SCOTUS decision allows corporate and union campaign financing
The Supreme Court has overruled the decades-long prohibition on direct spending by corporations and unions in political campaigns, by a vote of 5-4. The conservatives on the bench were joined by the “swing” voter Justice Kennedy in rendering the libertarian decision.
I’m all for free speech. That’s the principle. But in the practical sense, I also hate all the big money in campaigns. On the other hand, the big money was there anyway, in hidden ways. So it may as well be up-front.
More here.
You’ve summarized my feelings about this.
Along a similar vein, I always wonder what the heck these “bundlers” are doing. They certainly seem to be operating contrary to the spirit of donation limits, even if they are in compliance with the letter of the law (regulation).
I think campaign finance laws are a lot like gun laws. Only the law-abiding follow them
So you have Law-Abiding-Citizen registering his .38 Special revolver, never carrying it around concealed, and giving only the allowed amount to candidates. You have Scofflaw Citizen carrying his sawed-off in some loops under his trench coat and giving 1000 times the legal limit (which isn’t hard to do; remember Gore’s “penniless Buddhist monks?).
The probability is very high that neither one will suffer any sanction. So which one has the advantage?
Like you neo-neocon it makes me a bit nervous. Money corrupts and neither unions’ nor corporations’ fundamental interests necessarily align with the “greater good’.
The libertarian argument does have merit and so the only ‘check’ on union and corporate ‘donations’ I can foresee is utter and inescapable TRANSPARENCY.
How we achieve that appears to be the ‘64,000 dollar’ question.
If the money and power were not flowing through Washington like a raging river, it wouldn’t be as worthwhile to support this or that politician. But because the stakes are so high, the contributions flow in, even if they are not “coordinated” (as if somehow the distinction matters).
Since McCain-Feingold was passed, there’s always been a concern (or fear) that one day that law would be brought to bear on politcial web sites and blogs. I’m guessing that this ruling also ends that threat.
KRB
The issue has very little to do with likes and dislikes. It has to do with Free Speech, one of the holiest of our holy writs. Political free speech isn’t free; it costs money. And if one can pay to be heard, one should perforce be heard. Standing on a box in Hyde Square is free, but also utterly ineffectual, a mere exercise of personal vanity.
McCain-Feingold was always felt by some of us to be unconstitutional for that very reason. We stand affirmed by 5-4, with the Left on SCOTUS and elsewhere wishing still to deprive us of this liberty, among others. That this precious liberty is affirmed by only one vote is obscene.
It simply makes no sense to oppose free speech for reason of cost.
McCain-Feingold is some of the worst legislation in the battle for free speech in the history of this country. In politics, money IS speech. If money in politics makes you uncomfortable then the solution is not to limit speece (political donations) the solution lies in giving corporations less incentive to donate. We should be inclined to elect leaders who are less inclined to “rent seek” and constituents (which include unions and corporations) will have less to need to “communicate” and “influence”.
Yes it sounds simpleminded on it’s face but the system aint perfect folks. Flame away LOL..
Corporations come in all shapes, sizes and forms, goood and bad. The plaintiff in the case before the Supreme Court, Citizen’s United, was a corporation that was merely attempting to provide potentially informative political information to prospective voters by offering video-on-demand versions of “Hillary: The Movie” within 30 days of the 2008 primarly elections. In stark contrast, corporations with less benign motivations include the pharmaceutical, insurance, and other health care concerns that pledged to spend $12 million promoting health care legislation, under their Faustian bargain with the Obama administration. McCain-Feingold restricted the relative pure political speech disseminated by Citizen’s United, but was completely mute about the more questionable health care industry’s thinly veiled promotions advancing the DNC agenda. One of the costs of the First Amendment is, of course, having to accept speech which we deplore.
In some cases, it may make sense to investigate whether lobbying or other promotional activities constitute bribery (e.g., the health care industry agreement to promote the Obama plan), but corporate speech by itself should not be restricted. In general, one would expect firms that wish to compete on the merits to spend their lobbying dollars opposing attempts to limit market operations. Pharmaceutical and other operations that make common cause with the political class will tend to lobby for laws and regulations that exclude rivals or disproportionately raise their cost of doing business.
Here’s a link to the decision: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf The concurring opinion by Roberts and Scalia are particularly good.
und now ve vill have der perfekt way that our constituencies can pay us for our services… the people wont fund us, we will be funded with their money anyway… we vill let the corporate lackies of our progressive state handle both the task, and der blame…
bwahahahahah!
