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Hephaestion
Deeply Shallow
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
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Location: Where the Wild Things Are...
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 Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 6:39 pm Post subject: SCOTUS, money and the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law |
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Over here, Tehanu posted the following:
| Quote: | The United States Supreme court, continuing with its 5-4 rulings, handed down a number of rulings that aren't going to do much for women, which promote side-stepping elections finance reform, such as it is, and which further erode the separation between church and state. I've included the two most closely related to women's rights:
| Quote: | ... "The Bush-stacked Supreme Court, led by Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, is doing exactly what they were appointed to do," Feminist Majority President Eleanor Smeal said. "They are rolling back the clock on women's rights and promoting a pro-big business, pro-religious right agenda."
In the first case, the Court ruled 5-4 that an anti-abortion group's television ads, which encouraged voters to contact Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) while he was up for re-election, were not in violation of campaign finance rules. In 2002, campaign finance rules were revised to ban corporations and unions from running "issue ads" that included the names of candidates for federal office within 60 days of a general election and within 30 days of a primary or caucus. Republicans and business interests have been leading the effort to challenge these rules. Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the decision for the majority, said that an advertiser's intention to impact an election is not important, as long as they can show that it is a legitimate issue ad. "This is a big win for big money," Mary Wilson, president of the League of Women Voters, said. "Chief Justice Roberts has reopened the door to corruption.
The Supreme Court also ruled that tax-paying citizens do not have standing to challenge President Bush's faith-based initiative program. The Freedom From Religion Foundation led a lawsuit, objecting to speeches at government conferences in which administration officials encourage religious charities to apply for federal funding. The plaintiffs argued that the spending of federal money to promote and aid church groups violated the separation of church and state. Despite a 1968 Supreme Court ruling that said that taxpayers could challenge the government for spending money on religion, the current Supreme Court threw out the case for lack of standing. |
Ms. Magazine. |
I'd like to follow that up, but on a broader theme than she chose:
SCOTUS: Corporations May Spend Freely on Political Campaigns
| Quote: | A Supreme Court ruling on campaign spending limits was just handed down:
| Quote: | | By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states. It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions. Critics of the stricter limits have argued that they amount to an unconstitutional restraint of free speech, and the court majority apparently agreed. |
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined John Paul Stevens in the dissent. Said Stevens: "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation." |
So... is the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law now kaput?
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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pogovio
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Joined: 16 May 2006
Posts: 900
Location: New York state
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| Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 7:59 pm Post subject: |
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I think the McCain-Feingold Act has in effect been almost totally gutted by this ruling.
It does not affect the part of the law that applies to a candidate's own campaign organization. One provision of the act that this won't directly affect is the requirement that the ads of a candidate's campaign must include a statement by the candidate that he supports the ad. In 2004, that stopped the sleazy and libelous ads by the campaign, which the candidate later disavowed, saying "If had had known about it I would have stopped it."
But it seems to me the likely affect of this SC ruling will be that the ad campaign will be largely shifted away from the candidate's own organization, and run with unlimited funds by separate entities that claim to be independent. So the "stand by your ad" provision will probably become irrelevant in future elections.
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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I rather expect the anti-gay loonies like FOTF and NOM are gonna go even MORE berserk, now.
*sigh*
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 10:46 pm Post subject: |
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From change-congress.org, Lawrence Lessing discusses this SCOTUS case, and what can be done about it. (video report)
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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Hephaestion
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Location: Where the Wild Things Are...
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| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 9:17 am Post subject: |
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Constitutional amendment petition: run government for people, not monied interests
| Quote: | The Campaign to Legalize Democracy is circulating a petition in response to yesterday's ruling that legalized unlimited political bribery by corporations in the USA. Signatories include Bill Moyer, Howard Zinn, Jim Hightower, Billl McKibben, and Tom Hayden.
| Quote: | We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:
* Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
* Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.
* Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments. |
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Anything supported by Bill Moyer, Howard Zinn, AND Jim Hightower is prolly okay in MY books...
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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Hephaestion
Deeply Shallow
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Location: Where the Wild Things Are...
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Hephaestion
Deeply Shallow
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 24243
Location: Where the Wild Things Are...
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 3:40 am Post subject: |
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Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL): tax corporate political ads at 500%
| Quote: | Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), the best thing to hit Congress in a long time, has launched a campaign to tax corporate political ads at 500% of their value.
| Quote: | Fearing this decision before it became official, Grayson last week filed five campaign finance bills and a sixth one on Thursday. Grayson said the bills are important to securing the people's "right to clean government." The bills have names like the Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act and the Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act. The first slaps a 500 percent excise tax on corporate spending on elections, and the second mandates businesses to disclose their attempts to influence elections. More details are available on the congressman's Web site.
