January has sure been a month for game changes. First there was a book of that name written by a coupla gossip columnists disguised as journalists. That’s the one that revealed Harry Reid had accidentally told the truth about reasons Barack Obama actually could be elected president.
And just when we thought we were getting away from the political Kitty Kelleys, comes the Massachusetts Senate race in which a lousy Democratic candidate lost to a lousy Republican candidate because 1) she was a lousy candidate, 2) she couldn’t keep her feet out of her mouth, 3) Massachusetts voters apparently like their candidates to be centerfolds, 4) progressives were pissed about a lot of things, especially the public option, and forgot what happened in 2000, 5) Mass voters actually believed Scott Brown when he said he was an independent, 6) the end is nigh.
But now comes the real game changer. Chief Justice John Roberts Wednesday accomplished what he was appointed to the court to do: He eliminated limits on federal campaign spending by corporations. Silly Teabaggers. They probably thought his purpose was to kill Roe v. Wade. Nah. The guys with money coming out of their ears don’t give a shit about that. Stacking the U.S. Supreme Court with conservatives had just one goal.
Mission accomplished. Welcome to America, Inc., where corporations are considered citizens. And John Roberts didn’t even have to wear a flight suit.
Yay! Bribery is now legal!
So now, every incorporated entity in the United States — from Goldman Sachs to the ACLU to News Corp. to the AFL-CIO to BP to Eggleston Children’s Hospital to Bristol-Myers Squibb to Greenpeace — can pour as much money as they want into politics.
They can’t – yet – give all those millions to individual candidates. I’m sure that’s next, but they can make ads, commercials, infomercials – anything they want – for or against a candidate or an issue.
I know it’s asking a lot — but real Americans, the pro-democracy, pro-individual liberties types — could probably see a teeny-tiny problem with that, if they only looked really, really hard, not to mention that some of those special interests have a heckuva lot more spare change laying around than others, Exxon.
Of course, the ones who’ll benefit from this unleashing of corporate mania onto the American citizenry think it’s great. Ed Rollins, GOP strategist and CNN political analyst, says it’s g-r-r-r-r-eat! Because it’ll make political races more competitive.
More competitive? On whose planet does having corporate backing makes this more competitive? You know that, I know that. Hell, Teabaggers know that. But their masters are lobbyists, so we know that’ll change soon.
So here’s what’s gonna happen. Not one single congresscritter is going to come out in favor of this decision. Select numbers of them will condemn it in the usual language. There will be some noise about Doing Something, some mention of a constitutional amendment.
But in the end, nothing will be done. Not one damn thing. And some new shiny object will come along to take all our attention away from that issue, burying it into the deep recesses of our collective memory with enough locks and chains that will guarantee it never resurfaces.
Why? It’s the money, stupid. Only the most altruistic politicians are truly upset about this, and figuring out which ones those are isn’t easy. But I can guarandamntee you that there’s not enough to Do Something about it.
Just so you’ll know, this whole thing was about some swiftboat-type conservative group called Citizens United that regularly puts out “documentaries” that are actually just right-wing smear-fests. You may recall the squabble over “Hillary – The Movie,” which, in fact, was the impetus for this case.
Now, thanks the Roberts court, any corporation with an ax to grind can grind away and the only thing they have to do about it is make a disclosure report. That’d be really helpful, actually, if only American citizens would actual use disclosure reports and have an idea of what they mean.
Seeing Pfizer stumping for a few congresscritters likely means they’re buying favorable votes on bills that have to do with pharmaceuticals. Texaco doing the same is looking for more tax breaks for oil companies, most likely. And on and on. But I’m not holding my breath for the average American to look into that or even care when anybody else does.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote for the majority in the 5-4 ruling, said that laws preventing companies from spending this kind of money somehow violated a First Amendment right “to think for ourselves.”
When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,
he said.
John Paul Stevens, in dissent:
In a democratic society, the long-standing consensus on the need to limit corporate campaign spending should outweigh the wooden applications of judge-made rules.
The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.
Kennedy is right that the citizens are free to get their information from wherever they want, whether it’s legitimate or not. And yes, we do indeed have the freedom to think for ourselves.
But a corporation should not have the right to pour unlimited amounts of money into their political agendas and foist those agendas onto potentially unsuspecting citizens. Faux News already does that quite well. But there’s far too much information to sort through.
It’s no wonder so many citizens latch onto some ideology and then cling to it for dear life.
I have a better idea. Rather than create all kinds of campaign finance laws, which some activist conservative court will then interpret to be violating the First Amendment, let’s just ban campaigns. No political advertising. That totally takes care of the spin. Well, most of it.