I’ve often been one of John McCain’s defenders here. But I’ve always opposed his McCain-Feingold “campaign finance reform” and thought it violated the First Amendment. I guess I’m a little surprised that the SCOTUS ruling is being met with some trepidation here.
Anyway, this is at least a sign that G.W. Bush’s appointmets actually made a difference. In 2003, the justices went the other way in another “campaign finance reform” case.
I heard one argument on this issue that convinced me of just how sound it is. Prior to this ruling, corporate america was prohibited from speaking out politically, but the labor unions were not. The playing field has been leveled.
This is impossible to separate big money and politics. It is better not trying to impose non-enforcible laws and make such transactions transparent to the public, that is, legitimize them.
Something I have a lot of trouble explaining to some people: not everything worthwhile should be legislated.
Can money be a corrupting influence in politics? Of course, and we must always be on the watch for people, or companies, or organizations, trying to buy legislation that favors them.
But we’re not going to fix that by legislating where the money goes. Candidates in need of money, and not overly scrupulous about where it comes from, will get it. I’m absolutely with Nolanimrod on that.
Rather, what we should do is to keep an eagle eye on our legislators… which we should be doing anyway, right? Legislators, not contributors, are the bottleneck; track each Congresscritter’s finances, personal and political, and look out for anything that looks fishy.
(Is that an invasion of privacy? Sure it is. It’s also a violation of MY freedoms to say what I can and cannot do to support the politician of my choice. The difference is that the politician volunteered for the job, and knew she would come under heavy scrutiny if elected. I never volunteered to be gagged. And I do expect my leaders, including my representatives in Washington, to be held to higher standards than we private citizens; they volunteered for that too.)
Some people seem to think that legislation can cure everything. (Perhaps it’s an application of the hammer and nail rule, although I thought that Sen. McCain was smarter than that.)
But it doesn’t work that way. Laws apply to everyone, and therefore must be a one-size-fits-all proposition, which can be devilishly difficult to get right. Laws also have unintended consequences, always, which tend to invent new classes of crime and criminals. In this case, we’ve made it a crime to do something, not because it corrupts the political process, but because it MIGHT, or because it LOOKS as though it might.
Instead of punishing a private citizen for contributing too much (because he might be offering a bribe), we can now focus on the politician receiving the bribe… who is far more deserving of punishment, in my humble opinion.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
If media corporations are the only ones with free speech – then other corporations will suffer their idiotic views.
Such as:
Impose CO2 laws on businesses
Well !
Let’s impose huge penalties for newspapers killing trees.
Let’s have huge taxes on media personalities big salaries.
Let’s have less speech and more impositions on big media.
Let’s tax commercials.
Let’s tax political commercials especially.
What does Hollywood produce? Nothing! Let’s tax their explosions, props, destruction, gas guzzling speed chasing, bus exploding, bird killing, natural material using, huge energy using, CO2 spewing, nasty foul mouthed, horrible idea spreading, brats who think the American people need to hear their disgusting crap.
I’m not sure the money is all that much, compared to what else Americans spend money on. It sounds like a lot because it becomes concentrated in a very few places, for a short period of time.
I find it quite funny that some folks are all “concerned” about this decision because it will cause millions of dollars from corporations to flow into elections. Where was all this “concern” for the past hundred years while millions of dollars from corrupt, socialist unions was flowing into the campaign chests of democrat candidates? I don’t recall any expressions of “concern” over that by leftist elitists who have now suddenly become strict constructionists and oh, so “concerned” about free speech and untainted elelctions. Give me a break! Support for candidates, monetary or otherwise is political speech, the form of speech the First Amendment was most meant to protect. So spare me your “concern.” It seems to be very selective “concern,” i.e. it has never applied to the millions of corrupt union dollars going to democrats. Gee, how highly moral of you!
The economics textbooks make this really clear.
In any given market, X and Y want to stop their potential competitors, A and B, from ever being allowed to compete.
So X and Y get the government to regulate A and B from entering their protected field.
But now the barriers to A and B come down, and X and Y aren’t alone anymore.
Better for consumers, obviously, but X and Y are upset. They lose the power that they used to have when the market was artificially small.
Lots of people don’t read economics textbooks, which is why they don’t see what a no-brainer it is to let A and B compete.