Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
                                        What people say:

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Corporations are citizens - what are we?

“This week’s Supreme Court ruling that corporations are protected by “free speech” rights and can contribute enormous sums of money to influence elections is a de jure endorsement of the de facto dominance of corporations over our lives. Indeed, corporations are the new citizens of this country, and ordinary Americans, who used to be known as “citizens,” now fall into three categories: consumers, warriors and prisoners.” William J. Astore. truthout.org

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Supreme Court Rolls Back Election Reform

“Great works of literature have dealt with the erosion of personal rights as usurped by institutions of power. The likes of George Orwell, his classic 1984, envisioned the enemy of personal freedom as socialist dictatorship. Orwell did not live in a world wired together by CNN and the internet. He could not have imagined an era of newspapers in decline and news organizations owned by corporations. He saw armies in perpetual war, fighting for anonymous governments oppressing personal liberty. As recent as the 1960s, Dwight D. Eisenhower spotlighted a Military Industrial Complex eager to function as invisible government. The last foothold on rights dedicated to individuals is being redacted. Private entities are maneuvering to claim Constitutional rights intended for individuals- people: not banks, insurance companies, energy purveyors and special interest groups. When they cannot buy power, they send in the lawyers to claim it. Witness the economy and public dissatisfaction, then understand why the faltering corporate world is scrambling to tie up loose ends.” C.M. Barons, The Batavian.

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“Public Citizen will aggressively work in support of a constitutional amendment specifying that for-profit corporations are not entitled to First Amendment protections, except for freedom of the press. We do not lightly call for a constitutional amendment. But today’s decision so imperils our democratic well-being, and so severely distorts the rightful purpose of the First Amendment, that a constitutional corrective is demanded. We are formulating language for possible amendments, asking members of the public to sign a petition to affirm their support for the idea of constitutional change, and planning to convene leading thinkers in the areas of constitutional law and corporate accountability to begin a series of in-depth conversations about winning a constitutional amendment.” Public Citizen.

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Should we be compliant lambs or nonviolent gadflies?

“The natural law of war abides - spitballs into darts forever. Washington’s defense spending, therefore, continues to surge. (The Project of Defense Alternatives reported last week that the Obama administration’s planned allocation of more than $5 trillion to the Pentagon over the next eight years surpasses any eight-year figure, in constant dollars, since 1946 - “a period encompassing Korea, Vietnam, and Cold Wars.’’) The fantasy that Pentagon spending might be checked was obliterated by last week’s other news - the Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited corporate funding of political campaign ads. Defense contractors will spend billions reinforcing the natural law of war. But is it true? Among individuals, even male aggression is tamed by time. Boys grow up. They see what darts can do, and stop shooting them. Can the human race, by analogy, come of age? Roaming the woods to kill, we Chi-com hunters could not have imagined it, but here is the later General MacArthur’s final answer: “The abolition of war. . .is no longer an ethical question to be pondered solely by learned philosophers and ecclesiastics, but a hard-core one for the decision of the masses whose survival is the issue.’’ The masses whose survival is the issue - that would be us.” James Carroll, The Boston Globe.

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“Moreover, the difference between Goldman, Sachs making a video and buying time for it on television, and a group of middle managers at firms like Goldman, Sachs forming a PAC and doing the same thing is not entirely clear to me. Because the top one percent of individuals in the US owns over 40% of the country’s privately held wealth and takes home 20% of its income every year, those roughly 1.3 million persons already had lots of means of influencing campaigns. Videos are not that expensive to make and even television time is inexpensive for executives in a firm that gives out $40 billion in Christmas bonuses. In other words, given the extreme maldistribution of wealth in the US, the corporate sector already had things stacked in its favor through wealthy persons employed by corporations. Jeffrey Toobin on CNN pointed out that in a congressional race, a million dollars is a lot of money, but would be chump change for a corporation. But it would be chump change for a lot of corporate executives, too. ... For all these reasons, a much greater danger to the republic than the anointing of corporations as persons with the right to flood our airwaves with propaganda is any attack on Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is the principle that my blog is inexpensive to publish and to access, so that I and my readers have the same advantages in this regard as a corporation would. If the Right Wing ever manages to scale the internet and make me pay $70,000 a year to put up this blog and have it easily available to my readers, it will kill it and would signal a return to push media like the networks. And a push-media world where corporations own the Web and can push at us what they please, including their weird ideas about political reality, really would be Orwellian and dangerous. This horrible ruling, bad as it is, is not the Waterloo of democracy. The abolition of Net Neutrality would be.” Juan Cole.