Candidates may maintain Web sites, and they may send e-mails to their own supporters. Robocalls are banned, but phone banks are allowed. A live human must be at the candidates’ end of the phone line. Television and radio will make space for debates or discussions of the issues with the candidates. Volunteers can do their canvassing thing.
There’d be some minor variations among federal, state and local races, but the result would be that political campaigns would be much cheaper, and maybe, just maybe, somebody other than rich sons of bitches and their female counterparts will actually have a chance.
And maybe the candidates will actually have to listen to the voters for a change, rather than the folks who fund their campaigns. I’m certainly not holdin’ my breath on that one, but one day …
One day, the teabaggers and the progressives and the liberals and the conservatives and the religious and the atheists and everybody else are all gonna see the same thing: That this is Corporate America, and what they say or think means absolutely nothing.
When that happens, somebody’s gonna have some splainin’ to do.
But I have a caveat for us all.
Teabaggers and other conservatives are looking in the wrong place for similarities between modern times and the 18th century. The French Revolution will have much more in common with a modern uprising than our own War of Independence simply by virtue of the U.S. revolution being a war for independence from another nation. In France, it was a fight to shed the yoke of an uncaring aristocratic elite – a true aristocratic elite, not the educated liberals the conservatives are so afraid of. In America, the fight was to break away from a despotic and possibly mentally ill monarch who was happy to take the colonies’ money but quite reluctant send any back.
By the way, I caution against trying to equate the various French factions with any factions in modern America. Your head will likely spin off into space if you do.
The caveat is this: La Terreur – the Reign of Terror — followed the French Revolution. It was a period of violence pitting rival “revolutionaries” against one another that lasted for more than a year. As many as 40,000 people may have died in that violence. Most were sentenced in tribunals to death by guillotine, others were killed by crazed mobs. Maximilien de Robespierre, who came to the forefront during those 14 months under the auspices of the Committee for Public Safety, equated The Terror with virtue and patriotism.
But three-fourths of those who ran afoul of the tribunals were average Frenchmen and women, workers and peasants. Less than a fifth were the aristocrats.
Sooooo … be very careful of the games you seek to change.
I’m just sayin.
AWOP executive editor, politics
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Great write up, and even better ideas for “non-campaign reform.” Only thing I could add is that under the new rules, foreign governments, say China for instance, could easily buy an obscure US corporation and quietly funnel a bazillion dollars into the campaign of their choice. The irony of course is that only a few years ago, wasn’t it the conservative wing of our government that went ape shit when Al Gore accidentally received campaign contributions from some buddhists who were, uh, Chinese? Something like that – non-citizens at the very least.
This makes my head and my heart hurt – I feel like my children have just been sold into servitude.
On the whole I agree with you. In fact, my instincts agree with you completely. I am concerned that several attorneys I respect… Glenn Greenwald, for example… see this as a genuine First Amendment issue, and make the classic argument against forsaking rights for the sake of convenience or expediency. I disagree with him, but he’s no dummy; if he has civil liberties concerns, there may be aspects I’m missing when I say “This decision is nuts.”
What would you say to a reintroduced Fairness Doctrine, strengthened to compel the dedication of funds to opposing ads in all arguably political matters?
Really, Steve, I think the Fairness Doctrine is unworkable because it tends to assume that there are ever only two sides to an issue. Beyond that, somebody’s got to decide which other sides are “worthy” enough to be included. Happens every four years like clockwork during presidential primaries — somebody decides which candidates are worthy of inclusion in debates and which are not, and invariably somebody’s pissed.
Frankly, that’s what’s wrong with my colleagues now as it is. They can see only two sides to every issue. It’s why they can’t see that progressive dissatisfaction had anything to do with Scott Brown’s win — you can’t have conservative dissatisfaction and progressive dissatisfaction at the same time in their eyes.
I really disagree with Glenn too, at least as far as this ruling is concerned, but I do agree with his remedy: publicly funded campaigns.
newswriter, from about the Reagan era forward, the managers of election campaigns on the federal level have seen only one side, period. The Karl Roves and Rahm Emanuels of the world exhibit not the slightest perspective that makes me think they see any value in even as many as two opposing forces in the political arena. Once either gains power in a world in which corporate funding is effectively unlimited, that’s it… power will not change hands again, not until some sort of overt revolution, So if your publicly funded campaigns are to be legislated into place, it must happen now… as in, right now, during Obama’s only term. That’s really gonna happen, d’ya think?
