent them. So VOTE.
3) Big money supports the interests of the very wealthy and large corporations (willing to pollute for profit and looking to avoid their fair share of taxes). So, only if you believe in simplistic and gross trickle-down economics, such money in politics only benefits a few. Middle-class tax payers are losing more in general revenue to the US treasury (which would help them and their loved ones -- better roads and bridges, medical care, social security, enforcement of clean air and water regulations, global warming relief, etc.) than they are gaining in their small and probably temporary tax cuts.
Our votes can cancel the effects of big money. Help get out the vote and VOTE.
19
"Citizens United" is a political extension of neoliberal economics; the free market determines whose speech is heard and whose isn't. The assertion that the "appearance of influence or access...will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy" assumes that "the electorate" also has influence or access. But with "Citizens United," the people and businesses who have the most money have ALL the access. And the free market determines what legislation is passed, not what policies benefit average voters.
I can assure the five Justices who decided Citizens United affirmatively that "the electorate" has indeed lost faith in our democracy. Our country is now Citizens Divided.
47
Abraham Lincoln, when told that the big eastern Banks would fund his northern armies at 20% interest, said he feared the banks more than he did the confederate soldiers. Instead of borrowing, he created $450 million in new currency (called Greenbacks) to fund the army. There was inflation, but it was primarily caused by the sudden demand for war materials; an inflation in other words that would have happened even if Lincoln had taken the expensive loans. After the war, the value of greenbacks recovered.
18
The 5 justice Republican Supreme Court majority wasn’t being naive in allowing unlimited money in politics. Their rhetoric aside, they did it because their party benefits from open bribery by “donors”. If the opposite were true, these same judges would have ruled differently.
248
@Demosthenes
Although your diagnosis is correct I believe those justices went home that night, after the decision, thinking that what they did was right. I doubt anything can dissuade them from that opinion. The fact is that they are cut from the same cloth as their fellow Republicans and long before they became members of SCOTUS they drank the GOP's kool-aid.
Their mentor is not Blackstone but Coolidge: where the business of America is business.
9
@Demosthenes & Tom
I don't expect it will count for much, but both of your posts allude to a little-noted aspect of Supreme Court justices: the Republicans among them, anyway, are cultivated, coached and coddled by an affluent system of conservative jurisprudence —one that advances first and foremost the interests of the Deep Plutocracy.
Whose interests are consonant with the very people that Roberts, Alito & Co. socialise with outside of work. Why would the conservative justices privilege country over party if party members are those whom they rub shoulders with away from the bench?
9
demosthenes: 2021, time for dems to pack the court!
2
@Thomas Wieder Thanks for correcting that egregious error. I stand by my comment, nevertheless. A trillion dollars is relevant in that soon there will be a single individual who controls such an amount. Corruption encompasses much more than politics which is merely its gilded chariot.
6
I guess I am in the minority that believes restricting money restricts speech and the ability to campaign. When money is restricted, the beneficiaries are incumbents and newspapers. The evidence that money buys elections is very weak. Many well-funded candidates lose, most prominently Hillary Clinton. We have to remember a campaign is not the actual voting.
I have no problem with politicians soliciting campaign contributions, as long as there is no specific quid-pro-quo. When we have an enormously powerful government, whose decisions can make or break companies, we should focus more on restricting government than on those seeking relief.
2
That misses the point.
The problem is not money per se, but who has more of it to influence politics.
Corporations therefore control the government, regardless of who wins elections.
33
The fact that Vladimir Putin- the richest person on earth- admitted that he used his resources to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign throws a wrench into your example of rich people losing elections. There's always someone richer willing to tip the scale. There is always a quid-pro-quo in waiting. When money is restricted democracy- the voice of the people- is strengthened.
18
@wnhokek. But money today spells outreach. In fact, in reporting the amount of campaign money is often listed next to a candidate’s name BEFORE party affiliation.....certainly before any policy positions.
Political reporting is now done like upcoming sports reporting: money available (salary), previous record stats, and party (team) affiliation. Policy is only listed as sound bite minis if listed at all. Party is assumed to be all that is necessary.
People, including Supreme Court justices, underestimate the power money brings to the game when it comes to shaping public opinion. The very wealthy can, if they wish, buy the talent and expertise to manipulate the way people think.
We have seen that a lot of rich people do just that. Sheldon Adelson is only one example. The Koch network is another. Yes, there are some billionaires who support Democrats, but does that really make a level playing field?
