Talk about an idea whose time has come.
Today, the Fair Elections Now Act is being re-introduced. Actor Alec Baldwin, who was present at the bill’s introduction, told CNN it was a critical step toward “reducing the influence of corporate lobbyists and special interest money.”
Alec is right. The bill would help candidates remain free from corporate interests by providing public money for their campaigns if they raise a certain amount of small-dollar contributions from voters.
The grip that corporations have over our elections and our lawmakers is unprecedented, thanks in no small part to the U.S. Supreme Court’s January 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That’s the decision that gave corporations the green light to spend as much money as they want on elections.
What does that decision mean for you? It means that lawmakers are even more beholden to wealthy corporate interests — oil and coal companies, financial giants, agribusiness mega-companies and so forth — and even less likely to act in your interests. After all, those corporations are looking out for their bottom lines and have no problem rolling over citizens to boost profits. They want public policies that advance that goal. They give money to lawmakers so they can ask for favors later.
We saw the effect of the Citizens United decision on the midterm elections: spending by outside groups jumped to $294.2 million in the 2010 election cycle from just $68.9 million in the 2006 cycle. Nearly half of the money spent came from just 10 groups. Two groups formed by Republican strategist Karl Rove combined to spend $38.2 million, more than any single group. Next was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Today, Public Citizen sent a letter to Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), who introduced the measure. The letter said: [Read more]
Happy Birthday, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission!
You’re one year old today, big boy. But just think of all the fine things you’ve done already:
[Read more]
To mark Friday’s anniversary of a court decision that allowed corporations to sink millions into politics, Common Cause, a reform group, is asking the Department of Justice to investigate alleged conflicts of interest involving two Supreme Court justices – in hopes of forcing the court to vacate the 5-4 ruling.
Common Cause officials and at least one legal expert acknowledged the difficulty of getting the landmark case overturned in this way. But in a document to be submitted to the department Thursday, Common Cause President Bob Edgar cites appearances by Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia at retreats sponsored by Koch Industries, a corporation run by two major Republican donors who helped finance some of the new GOP groups founded after the ruling.
“It appears both justices have participated in political strategy sessions, perhaps while the case was pending, with corporate leaders whose political aims were advanced by the decision,” the Common Cause petition asserts. [Read more]
January 18, 2011 – The U.S. Supreme Court on January 21, 2010, scuttled the longstanding American tradition of prohibiting overt corporate spending to influence elections in its Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling.
On the one-year anniversary of the decision, this report offers an assessment of its impact. We provide a brief history of the legal restrictions on corporate involvement in elections and the events that led to the Citizens United v. FEC decision. We document the dramatic increase in outside spending in the 2010 elections and assess the enhancement of power that corporate lobbyists now enjoy. Finally, we discuss a comprehensive package of legislative and constitutional reforms that can be pursued at the federal, state and local levels to mitigate the damage caused by Citizens United v. FEC—or to reverse it altogether.
WASHINGTON — Almost 40 years ago, a Virginia lawyer named Lewis F. Powell Jr. warned that the nation’s free enterprise system was under attack. He urged the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to assemble “a highly competent staff of lawyers” and retain outside counsel “of national standing and reputation” to appear before the Supreme Court and advance the interests of American business.
“Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court,” he wrote, “the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.”
Mr. Powell, who joined the Supreme Court a year later in 1972 and died in 1998, got his wish — and never more so than with the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
The chamber now files briefs in most major business cases. The side it supported in the last term won 13 of 16 cases. Six of those were decided with a majority vote of five justices, and five of those decisions favored the chamber’s side. One of the them was Citizens United, in which the chamber successfully urged the court to guarantee what it called “free corporate speech” by lifting restrictions on campaign spending.
The chamber’s success rate is but one indication of the Roberts court’s leanings on business issues. [Read more]
“It’s not too late to limit or reverse the impact of the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Citizens United v. FEC,” says Fran Korten in a recent article for Yes! Magazine. Korten puts forth 10 ideas that would help limit or reverse the Court’s decision, including:
American business leaders are concerned about the pressure they feel to donate to political campaigns and the influx of large, undisclosed donations to third-party political organizations that are not required to disclose their sources of funding, according to a new Zogby poll commissioned by the Committee for Economic Development (CED).
The survey found that 60 percent of the over 300 business leaders polled say there is pressure to contribute to political efforts.
Seventy-seven percent of respondents believe that corporations should disclose all of their direct and indirect political expenditures, including money provided to third-party organizations to be spent on campaign ads. [Read more]
We hope you enjoy this issue of Public Citizen’s e-newsletter about the intersection of money and politics. This is part of the campaign we developed following the disastrous Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts supporting or attacking political candidates. We’ll update you regularly with select news stories and blog posts, legislative developments and ways to get involved.
