SUPREME COURT U.S. Government For Sale Yesterday, in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court held that "the constitutional guarantee of free speech means that corporations can spend unlimited sums to help elect favored candidates or defeat those they oppose." The activist 5-4 decision struck down a 63-year-old ban that ensured corporations may not use their enormous profits to support or oppose candidates. The ruling "declared unconstitutional a large portion of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act passed in 2002." Ian Millhiser of the Center for American Progress Action Fund observed, "Today's decision does far more than simply provide Fortune 500 companies with a massive megaphone to blast their political views to the masses; it also empowers them to drown out any voices that disagree with them." Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), who is already pushing legislation to rectify the Court's decision, warned, "The law itself will be bought and sold. It would be political bribery on the largest scale imaginable." "The Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century," the New York Times writes today.
THE BACKGROUND OF THE CASE: The case grew from attempts by the conservative organization Citizens United to promote its anti-Hillary Clinton film, "Hillary: The Movie," in 2008, which "takes viewers on a savaging journey through Clinton's scandals." Because the movie was partially financed with corporate funds, "it fell under restrictions in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002," also known as The McCain-Feingold Act. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) therefore heavily restricted Citizens United's ability to advertise the film. A March 2009 ruling upheld the FEC's decision, writing that the film was "susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her." The film "was the brainchild of Citizens United President David N. Bossie, a former congressional aid" and longtime Clinton critic. According to Nick Nyhart, president of Public Campaign, "The movie was created with the idea of establishing a vehicle to chip away at the decision. ... It was part of a very clear strategy to undo McCain-Feingold."
A RIGHT-WING ACTIVIST COURT: The Washington Post writes that the Court's majority made "a mockery of some justices' pretensions to judicial restraint." Although Chief Justice John Roberts represented himself as an impartial "umpire" during his 2005 confirmation hearings -- acknowledging that "it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent on the bench" -- Roberts "has shown himself more willing than his mentor and predecessor, William H. Rehnquist, to question the court's past decisions." During his short tenure thus far, Roberts' "record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative." Likewise, Samuel Alito's replacement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has tipped the court's balance from supportive of congressional efforts to reduce the influence of special interests to suspicious of how the restrictions curtail free speech. Since Roberts and Alito joined its ranks, the Court ignored longstanding precedents protecting women against paycheck discrimination and older workers against age discrimination. The Court overruled a very recent precedent protecting women's reproductive freedom, and Roberts even had the audacity to claim that the Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision forbids school boards from desegregating public schools. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, "At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people. ... While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."
FURTHER EMPOWERING BIG BUSINESS: In 2008, "the Obama and McCain campaigns combined to spend just over $1.1 billion, an enormous, record-breaking sum at the time," but a small fraction of what corporations have available. "With hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate profits at stake every time Congress begins a session," wrote Millhiser, "wealthy corporations would be foolish not to spend tens of billions of dollars every election cycle to make sure that their interests are protected. No one, including the candidates themselves, have the ability to compete with such giant expenditures." David Kirkpatrick wrote in the New York Times that the Court "has handed a new weapon to lobbyists. If you vote wrong, a lobbyist can now tell any elected official that my company, labor union or interest group will spend unlimited sums explicitly advertising against your re-election." "The good news," wrote Millhiser, "is that lawmakers are already considering ways to mitigate the damage caused by Citizens United, and a number of options exist, such as requiring additional disclosures by corporations engaged in electioneering, empowering shareholders to demand that their investment not be spent to advance candidates they disapprove of, or possibly even requiring shareholders to approve a corporation's decision to influence an election before the company may do so." Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) have been "working for months to draft legislation in response to the anticipated decision." Potential fixes include banning political advertising by corporations that hire lobbyists, receive government money, or collect most of their revenue abroad. "Another would be to tighten rules against coordination between campaigns and outside groups so that, for example, they could not hire the same advertising firms or consultants. A third would be to require shareholder approval of political expenditures, or even to force chief executives to appear as sponsors of commercials their companies pay for."