An industry has developed to take advantage of the opportunities. Some are partisans, but many are willing to use their skills in service of the highest bidder. This has its own corrupting effect and there is a tendency to do whatever works in order to win. It does not bode well for democracy.
44
Citizens United is one example of how the right has increasingly weaponized the First Amendment as a tool to judicially overrule a myriad of legislative judgments, from coverage for contraceptives to agency fees for union services in collective bargaining. The rhetoric of 'judicial restraint' has been abandoned in these cases in favor of abstractions wholly unmoored from practical considerations that supported prior precedent -- many of long standing, like Austin or Abood (the 45 year old case on union fees the Court overruled last term). Levinson is right that there is a woeful lack of practical experience on the present court by comparison with even the most recent past that has contributed to this. As Holmes wrote "Constitutions are intended to preserve practical and substantial rights, not to maintain theories." Engagement with reality outside of appellate advocacy and legal academia is necessary. That no justice on the court has stood for election to anything is noteworthy, that only one has served as a trial judge and but two have experience actually trying cases is also remarkable.
25
@EABlair. And the Boud case is a ruling diametrically opposite to Citizens United. In the union case, the union cannot speak for all whereas a corporation can speak with a single voice despite employee dissent.
25
I have never understood the logic of using the same standard for individual and corporate rights. The whole point of incorporating is to create an entity that is NOT an individual and establish separate rules for it (liabilities, etc.). Corporations are not sentient creatures, They do not have wills or political preferences -- the individuals running them do. Why should corporate entities be granted rights conceived for individuals and still be used as legal/liability shields for those individuals actually directing them? Moreover, allowing entities a separate "voice" basd on free speech is problematic on its face: what if a corporate donation contradicts the political preferences of the majority of people working in/for it? It's not even really the same as a voluntary association (i.e., interest group), let alone individuals.
336
You've stated the most important point.
Since a corporation is a government charter — a special privilege, if you will — the government has the right to define the limits of that charter.
There is nothing unconstitutional in narrowly constricting the corporation to its ostensible purpose of limited liability to shareholders, and permitting no other behavior under cover of its charter.
118
@Jenswold. I agree with all of this, although my agreement doesn’t mean anything. What I wonder about, however, is how does the very notion of public opinion reflect, not just numbers of individuals, but how people organize? A corporation is an organization and it is more than just a container of individuals. The same can be said of grass roots organizations and established voluntary organizations. Organization, itself, says something political and it is more and different from simply a container of individuals.
I’m not smart enough to take on Kennedy or the Supreme Court, but it seems like Kennedy is onto at least something that previous campaign finance law couldn’t handle—social and political organization—the problem and its proposed solution unfortunately being posed in terms of money. That’e where things have gone awry. If we take money out of the equation (because it corrupts) how can we solve this further problem of determining what is public opinion?
Perhaps we need an updated Walter Lippmann.
2
@Jenswold
Agree completely. Corporations don't go to the polls and vote - people do. So why should corporations even be allowed to contribute to political campaigns?
38
As long as we're talking about presupposing, doesn't making a monetary contribution to a politician's campaign presuppose it will influence the politician's decisions?
6
@Glenn Thomas
Monetary contributions directly to a politician's campaign can be and are limited. Those limits have been upheld by the Court. It is not a true comparison to the unlimited expenditures permitted by Citizens United.
5
Justice Kennedy simply redefined the meanings of "corruption" and "speech" to suit his purposes. The idea that money, and the volume & media power it buys, is an exchange comparable to the exchange of language and ideas, is a flagrant contradiction of the principle of freedom of speech, which depends on the equal exchange of ideas. It is certainly not an idea that would occur to anyone who can't afford to buy airtime or a media outlet. Or the idea that spending money on behalf of a legislator with the expectation of receiving legislation in return, and then getting that legislation, is not corruption . . . if you think Justice Kennedy actually believed that then I wager you have a financial interest in believing it.
What everyone avoids saying is that the Randian ideology that the Republican party has developed over the last few decades, that money is ideologically neutral, that conflicts of interest are really forms of expertise, that democratic government itself is a form of corruption, that serving the interests of the rich is the only way to help the poor, etc--is in fact a way of idealizing corruption and theft. It's an ideology bought and paid for by the people it benefits.
131
@Martin. Ask Me lvaney. He baldly stated that he talked to constituents who contributed as a congressman.
If money talks......Citizens United allowed corporations to have an outsized voice.