WASHINGTON – October 19 – With record amounts of secret money being funneled through nonprofit organizations to influence the upcoming elections, Public Citizen today unveiled an Internet database to track the activity.
The new Stealth PACs database is available at http://www.citizen.org/stealthpacs.
The project tracks 120 groups that are working to influence the elections with large contributions from corporations, unions or wealthy individuals in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s January 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. [Read more]
The only sure things in life, Benjamin Franklin should have said, are death, taxes and campaign-finance reform. Trying to keep money out of politics is like trying to keep a basement dry in New Orleans, which made the issue a perfect subject for the Supreme Court: nothing revs up Justices like a symbolic fight over an intractable issue. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court struck down certain limits on corporate campaign spending–upholding the First Amendment or selling American politics into bondage, depending on your view.
Some backstory: in 2008 the conservative nonprofit Citizens United produced the anti-Clinton film Hillary: The Movie and arranged to distribute it using money from the group’s corporate treasury rather than from its political-action committee–a crucial distinction under the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reforms of 2002. In a 5-4 ruling, the court found that distinction unconstitutional. If freedom of speech protects the right of individuals to air their political views, it decided, then that right extends to incorporated groups–like businesses, labor unions, Planned Parenthood and Citizens United.
The case sparked a clash of worldviews. “The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority. A law declaring who can say what about elected officials, and how and when, did not pass muster. On the other side, Justice John Paul Stevens’ 90-page dissent spoke admiringly of McCain-Feingold and shuddered to imagine the influence that big corporations and Big Labor might exercise over politics in the absence of such efforts. The ruling, he wrote, “threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation.” [Read more]
WASHINGTON - Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a rare, out-of-term rehearing of a case justices set aside from last term that could flip campaign finance law on its head.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will determine how much influence corporations can exert in political campaigns. If the justices ultimately decide to rule against precedent, says Rick Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School Los Angeles, it will “open up the floodgates of money in federal elections.” No surprise, then, that the business community, labor unions, numerous advocacy groups, 26 states and the District of Columbia, several congressmen and two U.S. senators have all weighed in.
Corporations and labor unions are allowed to contribute to political action committees, but for more than a century, Uncle Sam has curbed their direct spending to influence elections. In 2002, Congress passed the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, banning certain corporately funded broadcasts just before an election and requiring disclosure of most corporate funding for ads. In a decision the next year, the court bolstered the law and upheld a 1990 decision limiting corporate influence.
But the justices may be about to change course, due to the debate surrounding the 2008 documentary film Hillary: the Movie, an unflattering portrayal of Hillary Clinton, then a presidential candidate.
In simplified terms, Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, produced the movie and wanted to offer it as a video on demand, in addition to its appearances in theaters. It also wanted to run ads promoting the film. A federal district court determined that federal regulators couldn’t ban the ads (as long as they adhered to disclosure requirements), but they could ban the film. If that’s the case, argued Citizens United, it’s an intrusion on the right to free speech.
The case has created an unlikely group of allies and adversaries. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business community’s lobby in Washington, says the law’s disclosure requirements have a “suppressive effect” on First Amendment expression. The AFL-CIO argues that the court’s previous decisions on the matter have created an “unworkable censorship regime” that can be remedied only by reversing parts of the 2003 decision.
Others, like the American Independent Business Alliance, argue that business and individuals are inherently different and that corporations don’t enjoy the same interpretation of free expression under the First Amendment that people do.
Since the court rarely hears a case unless it wants to clarify a confusing aspect of law or overturn a previous decision, the John Roberts court may be poised to overturn several aspects of its 2003 decision and perhaps the 1990 decision as well, some analysts have argued.
If that happens, the justices would be making a legal statement at an awkward time politically. For the past year, lawmakers have excoriated regulators for allowing companies like Citigroup, American International Group and Bank of America for getting too big to fail. Handing companies more power to influence the political process would be unpopular, to say the least.
Corporations already play a prominent role in campaign funding. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft and Citigroup were among the top donors to Democrat Barack Obama’s successful bid for the presidency last year. Republican candidate John McCain’s top three contributors were Merrill Lynch (now owned by Bank of America), Citi and Morgan Stanley.
If after hearing Citizens United v. FEC, the court reverses previous decisions, Hasen predicts it’s unlikely that businesses will directly support one candidate or another.
“That could be bad for the corporate image,” he says. Instead, contributions will likely get funneled through organizations like the U.S. Chamber, which can direct it to any number of purposes. But it’s also likely that parties and candidates will hit up companies for political donations more frequently.
“The question is more about extortion than bribery,” jokes Hasen.