The first case the Supreme Court heard this term brought what’s left
of campaign finance laws back for scrutiny by the same court that gave
us corporations have civil rights and money is speech in Citizens
United. Citizens United, the Sequel, is brought to you by Sean
McCutcheon, a businessman and repugican agitator from Alabama.
Naturally, the chief benefactor of Citizens United joined him: the rnc.
This is a bfd because, if McCutcheon prevails, it means the Koch
brothers and other rich totalitarian types will have unlimited use of
their corporate wealth and their personal wealth to pool resources to
buy Federal, state and local governments. President Obama and Senator Bernie Sanders voiced the grave consequences to our political system that came with Citizens United and why they will be greater in this case.
In effect, this case seeks to reduce elections to auctions in which
billionaires are the loudest bidders. It means no matter who we vote
for, our political representatives will be a billionaire’s pet.
McCutcheon v. the FEC argues
since corporate money is speech under Citizens United, that logic
should apply to living breathing individuals. If one thinks Citizens
United is a good ruling, this logic is impeccable. If one recognizes
that corruption is inevitable when a handful of people can buy a
government, the very reasons the logic was flawed in Citizens United
also apply in this case.
The only legal problem is Citizens United was legislating from the
bench to overturn decades of settled law. If only the disastrous
results of Citizens United were limited to that.
Since the Roberts court ruled on Citizens’ United, the Koch Brothers
established the teatalitarian party, to push the sort of crazy extremism
advocated by people like Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann. Corporate
money went dark at unprecedented levels pushing the repugican cabal to
ideological extremes that made the repugican cabal an ideological equivalent of
fascism. Moderates, at least when compared to the tea party, who wanted
to survive the wave of tea party madness quivered in fear of being tea party challenged by corporate money.
The representation that Citizens United bought in 2010 was disastrous
to the point that even the corporations that bought clowns like Ted
Cruz and Michele Bachmann realize the monsters they created.
Citizens United brought us the tea party with its mix of religious
extremism and corporatist economic policy. Citizens United brought us
personhood amendments, bans on same sex marriage, attacks on the voting
rights of everyone with the exception of the very people who benefited
from CU and stand to benefit from CU on steroids.
We only need to look at North Carolina to see firsthand what CU on
steroids would do to the political process at all levels of government.
Art Pope bought the government, and now he controls its purse strings.
The Pope regime passed the most extreme vote suppression law in the
country. It wiped out any semblance of progress in the state, with
corruption reaching levels comparable to what you see in banana
Republics.
In various teatalitarian party controlled states, we saw the advent
of personhood amendments and tax reform meant tax cuts for the rich with
crippling tax increases for people at the lowest rungs of the income
ladder. They gutted resources for public education in favor ALEC
inspired Charter Schools. They gutted labor protections reducing people
who work for a living to slaves who are increasingly unable to make ends
meet. Programs designed to meet the needs of the most vulnerable and
least politically powerful people have seen barbaric cuts and barbaric
requirements such as the unconstitutional requirement of drug testing in
exchange for public assistance.
Citizens United has, without question, changed a lot of things about
politics in America in ways that have been detrimental to the electoral
and political processes. With the exception of the 1%, Americans are
getting poorer with children hungrier and less educated. If McCutcheon
prevails, the problems that came with Citizens United will amplify in
ways that are not evident today.
Under current law, an individual can contribute up to $48,600 to
candidates for Federal elections during a two-year election cycle and
$74,600 to PACs. Most Americans can only imagine having enough money to
feed their families and still have $123,200 over two years to donate to
their political party of choice. However, for people like Art Pope and
the Koch brothers, this isn’t even coffee money. They will spend
millions to adopt congressional representatives at the federal and state
levels, and they will buy all the local representatives as well.
Limiting the damage of McCutcheon v. the FEC to partisan divides
overlooks the greater concern, namely, the corruption that comes with
individuals having the capacity to single handedly buy governments and
the implications for other laws that regulate campaign finance. In
fact,
Mitch McConnell is hoping that a favorable ruling in this case can be leveraged to eliminate all campaign finance law.
McConnell, however, is aiming straight for the base
limits restricting the amount a donor can give a single candidate
($2,600 per election) or a political party committee ($32,400). His
argument hinges on overturning the Supreme Court’s 1976 ruling in
Buckley v. Valeo, which found campaign contribution limits to be
constitutional but campaign expenditure limits to be an unconstitutional
burden on free speech.
According to observers, the court was more interested in pondering
the dynamics of money and buying influence than on the constitutional
question of whether limits on aggregate spending violate the first
amendment.
Scalia doesn’t think facts matter and thinks that limits on aggregate
spending “sap the vitality of political parties” and encourages
“drive-by PACs” so it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that
Scalia intends to rule in McCutcheon’s favor. Given that Thomas is
ethically challenged, he is unlikely to be moved by the inevitable
corruption that comes with moneyed interests adopting political
representatives or whole governments. Kennedy wrote Citizens United, so
he is probably in McCutcheon’s camp.
The Chief Justice wondered aloud if removing aggregate limits would
inhibit wider participation in the financial aspects of elections,
suggesting that Roberts might join with the liberal wing in this case.
The fact that the court focused on the dynamics of campaign money
doesn’t suggest to me that it was disinterested in the first amendment
aspect of the case. This court already accepted that money is speech in
Citizens United and in other cases.
The question comes down to whether or not the court concludes all
voices have a right to be heard. Based on the Justices’ reactions, the
majority is leaning toward giving the rich a bigger megaphone, while
acknowledging that the many who are shouting from the forest should
still have a voice, albeit one with much less volume and reach.