5
Yes, the electorate universally disdains Citizens United. The law equates money with speech and then completely ignores how that equation undermines equal representation under the law. Adelson’s 30 million dollars bought him 30 million words of influence that completely drowned out the hundreds of dollars I was able to scrape together to support the candidates and laws that represent my interests. As proof of how corrupt the system has become under Citizens United, something like 80% of the electorate want health care reform in this country; either fixing the ACA or universal healthcare and almost none of us thought that giving huge tax cuts to Mr. Adelson and the hundreds of billionaires like him was a priority. Guess what the nation got? A congress that bemoaned the fact that they had to pass the tax cut or their donors wouldn’t write them any more checks. Did Americans get any progress on healthcare? Of course not.
626
@Ann Lenhardt
Sure we got, “progress.” Progress, for the status quo.
A few facts. Justice Kennedy is not stupid. My guess is that he’s a fairly smart guy. So, If I see the hypocrisy, fraud, and injurious results of Citizens United to our democracy and country, he must as well. He, or his family, must be personally benefiting from his actions on the court even if it’s to satisfy his conservative dogma. I for one would like to see a populist politician that could act for the benefit of the people like FDR or Teddy Roosevelt. They have all been bought off, by yes, Citizens United.
23
@Ann Lenhardt
No mention of how long it has taken Mr Edsall to write about this gigantic misuse of power?
The United States has been betrayed by the so-called mainstream media since the years when NONE of the great newspapers or television networks called out Ronald Reagan for his charm-laden blatant lying day after day after day. They let him get away with murder almost literally - not the killing of a person, just of a standard.
24
@Ruskin,
Okay. So whataboutism: it's Mr. Edsall and the "mainstream media" about which we need to be more vigilant?
See, this article is about the Supreme Court and how they, Ivory Tower and all, don't see the political reality.
I see the "mainstream media" as being almost completely controlled by the very same (and also already very huge and politically powerful) corporations to which the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision gave even more political power. And that is what the article is about, too.
If the NYT is part of the corporate media (and I'd wager that it is), it runs counter to the NYTimes's business interest to whack away at Citizen's United. So, can you say why does the Times do that at all?
Well over 90% of the political stories in the media that the average American "consumes" is from news outlets controlled by giant corporations. The little guys have long ago been squeezed out of the "mainstream."
4
Privately funded political advertising should be banned completely. There should be a short period before elections, like six weeks, where every running candidate is allowed to advertise, using strictly taxpayer-funded budgets, which should be a small fraction of what is spent today.
Political advertising should enable parties and aspiring office-holders to make themselves and their positions known to interested voters. The voters can then search for more information themselves. There is no reason that parties should saturate the airwaves with ads or that unreliable voters should be pampered with a dozen of personal appeals to please please vote. Citizens who are too indifferent or incompetent to inform themselves shouldn't vote anyway.
All this would drastically cut short election seasons, giving politicians MUCH more time to actually work for the public instead of pampering donors and voters. And even more importantly, it would take the power away from the rich donors because their money would be meaningless unless they engage in outright corruption like illegal cash payments.
But it will never happen. Even most voters oppose it because they are too shortsighted to see that this tax money would be very well spent and save them untold billions in other areas where the influence of the donor class now leads to huge tax giveaways to the rich.
64
@GS....privately funded campaign ads flood US media and bring our media profit over prolonged campaigns.
But in other democracies these ads are banned, to prevent special interests from taking over the political discussion. They have shorter campaigns, use more public funds, and limit private donations.
See Wikipedia on campaign advertising.
A huge difference in attitude, with a resulting difference in political representation. Most modern countries have guaranteed, affordable health care for all for generations already, that we still don't have, even with ACA. Their politicians don't have to depend on insurance/drug company money to run for office.
What a concept!
1
Citizens United reveals the difference between an obtuse legal argument and the practical effects, the impact, that argument has on society. I'm an engineer, not a lawyer. My entire life has been devoted to that which is practical. The arguments I write here are based upon what is practical. From a practical point of view, Citizens United is a total disaster, even if a legal case can be made that it is free speech. It is free speech that is killing our system of governance.
Years ago, I watched a docudrama about a major Supreme Court decision, I think it had to do with civil rights, overturning Plessy I believe, and the Justices were arguing the practical effects of their ruling on society. They were arguing how their ruling would change the world, not some obtuse legal definition. That was their civic duty. In today's Court, this is not the case.
Let's say I invent some inert edible candy. It is harmless. Let's say I coinvent another similar candy that when placed in a glass of water with the first they combine to form a terrible addictive drug. Should I be allowed to produce them?
This Court would say yes because each one independently is harmless without considering the practical effects of how people would use them together. I just have to make them in separate factories owned by separate entities.