Oh, and what is our nation’s product or service to be sold to the world? political campaigns? you gotta be kidding me… but soon enough, that will be all America has to offer. What a wonderful world. “I see trees of green, / red roses too, …”
heheheh. between that one and Devo’s Beautiful World, yeah.
y’know, i really don’t know what’s going to happen next. i was struggling with a post about it last night — what should we do, and trashed it when i realized i was falling into the same trap i slap other people for — thinking inside the box. i was looking at where we were and trying to invision a way out. not having much luck, i wasn’t making much sense.
then i realized i was abandoning one of my most cherished ideals — along with never giving up — and that is when you feel boxed in, look up. what we’ve done traditionally obviously isn’t working. time for something untraditional.
it’s actually what i was advocating for the prez — his two democratic models are Carter (told the truth, got slammed for it, stuck to his guns, one term prez. fail) and Clinton (told the truth, got slammed for it, ran to the right, two term prez, also fail). If the two models you have didn’t work, you’ve got to try something different.
And after I realized that, I also realized I had totally forgotten about another cherished ideal: build coalitions. Find allies where you thought there were none. It’s what FDL has been doing, although I think jumping in bed with Grover Norquist is a bad idea. The generality is right, but the specific is just plain wrong.
And then, my hero, Sara Robinson, wrote the post I was struggling to find. it’ll appear tomorrow at AWOP.
Teabaggers…
*sigh*
Can someone please advance an acceptable rebuttal pejorative that I may use that will not insult or otherwise offend? I happen to like ‘moonbat’, but tastes vary from progressive conclave to conclave.
Newswriter,
I know that some are alarmed at the prospect of corporations being able to donate money to campaigns and the corruption that may result.
But the plain language of the First Amendment sets limitations upon the government, not of the people. Ultimately, it is the government that requires our constant vigilance such that it is never allowed to seep into our lives as it has successfully done in these past decades.
Yes, corporations are often offensive beasts that require taming from time to time, but none is large enough to offer any kind of defense against the might of a tyrannical government with the power to tax, regulate, penalize and imprison by whim and fiat.
The corporation is ultimately governed by the laws of the free market; we can all decline to purchase the good or service offered, sell our stock or use our own right of free speech to deliver the message far and wide that a corporation is not producing a quality product and that we should instead look elsewhere.
As we are all figuring out, there is no analogy to the free market checking the monstrosity of government other than our vote, the First Amendment and as a last resort, the Second Amendment. I know none of us wants to go there. Debating, campaigning and voting is much more fun.
blah blah blah turfie.it’s too late. the corps already own the gov. so while all the little teabaggeries are screaming their little heads off about government intrusion, the real rulers of the country now have more ability to corrupt congress, as if they actually needed it.
as i’ve said before, until we have a perfect world in which everyone considers the greater good over everything else, there must be laws, regulation, even taxes.not to mention penalize an imprison. Not by whim or fiat but because it’s necessary.
unfortunately, our government has already opted out of that. they make little noises about it from time to time, but the real purpose of our government is to make sure those artificial people — the corporations and their top executives and board members – make their millions.
our votes, our free speech — they don’t count. we can still do it, of course, but it makes no difference whatsoever.
and by the way, i prefer dirty hippie.
hmmm… I thought it was dirty “miscreant” hippie… or was that another of my commie liberal America hating friends?
kim g.
oops you’re right. It is dirty miscreant hippie. I thought dirty hippie didn’t look quite right. Thanks buddy!
yeah, I thought that was you. It really does help capture that “dangerous to the status quo” aka herd quality in your writing that makes the tails of sheeple stand up and twitch nervously. I love that.
kim g.
Oooh, I like that. “dangerous to the status quo.” speaking of which, read Sara’s piece. Clarified all my swirling thoughts and feelings of the past few days. I’m a changed woman.
yeah, I did read it.
Changed how?
More clarity. More detachment. Made sense of the paradox. I long ago learned that the paradox points to absolute truth, but y’still gotta understand it to move forward, or at least be one with it. Been having trouble with knowing that coaltions are vital and that some coalitions may seem odd while also knowing that some of the people we need to coalesce with are not good for us. The answer was very simple and right there — “be choosy.”
By the way, check out this cartoon:
ha! good one.
yes yes, I know discernment. It’s an old favorite of mine. I discovered it a few years ago out of sheer desperation in regard to personal relationships of the romantic kind and applying it to other aspects of life was pretty easy after that but the non-attachment to the outcome part of discernment continues to be the real struggle for me now. I am far better at it now than I have ever been but still have far far to go.
How quaint the ways of Paradox!
At common sense, she gaily mocks!
(Fascinating conversation, viewed from the outside, even if I haven’t a clue about its content.)
I’ve been reading a book titled Expletive Deleted, a semi-scholarly study of cussing, and it suggests a different word between “dirty” and “hippie” … but I’m sure you have considered that possibility already.