|
|
||
|
|
The U.S. Supreme Courts Latest Legal Fiction Opens the Floodgates on Influence Peddling By Robert E. Martin
The need to control influence peddling by corporate lobbyists has consistently eroded at the fabric of our democracy ever since the Watergate era of the 1970s, and perhaps even further to the explosion of the Military Industrial Complex back in the 1960s. The corrupting influence of unregulated corporate lobbying has impacted and denigrated every key piece of legislation currently before Congress, from health care reform to environmental protection and beyond. But just as many states have started to enact ‘Pay to Play’ legislation to roll back the reigns on influence peddling, the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case Citizens United vs. FEC has managed to overturn over a century of precedent while opening the floodgates for unlimited amounts of corporate money to flow into our political system. Shockingly, the court’s decision may even allow foreign corporations and large multinationals to manipulate our elections and undermine the very foundation of our democracy. Remember the names: Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas – the same crew that threw centuries of precedent out the door back in the year 2000 when they interfered in the Florida recount that wound up giving the presidential election that year to George W. Bush in their now infamous Bush vs. Gore decision. In an unprecedented perversion of judicial power, the court decreed that corporations have a free-speech ‘right’ to dip into their corporate coffers and spend unlimited sums of money to elect or defeat candidates of their choosing. Never mind that U.S Constitution and Bill of Rights speaks of ‘people’ instead of corporations in its language; the notion that the act of spending money is actually protected ‘speech’ is patently absurd, because as Bob Dylan once wrote, ‘Money doesn’t talk, it swears’. And let’s face it; the Court has also ruled that obscenity can be regulated. No other group in America comes anywhere near the spending clout that this relatively small group of wealthy special interests wields over elections and our government. The notion that the corporate voice is a victim of political censorship is not merely judicial activism at its worse; it is truly judicial radicalism. Thomas Jefferson warned about the dangerous rise of corporate power, declaring that we “must crush it its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations.” But sadly, over the decades, much of the wisdom of our founding fathers has been lost in tidal wave of dollars spilling into contemporary politics. Has our Republic been lost in a corporate coup d’etat? Consider these works from the recent Citizens United case by Justice Stevens in his dissent: "In a democratic society, the longstanding consensus on the need to limit corporate campaign spending should outweigh the wooden application of judge-made rules. The majority's rejection of this principle 'elevate[s] corporations to a level of deference which has not been seen at least since the days when substantive due process was regularly used to invalidate regulatory legislation thought to unfairly impinge upon established economic interests.' Bellotti, 435 U. S., at 817, n. 13 (White, J., dissenting). At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics." The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United violates every principle of constitutional decision-making — and will be remembered as a judicial ploy intended to tilt the 2010 elections. The Court's majority, in overturning the prohibition on corporate and union funding for election ads, went out of its way to declare a major Congressional law unconstitutional, even though its bedrock procedural doctrines dictate that the Court should avoid doing so whenever possible. These doctrines may seem like technical niceties, but they actually reflect core American legal values: deference to the people’s representatives in a democracy, an understanding that an unelected Court should shun political issues, and our humble and wise tradition of courts deciding just the specific matter before them. The Citizens United case thumbs its nose at all that. First, the Court addressed and decided an issue not brought by the parties. Citizens United, an advocacy nonprofit that took little corporate money, renounced in the trial court its “facial challenge” that the corporate prohibition on funding independent political ads was unconstitutional in all circumstances. Citizens United asked the Supreme Court to decide only whether the corporate funding prohibition was unconstitutional “as applied” to them in their narrow fact situation. The Court decided on its own to address the facial challenge, holding the statute unconstitutional as applied to all corporations, even for-profit corporations, in all circumstances. There was no evidence in the record that there were exceptional circumstances; and the Supreme Court would be hard pressed to prove them, since the country has had a corporate campaign prohibition since 1907 and we have had no apparent shortage of vigorous free speech. Second, the Court easily could have decided, if it had wanted to, the case for Citizens United without addressing the constitutional question. It could have held that the statute, which banned corporate and union funding of television ads referring to federal candidates within thirty days of a general election, did not apply to a video-on-demand movie, as was involved in this case. It could have held that Citizens United fit a long-standing exception for certain advocacy nonprofits that take little or no corporate funds. However, the Court could not control its ideological desire to eliminate the corporate prohibition on funding electioneering that has been the law of the land for over 100 years and upheld by both conservative and liberal courts — until now. Last but not least, the Court violated the conservative principle of stare decisis (“stand on the decision”), which means it should follow its prior decisions except in very special circumstances. How special? The Court did not even expressly overrule in Brown vs. Board of Education its infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson creating the doctrine of “separate but equal.” Stare decisis allows the public and policymakers to rely on prior Court decisions and protects the integrity of the Court by ensuring that the laws are more than the personal whims and conceits of five unelected lawyers appointed for life. Yet in Citizens United, there is no evidence of special circumstances in the record that would justify overturning years of settled federal and state law. The Court appears to have mistaken its political desires for an emergency, undermining stare decisis and its own legitimacy. Representative Alan Grayson has been one the most forceful voices in responding to this crisis. He has introduced a number of bills as part of a "Save Our Democracy" initiative to blunt some of the worst implications of the Supreme Court's decision. The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act (H.R. 4431): Implements a 500% excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees, and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns. The Public Company Responsibility Act (H.R. 4435): Prevents companies making political contributions and expenditures from trading their stock on national exchanges. The End Political Kickbacks Act (H.R. 4434): Prevents for-profit corporations that receive government money from making political contributions, and limits the amount that employees of those companies can contribute. The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act (H.R. 4432): Requires publicly traded companies to disclose in SEC filings money used for the purpose of influencing public opinion, rather than for promoting their products and services. The Ending Corporate Collusion Act (H.R. 4433): Applies antitrust law to industry PACs. The End the Hijacking of Shareholder Funds Act (H.R. 4487): This bill requires the approval of a majority of a public company's shareholders for any expenditure by that company to influence public opinion on matters not related to the company's products or services. Without these types of laws, it will be even harder for candidates and elected officials to stand up to Big Business. Even before the decision, we too often saw the interests of Main Street subverted in favor of the interests of Wall Street. But with the Citizens United decision now the law of the land, large corporations have the power to spend unlimited amounts of money from their general treasuries to buy elections. And our democracy is sadly weaker because of it.
|
|
|
|
||
|
home |
Out & About |
Dining |
Events |
singles |
classified |
archives |
advertising |
||