This is the effect of Citizens United. The drug has legal cover because it comes from different entities, but it still addicts people as originally intended.
46
@Bruce Rozenblit
Love your example; however, while the candy would need to be produced in separate factories that are seemingly owned by different entities, in fact, both factories would be subsidiaries of one parent corporation. That holds true in the political realm as well.
2
"How did this come about? Essentially, by legal fiat: a declaration by five Supreme Court justices that what looks, smells and feels like corruption is not in fact corruption."
Maybe Trump was right when he said"Don't believe what you hear, don't believe what you read." Obviously the Court had no real real basis for protecting the public by this decision.
It's not just the amount of money flowing to races or the negative ads. The midterms showed that candidates, like O'Rourke and Ocasio-Cortes, could be successful taking only individual contributions. It's that elections and candidates are no longer campaigning on issues.
Over time, those monies give certain candidates an unfair advantage over prospective opponents, regardless of their platforms. Moreover, we're seeing post election manipulation by legislatures to constrain the winners' powers of the winner happens to be a Democrat.
Besides the obvious need for campaign finance reform, we need to move towards an election process that is time constrained (e.g., 3-4 months long), is funded by equal appropriation of public campaign funds, and requires candidates to present policies and action plans based solely on their issues, with no attack ads allowed.
Perhaps it's a pipe dream, but our system does not reflect true representative government, but government bought and sold by the few, only for their own benefit.
55
The Court in its infinite wisdom has declared that corporations are people, although they cannot suffer the punishments meted out to people.
It also declared that there is no longer any racism in voting rights - despite the evidence that abounds.
I think that we should blindfold the Justices when they are on the bench, and perhaps cover their ears too, so that they can be free to adjudicate from the deep recesses of their minds, free from any contact with reality.
38
I think you can make the case that it's a wash. Yes, much more corporate money is entering politics, but the you have the clip of Romney saying "Corporations are people my friends." That had to have cost him votes. More corporate money, but also the corruption of Donald Trump. We know that cost him votes in the mid-term. The corporate money in politics will cause actual criminal corruption, and that of course will also cost Republicans votes. So there are long term upsides to the unfettered actions of corporations.
5
"But despite some prominent liberal counterexamples, rich Americans tend to support the economic policies from which they have so greatly benefited. This raises the disturbing prospect of a vicious cycle in which growing economic and political inequality are mutually reinforcing."
This quote by Martin Gilens says it all for me.
Of course actions that look and smell like corruption are indeed corruption. The 'wink nod' culture that sent Paul Ryan to beg at the feet of Sheldon Adelson--and had him close the door so he wouldn't be personally present at the "ask" is the political equivalent of "technical virginity."
My own feeling is that not only is this one of the worst (if not worst) SCOTUS decisions, but the most undemocratic due to the outsized role given to the wealthy in shaping policy to their liking.
Thomas Edsall is also right to quote legal experts who point out that robed men (and women, except they rarely vote with the men) in rarified chambers, full of arcane ways to wordsmith law-- but without real-world political experience of a decision's true impact-- are the last folks who should be shaping new law.
Money may not be able to buy you love, but it sure buys the wealth the ability to game the system to their advantage.
378
@ChristineMcM
Money may not be able to buy you love, but people love money.
And it's a common enough occurrence that, practically speaking, money buys people who love money, be it in politics, business, personal relations or (increasingly) all three.
18
@ChristineMcM
" but without real-world political experience of a decision's true impact-- are the last folks who should be shaping new law."
Reminds me of the Catholic clergy in addressing sex and sin. With no experience of ordinary marital relations and child rearing, they tell the congregation that sex is only for procreation and that every fertilized ovum is sacred. Then, on the side, they are molesting children and women. Come the next mass, they don the appearance of celibacy and preach the subjection of women to their biology again.
I guess it is no surprise, really, considering that four of the reactionary five are Catholics themselves. Once, that many Catholics on the court (five including Sotomayor) would have been a scandal itself.
22
@Eric W
"And it's a common enough occurrence that, practically speaking, money buys people who love money, be it in politics, business, personal relations or (increasingly) all three."
We know that. But are you really saying there's nothing that can be done?
5
Looking Casually at the U.S. one sees a Staggering Corrupted Democracy from "primaries" to decide the candidates by the biggest donors, to intended hindrances to voting, to gerrymandering, and therefore to candidates picking voters, not voters picking candidates!
Please tell me what I forgot to include-thanks in advance!
30
@Dart
You forgot the courts. They are stacked by the purchased politicians to benefit their benefactors and keep the con game going.
