by Leora Barish
Every American, hard-left to tea partyer, should be appalled by Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the radical Supreme Court decision that held that limits on corporate political spending violate a corporation’s right to free speech. Thanks to this decision, corporations can spend unlimited funds to promote or oppose candidates, advance or impede legislation, and shape public opinion. If political spending is free speech, corporations now have the loudest voice in American politics.
The Roberts court decision is the culmination of 200 years of corporate legal maneuvering aimed at establishing corporate rights without surrendering corporate privileges, which include limited liability, lower tax rates and perpetuity, which, alas, aren’t available to private citizens. But the framers of the Constitution never intended to extend right to free speech to corporations — not because they didn’t know about or couldn’t imagine big corporate interests, but because they could and did. The Founding Fathers frequently expressed concern that powerful corporations could, if unrestrained, “mingle in elections,” manipulate government, dictate laws, and destroy the principle of equality fundamental to democracy.
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by Darryl Isherwood
On Wednesday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee tore into Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for a fundraiser he held with Goldman Sachs (GS: 147.72 ,+0.47 ,+0.32%) executives earlier this year. Reid’s camp returned fire, accusing Republicans of being in the pocket of Wall Street after minority leader Mitch McConnell held a closed door meeting with lobbyists and executives to discuss the financial reform bill pending in Congress.
So exactly which party does Wall Street favor and who are the largest beneficiaries of the industry’s financial largesse? The answer is simple:
Whoever is in power.
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by John Nichols
In 2008, when it mattered to oppose bank bailouts, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, led the push to steer the spigot of federal dollars into the vaults of the biggest speculators on Wall Street.
While a number of Democrats and Republicans objected to the no-strings-attached bailout, McConnell objected to placing even the most minimal controls on the raiding of the national treasury. The Kentuckian even appeared with Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut [1] to talk up the bailout legislation.
Now, however, McConnell is leading the fight to block even the tepid regulatory reforms proposed by Dodd.
Why?
McConnell says the proposed reforms would “allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks.”
But didn’t McConnell back bailouts before he opposed them?
So what’s going on?
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“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy.”
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Amidst exploding bombs, smoke billowing from sinking battleships and dead bodies floating atop the oil slicked waters of Pearl Harbor, it was not all that difficult to appreciate the damage wrought by a surprise attack launched by the Empire of Japan. The same was true when we watched in horror as the smoldering twin towers of the World Trade Center precipitously collapsed on September 11, 2001.
Like these two earlier pivotal events, January 21, 2010 is, “a date which will live in infamy.” Yet, unlike Pearl Harbor and 9/11, most Americans do not recognize it as such. This attack came not by way of planes or bombs delivered by some foreign menace. It came from within courtesy of what Professor Cass Sunstein aptly described as — four directly connected to the Robert-Bork founded, billionaire-funded Federalist Society; all five as appointees of the Reagan and two Bush administrations. Men bent on unraveling the very constitution they had all solemnly sworn to uphold.
Their assault, though subtle, wrought far greater devastation than either Pearl Harbor or 9/11. They did not merely attack planes, ships and buildings. They assaulted the very foundations of our constitutional democracy….
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Time is short for Congress to deal with the damage from the Supreme Court’s decision allowing corporations and unions to spend without limit in attacking or boosting candidates for federal office.
To avoid an unbridled flood of cash in this year’s elections, Congress must impose full transparency on precisely where the money comes from — so corporations and unions can no longer hide behind euphemistic labels to finance candidate drives.
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By Richard L. Hasen
If you thought things have gotten bad with campaign financing since the Supreme Court turned on the corporate money spigot in the Citizens United case, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Opponents of reasonable regulation have a new target: trying to keep the flow of campaign money secret. We may soon be going retro, back to the pre-Watergate era of secret campaign cash.
The Watergate scandal of the 1970s taught us a lot about secret campaign cash. Major corporations to the Nixon campaign despite the prohibition on corporate giving to federal candidates. American Airlines was the first corporation to plead guilty to , laundered through a Lebanese bank, to the 1972 Nixon re-election effort. Cash also arrived to the campaign in paper bags from millionaires.
Watergate taught us too that secrecy allowed for all kinds of out-of-sight dirty tricks, such as breaking into offices of rivals, planting spies with opposition campaigns, and attempts at outright bribery of officials. The offered $2 million to the Nixon campaign in exchange for the administration’s support for higher milk subsidies. These were truly the “bad old days” of campaign financing.
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