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Money in Politics

“I’m just enough of a First Amendment fundamentalist to believe that there are plausible arguments for allowing corporations to make political contributions; just enough of a realist to think that it might not make as much difference as a lot of people think; and just enough of a cynic to think that corporations might not be as eager to spend huge pots of political money in plain view of their customers as you might suppose. On the other hand, I’m not credulous enough to think that modern multinational corporations are mere voluntary assemblies of concerned citizens who deserve to be treated the same way as the local PTA. The world is what it is, and in a practical sense corporations have such enormous power that it would be foolhardy in the extreme to think that we can just blindly provide them with the same rights as individuals and then let the chips fall where they may. In the end, I guess I think the court missed the obvious — and right — decision: recognizing that while nonprofit corporations created for the purpose of political advocacy can be fairly described as “organized groups of people” and treated as such, that doesn’t require us to be willfully oblivious to the fact that big public companies are far more than that and can be treated differently. Exxon is not the Audubon Society and Google is not the NRA. There’s no reason we have to pretend otherwise.” Kevin Drum. MotherJones.com

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Follow-up on the Citizens United case

”... I do think corporate influence is one of the greatest threats we face—but, ultimately, it’s because I don’t believe that restrictions on political speech and opinions (as opposed to other kinds of statements) can ever be justified that I agree with the majority’s ruling. There are reasonable arguments on all sides of that question. ... The “rule of law,” however, means that if the Constitution or other laws bar X, then X is not allowed regardless of how many good outcomes can be achieved by X. That was true for the “crisis” of Terrorism, and it’s just as true for the crisis of corporate influence over our political process. Whatever solutions are to be found for either problem, they cannot be ones that the Constitution explicitly prohibits. That’s what “the rule of law” means. ... “ Glenn Greenwald. Salon.com

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When Americans no longer own America

“The UK’s BP bought Amoco for $48 billion - now Amoco’s profits go to England. Deutsche Telekom bought VoiceStream Wireless, so their profits go to Germany, which is where most of the profits from Random House, Allied Signal, Chrysler, Doubleday, Cyprus Amax’s US Coal Mining Operations, GTE/Sylvania, and Westinghouse’s Power Generation profits go as well. Ralston Purina’s profits go to Switzerland, along with Gerber’s; TransAmerica’s profits go to The Netherlands, while John Hancock Insurance’s profits go to Canada. Even American Bankers Insurance Group is owned now by Fortis AG in Belgium. Foreign companies are buying up our water systems, our power generating systems, our mines, and our few remaining factories. All because “flat world” so-called “free trade” policies have turned us from a nation of wealthy producers into a nation of indebted consumers, leaving the world awash in dollars that are most easily used to buy off big chunks of America. As http://www.economyincrisis.com notes, US Government statistics indicate the following percentages of foreign ownership of American industry: ... Thom Hartman, Information Clearing House.

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Democracy in America is a useful fiction

“The civic, patriotic and political language we use to describe ourselves remains unchanged. We pay fealty to the same national symbols and iconography. We find our collective identity in the same national myths. We continue to deify the Founding Fathers. But the America we celebrate is an illusion. It does not exist. Our government and judiciary have no real sovereignty. Our press provides diversion, not information. Our organs of security and power keep us as domesticated and as fearful as most Iraqis. Capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, when it emasculates government, becomes a revolutionary force. And this revolutionary force, best described as inverted totalitarianism, is plunging us into a state of neo-feudalism, perpetual war and severe repression. The Supreme Court decision is part of our transformation by the corporate state from citizens to prisoners.” Chris Hedges, Truthdig.

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“In declaring unconstitutional Congress’ limits on independent expenditures advocating the election or defeat of a candidate by unions and corporations in a brief period (30 or 60 days) before an election, the Court majority (Justices Kennedy, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and the Chief Justice) stated in essence: —Political speech is at the core of the First Amendment. —Curbs on such speech can only be sustained by a compelling state interest. —Corporations and unions have the same free speech rights as individuals. —The Congressional interests—- in protecting against corruption, against distortion of the political process and against use of corporate or union funds for political purposes not approved by shareholders or members—were not sufficiently compelling to justify the free speech restriction on corporations and unions. The majority left untouched Congressional prohibitions on direct corporate or union contributions to candidates because, as decided in 1976 in Buckley v. Valeo, such contributions constituted a real threat of quid pro quo corruption.” Ben Heineman.