We ostensibly have three equal branches of government, but they are all subsidiaries of the fossil fuel, military contractor, and pharmaceutical companies.
4
I used to oppose government censorship and at the time I agreed with the Supreme Court's decision on Citizens United. Things have changed, however. Now that Donald Trump is president I am fully confident that the FEC under his control would only censor bad speech, i.e. stuff critical of Donald Trump or praising Democrats.
5
Terrific column.
The Roberts Court, in extending First Amendment rights to corporations, glosses over a critical issue. Who speaks for the shareholders of a corporation when they believe that either all political contributions, or specific contributions, or the amount of money expended are not in the best interests of the corporation?
Should corporate political contributions be approved by shareholders before, or only after, they are made? Must public corporations disclose their contributions by amount and recipient in filings with the SEC and other federal and state regulatory agencies?
24
The Citizens United decision has shown on the grand political scale what common sense, streetwise people know and understand about how money influences and tips the scales. The legal distinctions and abstractions which were the intellectual foundation of the decision were and our simply out of touch with reality. Money is power way more than speech.
86
If money is speech then equal representation means equal representation of the dollar, not of the person. Equal representation should mean of the person.
Amend the first amendment to include the following: "Money is not speech." That would slow it down.
70
"Citizens United has turned campaign finance into a system universally disdained by the public..." was not true of Bernie Sanders' campaign, where small individual donations made up the bulk of his funds. In the present system, a great mass of people have to pay, say, fifty bucks each to get someone they like elected. Short of real campaign finance reform with quicker elections, there's no other way to beat the racket of the super-rich set up by none less than the Supreme Court. What astonishes me, as a totally sympathetic foreign observer of the United States (with a mum born in Brooklyn), is that more Americans are not ashamed at what has happened to the country, and react against it.
122
@pedroshaio
I have always thought that only registered voters can donate a limited amount to political campaigns; no groups of individuals, which corporations and unions and special-interest groups are, can donate since they don't have the authorization to vote. Only individuals can donate.
2
sadly, I believe a majority of the people have given up on the idea of our country being for the people and are simply trying to survive.
22
@Kathy
The irony is that the reason the people have to focus all their energy on just "trying to survive" rather than making sure the country remains "for the people" is because corporations have monopolized their economic and political power such that the benefits of a huge economic expansion only go to them. The first thing they wanted their bought politicians to do was to crush the power of their workers. Republican voters drank the cool aid and are now struggling with the results.
19
The stark failure of reason which is allowing a corrupt ideology to infect our democracy shows the dangers of reason itself.
As a rational atheist, I’ve always clung to reason as the bedrock of all thought and action.
But, rational arguments can be constructed to defend any position imaginable. Rational arguments were proposed to prolong slavery. The Marquis De Sade presented a rational argument to support the concept of murder as a part of the natural cycle of life: Death is a part of life, and so hastening one hastens the other.
Reasonable arguments provide us with: “….a declaration by five Supreme Court justices that what looks, smells and feels like corruption is not in fact corruption.”
Rational thoughts, which propose that money is speech, and which go against the instincts even of those who defend them, are no more acceptable than De Sade’s defense of murder. To reconcile the two dangling ends of our reality takes the courage of a Lincoln, a lawyer who fought both reason and money with the instincts of decency.
Does the arc of the moral universe truly bends towards Justice? An odd word, which is now used to describe five black robed citizens, united, using reason, to crush it.
138
@Sera
Never underestimate the power of the human mind to deceive itself.
We can convince ourselves of anything and justify any action. Look at how religions justify hate of others.
9
@Sera. While you lose me at “rational atheist,” which is an oxymoron, you do raise an interesting question as to the “meaning” of money. It has been discussed in, say, Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money or Kurt Heinzelman’s The Economics of the Imagination, among other places. I don’t mean to get bookish on you, but that money has symbolic significance, referred to you by the notion that “money is speech” is not a notion we can simply dismiss. Thanks for raising the issue, unsolvable by ideological rant.
@Sera
Rational deliberation when deciding matters of law should always consider the probable impact of instincts, raw emotion, magical thinking, vested interests, unintended consequences and just plain ignorance.
4
While independent expenditures have grown greatly, I think Edsall meant to say that in 2016, they reached $1.48 billion, not trillion. The larger figure would equal more than a third of the federal budget. Things are bad, but not quite that bad.
13
@Thomas Wieder
30% of Democrats didn't graduate high school. You can't expect them to know the difference between billions and trillions.
@FreddyB
FROM high school.