RADICAL RIGHT -- MICHIGAN COMPANY WILL STOP PUTTING BIBLICAL REFERENCES ON GUNS: A Michigan arms company said yesterday that it would immediately stop putting references to New Testament Scriptures on rifle sights it sells the military. Last week, the blog Accurate Shooter reported that the company, Trijicon, had "discretely placed references to Bible passages" on the high-powered rifle sights it manufactured. Trijicon "has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps." The military strictly bans the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq and Afghanistan. Air Force Maj. John Redfield, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, initially defended Trijicon, saying, "This situation is not unlike the situation with US currency. Are we going to stop using money because the bills have 'In God We Trust' on them? As long as the sights meet the combat needs of troops, they'll continue to be used." But Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus took a different position on Wednesday, saying that "this is of serious concern to me and the other commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan because it can indeed create a perception that is absolutely contrary to what it is that we have sought to do." David Chater, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the Afghanistan, said the scopes could become a "a rallying cry for the Taliban. It gives them a propaganda tool." Scopes with biblical references were also sold to the Australian, New Zealand and British militaries. Trijicon has now said that it will end the practice and "offered to provide modification kits to the Pentagon to enable their removal on existing optics."
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Some conservative House Democrats are pushing to extend the Bush tax cuts, likely earning themselves favor with "Republican-leaning business associations." The Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo writes, "There's absolutely no reason to extend these cuts, which this year will give millionaires more in tax breaks than 90 percent of Americans will earn in income." Ben Bernanke's confirmation for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman "could be a closer vote than seemed likely just a few weeks ago." Three senators have publicly said they will vote against Bernanke, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said there are other Democrats who are quietly planning to do the same. In the wake of yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on corporate involvement in elections, the Colorado Republican Party plans to sue "to overturn voter-approved state limits on some campaign contributions." "Our firm will be bringing a challenge to this law in the coming days," said Ryan Call, a lawyer whose firm will represent the state GOP. The 2002 law banned direct corporate or union expenditures in state races. "The nation's mayors are asking the federal government for a second wave of stimulus money," saying the first round hasn't done enough to combat urban unemployment. More than 230 mayors are in Washington for a conference and warn that they will be forced to impose more layoffs without a second stimulus. Liberal radio network Air America announced yesterday that it was declaring Chapter 7 bankruptcy and shutting down after six years on air. The company raised the profile of Al Franken and Rachel Maddow and "helped build a new sense of purpose and determination among American progressives" at a time when dissent on issues was "often denounced as 'un-American.'" Despite yesterday's news, progressive radio remains alive and well. In a speech on Internet freedom yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "Those who disrupt the free flow of information in our society or any other pose a threat to our economy, our government and our civil society." The Chinese Foreign Ministry lashed out today saying Clinton's speech was "harmful to Sino-American relations." "A bill that would ban abortions in Nebraska during the second trimester or later would be the first law of its kind in the nation if passed by the Legislature," according to the bill's sponsor. The legislation would ban abortion after the fetus has the "physical structures necessary to experience pain" and would "require a doctor to determine the gestational age of the fetus before performing an abortion." The Obama administration "has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release," an administration official said Thursday. There are currently nearly 200 detainees left at the prison. Several European governments reacted positively to a new Obama plan "to curb banks' size and trading activities" yesterday. "They see that regulation, which was a taboo word that was difficult to use in financial circles in the United States, is vital to contain...banking excesses," said French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde. Continuing his "White House to Main Street" jobs tour, President Obama will travel to the Cleveland suburb of Elyria, Ohio today, one of the hardest hit areas in the country in terms of unemployment. The president will visit the Riddell sporting goods factory to witness the production of baseball and football helmets. And finally: Washington now finds itself in the middle of the NBC controversy between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien: The White House Correspondents' Association has reportedly chosen Leno to headline its annual dinner on May 1.
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"Notice, end of George W. Bush, first year of Barack Obama. Uh, kind of scary. Even the Neanderthal conservatives know that [a] 1.9 trillion [deficit], lots of money. Fire, good. Spending, bad."
-- Fox News' Glenn Beck, 1/21/10
VERSUS
"President Obama's agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the [2009] deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying."
-- The New York Times, 6/09/09
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