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“The biggest threat to American democracy is corporate power. There is vogue in the White House to talk about the threat of big government. But since the beginning of our national history, our most visionary political leaders have warned the American public against the domination of government by corporate power. That warning is missing in the national debate right now. Because so much corporate money is going into politics, the Democratic Party itself has dropped the ball. They just quash discussion about the corrosive impact of excessive corporate power on American democracy.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

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The Supremes bow to king corporation

“Yesterday’s 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission shreds the fabric of our already weakened democracy by allowing corporations to more completely dominate our corrupted electoral process. It is outrageous that corporations already attempt to influence or bribe our political candidates through their political action committees (PACs), which solicit employees and shareholders for donations. With this decision, corporations can now directly pour vast amounts of corporate money, through independent expenditures, into the electoral swamp already flooded with corporate campaign PAC contribution dollars. Without approval from their shareholders, corporations can reward or intimidate people running for office at the local, state, and national levels.” Ralph Nader. Counterpunch.org

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Opinion: Court ruling is a victory for free speech

“This decision should be welcomed by everyone who cares about free speech, if only because the alternative laid out by the government is so frightening. But it is a correct decision on its own merits. It will increase the amount of political information available to citizens and allow us to hear very important voices that ought to be heard as we, as a nation, debate our future.... Our founders, and fortunately a five-member majority of the court, understood that it is dangerous to allow the government to decide who has spoken too much, or who needs to be silenced lest they become "too influential." The next time you open a book on Kindle, rent a movie from video on demand or buy a book at Borders, remember that it is today's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that secures your right to do so.” Bradley A. Smith, AOLnews.

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The SCOTUS Decision

“So we have a government fused with corporations, a legislature run by corporate lobbyists who have just been given a massive financial gift to control the process even more deeply; we have a theory of executive power advanced by one party that gives the president total extra-legal power over any human being he wants to call an “enemy combatant” and total prerogative in launching and waging wars (remember Cheney did not believe Bush needed any congressional support to invade Iraq); we have a Supreme Court that believes in extreme deference to presidential power; we have a Congress of total pussies on the left and maniacs on the right and little in the middle; we have a 24-hour propaganda channel, run by a multinational corporation and managed by a partisan Republican, demonizing the president for anything he does or does not do; we have the open embrace of torture as a routine aspect of US government; and we have one party urging an expansion of the war on Jihadism to encompass a full-scale war against Iran, an act that would embolden the Khamenei junta and ensure that a civilizational war between the nuttiest Christianists in America and the vilest Islamists metastasizes to Def Con 3. There’s a word that characterizes this kind of polity. It’s on the tip of my tongue ... “ Andrew Sullivan. The Daily Dish.

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"From a practical perspective, the Citizens United decision has completely changed the dynamics of prohibited fundraising. Hereafter, independent organizations and groups will be permitted to collect and expend unlimited sums of money for or against a candidate. Only political parties and candidates will be subject to the regulated environment of the political process. Accordingly, we can expect that countless groups will be organized quickly to take advantage of this newly granted freedom. Moreover, candidates and, to a lesser degree, political Page 4 parties will be forced to assemble loose-knit coalitions of independent groups to advance their interests. This will dramatically reduce the power of political parties over the process, and consequently, permit more independent voices to be heard in the political debate. Accordingly, the door is now wide open for independent groups to engage in the political debate and have a real impact upon the process. Groups that choose not to do so have no one to blame but themselves." William M. Todd.

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“But Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion blithely overturned Court precedent, and rejected the work of the elected branches—all in service of the bizarre legal theories that (1) corporations have the same rights as human beings, and (2) spending money is the same thing as speaking. This was judicial activism of the most egregious kind. Indeed, it wasn’t as much a judicial opinion as it was Republican talking points." Jeffrey Toobin

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Should we be compliant lambs or nonviolent gadflies?

“Thomas Jefferson and those who followed took it as a rule of thumb that political progress stems from dissent. Under the First Amendment, people have a right to dissent. The great dissenters such as Martin Luther King Jr. were even willing to commit civil disobedience to force the government to assume its constitutional role. But as author Howard Zinn points out all too well, “Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.” John W. Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute.

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