Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling reversing the McCain-Feingold federal campaign-finance law is a victory for special interest groups and a bigger win for free speech in the United States. The 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will stop the government from regulating political speech of corporations.
President Obama quickly responded with a statement claiming, “It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans” Mr. President, we already felt that way, except you can add unions and bureaucracies to that list. On the eve of Obamacare dying, it also amused me that he says “I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue.”
The President wasn’t the only one riled up by the decision. The New York Times, the CREW, and the most of the media conveyed similar sentiments. My favorite would be Keith Olbermann’s special comment last night.
Apparently, free speech has come to an end and corporations will control every aspect of life with its money.
Ironically, this decision grew out of a 2008 federal ban on the showing of a documentary film, Hillary: The Movie, in which the movie’s criticized, then candidate, Hillary Clinton. McCain-Feingold allowed the Federal Election Commission to stop the showing of the film because a corporation produced it, even though the corporation in question was a NONPROFIT.
This case showed the way the FEC used law to protect politicians from the effects of free speech and knowledge. In this case in particular, the electoral process was protected from propaganda not corrupting influence. To be clear, Corporations and the like have had their spending limits uncapped, not to the individual candidate but to political ads. I suppose we could see some irresponsible spending by corporations to flood the airways with political jargon and in turn corrupting or influencing races.
Obama and others would have you believe that these special interests and big business are all in the pockets of Republicans. However the insurance companies and bank bailouts coupled with the heavy donations from Goldman Sachs to Democratic candidates shows there is plenty of money on each side of the aisle. Unions and Left-leaning groups will all have chance to spend their share of money to politicize its views. Here is the federal campaign finance website. You can see for yourself that Democratic party is not suffering from a lack of contributions.
My point here is simply that the more money spent on influencing opinion and spreading information the better. Let the Republic decide for itself what is acceptable and what is not. We don’t need the Government to shield us from interest groups.
3conservativebros
MacGregor
Johnny M
Timmy K
Since there’s obviously nothing we can do about it, we shall witness the effects of this decision firsthand. How much of an actual increase in influence will this decision make? It’s difficult to say. Certainly it will benefit both parties – any politician – who is championing a cause beholden to a specific set of corporate interests. Those won’t always be bad, and they won’t always be good.
I don’t like the decision, or agree with it. Corporations have enough control. Unions have enough control. This doesn’t do anything but benefit them, and they do not always have the public interest at heart.
I see this as a victory for politicians and a loss for the people.
I see your point of view. It will be interesting to see what kind of restrictions Obama and Congress can cook up to offset this. Since this is a constitutional ruling, I think there only option is an amendment. Shouldn’t a constitutional lawyer know that?
Corporation and Unions do have plenty of “control”… That control is usually manifested through the people though. Politicians don’t gain anything but added exposure through this… I would rather have exposure and information than the opposite, that is why i think it benefits the people.
I think you both have sentimented some way towards how I feel. I dont quite understand ‘the world is over as we know it, people should be rioting’ take tha Olbermann shares. Are we that naive to think none of this plays a role to begin with? And lets say a big oil company donates $50million to a senatorial campaign. Are we to think with all the transparency of this that a lot of people wont reject the guy because of this fact. Its not like the majority people dont disregard policy when voting anyway.
Timmy, I think the first thing you will see passed is that a corporation that donates a certain amount (or anything) to a campaign will have to release info on their donation and make it public. Not that financing doesnt become public anyway, but this will be a way they say they highlight the greatest “offenders”.
This ruling has been tough to figure out. I get what people like Barney are saying, Corps dont have individuals best interests at heart and blah. ANd i get the freedom of speech angle the repubs are playing.
Remember people dont react well to negative attack ads so much anymore. I guess my main concern is that it wont be transparent, and Corps will funnel money so its not quite clear who got what and how much. Think of how diverse a major corp is, how many subsidiarys and interests they have..
But i need to read a little more about the stipulations as i seem to be getting confused on it.
Hey, nice post. 🙂
Now, first, your point about including Unions and Democrats will get some of the financial help too is important. To be very clear, I don’t view this as a left v right problem. I view this as a personl v. machine problem.
Against the machine that is corporate profits, no individual can stand for long. Some congressman in the House votes against the corporations, and he could have 30, 40, 50 million dollars in negative commercials, bill boards, newspaper ads, thrown at him. That congressman (or woman) raises about a million dollars every two years. How can their message compete with 40 million?
(Fun fact, all political spending by all politicians and political groups, both winning and losing, in 2008 equaled 5.3 billion. That is equal to about 20% of Exxon’s profit in that same year. 1 company spending 21% of their profit would have a larger political voice and pressence than every politician combined.)
BookGuy,
Thanks for the info, what is the source of your fun fact?
I too share those concerns and feel the Repubs who are blindly saying this is freedom of speech are a bit out of touch. But lets be honest, Olbys “special comment” is a joke. Watch the first portion of his comment its even more absurd.
I did hear another idea on the Court’s ruling. They said maybe it levels the playing field a bit, so now some Corps can work to offset the uneven balance that the Unions and Main Stream Media currently enjoy.. Why can the NYTimes blatantly push an agenda up until the election, and a Corp cannot? Its also not as though by default all Big Businesses will be for the Republican candidate. And as i said before, with good transparency, negative ads are putting people off nowadays..
MacGregor:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-10-22-electmoney_N.htm
I don’t watch Keith Olbermann so have no opinion on him.
The only equal footing will be between corporations. Unless you have a corporate backer, no one will have the volume to compete. Which means all politicans will be corporate owned. 😦
Johny: Yes, the system has been broken for years. McCain did a good firs step in the right direction. Public Financing for all national races would be another good step. This court ruling was a horrible decision in the wrong direction.
I normally try not to advertise my blog in comments, but I’ve mad like 3 or more comments on this decision in the past few days. The last one is a very long constitutional argument against the decision.
No one ever mentions this, but Dems got more money from big business in the 2008 cycle, and 92% of all labor contributions. http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/blio.php?cycle=2008
Now, I know that business usually greases the palms of those in power, not necessarily a party. So do people think this will now change and instead business will collectively choose a party – presumably the Republican party? Thats what I dont get — how is this so much worse than the current system? Why is it the end of the world to some people on the left? The system has been broke for years, but no one wanted to take McCain’s campaign finance reform seriously – Obama did not want to negiotiate away his advantage in the last election. I dont blame him, but why is he now so riled up that we must change the system.
Timmy – I heard somewhere over the weekend, that Congress is looking at adding a 500% excise tax to political contributions over a certain amount to sway business from getting too involved. Leave it to the Dems to find a solution to a problem in extra taxing!!
Nice post ! Thank you for, posting on my blog page mate! Ill email you soon. I didnt realise that!