"These bills will save us from drowning in corporate money and special interest money," Grayson said. "They should have been passed a long time ago but after the Supreme Court opened those floodgates, I think it's imperative we get these things done." Reforming campaign finance laws has been a daunting task, as senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John McCain (R-AZ) have made concerted attempts and failed. "I'm very optimistic," Grayson said. "I discussed the bills with the leadership when I filed them, which was a week ago in the case of the first five." |
Grayson's petition has about 50,000 signatures already this morning. |
Grayson thinks too small -- it should be 5 million percent, not 500.
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 11:03 pm Post subject: |
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Grayson on Olbermann's show, discussing SCOTUS decision:
| Quote: | "I'm shocked. Shocked. This is the most irresponsible decision by the Supreme Court since the Dredd Scott decision over 100 years ago."
"If we do nothing and allow what amounts to the facilitation of a corporate coup to rule America, you can kiss this country goodbye."
"These same five judges who have today overturned 103 years of settled law, and relied upon no precedent to do so, these are the same judges who gave us George Bush for eight years. They have their own agenda, and it's time we stopped pretending otherwise. The Supreme Court has become utterly politicized, and the result of that is what you see here today." |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 6:29 am Post subject: |
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Some more:
Manuel Garcia, Jr: Corporate Personhood and Political Free Speech
| Quote: | ... From the perspective of public good, the fatal flaw here is as Justice Stevens acknowledged: “we have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment,” in many prior Supreme Court decisions.
Indeed, the ideal remedy would be federal legislation -- ideally as a constitutional amendment -- defining "personhood" as solely the property of individual living human beings, and specifically not so for any corporate entity. Thus, corporations would be stripped of 1st, 5th and 14th Amendment rights. In brief, these Amendments define:
(1st) freedom of: religion, speech, the press, assembly; and freedom to petition;
(5th) indictments, due process, self-incrimination, double jeopardy, eminent domain;
(14th) citizenship.
The pernicious effect of allowing corporations 1st and 14th Amendment rights -- hence, the right to lobby Congress -- is evident today in the many distortions of government and public institutions to the detriment of the public good: 'pork barrel nation.'
[...]
The Supreme Court justices promoting this decision knew exactly what they were doing, and why. Behind the display of magisterial solemnity and jurisprudential weight, these justices know -- deep down -- they are just elements of a much larger machine, they are only where they are because of who they really serve. |
Christopher Ketcham: Freedom of Speech for a Fiction
| Quote: | | ... Par for the course in the dying republic, where judges with the regularity of sun-up defend corporate interests against the public interest. But what’s compelling here is that the decision hinges on another longstanding idea, which is that corporations have the rights of living breathing people. The Supreme Court claims in this matter to be defending the corporate right of free speech. The laws of corporate personhood go back to the 1860s, in decisions offered by judges with close ties to the very corporations whose rights they were asked to judge. Corporate citizens, needless to say, have been a plague upon the land ever since (Joel Bakan, the law professor, has correctly observed that corporate citizenship often accords with sociopathic behavior, the kind of behavior that as a society we do not tolerate from individuals). In any case, corporate freedom is not a constitutional right, and corporations do not very much care about freedom of speech, press or assembly as it involves the individual. What a corporation cares about it is its collective endeavor. To provide a collectivist institution with the rights of the individual, to announce a corporation as a citizen, is one of those wonderful juridical inventions that could only be taken seriously in a system where law is exploited to veil reality and to render lies as truth. As Leigh Ratiner notes, no intelligent person can trust such a system. And as regards “corporate persons,” Ratiner asks the right question: “If they are natural citizens and commit crimes, why don't we liquidate them as punishment (since they can’t be put in jail)? Of course, the answer is that if you liquidate them it will hurt the economy and the innocent shareholders. But doesn’t that make it very clear that a corporation is not a person who can be put in a cage or hung by the neck until dead? That’s the kind of person the Founders were trying to protect.” |
Ralph Nader: The Supremes Bow to King Corporation
| Quote: | ... Indeed, this corporatist, anti-voter majority decision is so extreme that it should galvanize a grassroots effort to enact a simple Constitutional amendment to once and for all end corporate personhood and curtail the corrosive impact of big money on politics. It is time to prevent corporate campaign contributions from commercializing our elections and drowning out the voices and values of citizens and voters. It is way overdue to overthrow "King Corporation" and restore the sovereignty of "We the People"! Remember that corporations, chartered by the state, are our servants, not our masters.
Legislation sponsored by Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Representative John Larson (D-CT) would encourage unlimited small-dollar donations from individuals and provide candidates with public funding in exchange for refusing corporate contributions or private contributions of more than $100.
It is also time for shareholder resolutions, company by company, directing the corporate boards of directors to pledge not to use company money to directly favor or oppose candidates for public office.
If you want to join the efforts to rollback the corporate concessions the Supreme Court made yesterday, visit Citizen.Org and freespeechforpeople.org. |
Senator Russ Feingold: The Supremes Have Opened the Floodgates
| Quote: | ... In its ruling, the Court ignored several time-honored principles that have served for the past two centuries to preserve the public’s respect for and acceptance of its decisions. This decision runs contrary to the concept of “judicial restraint,” the idea that a court should decide a case on constitutional grounds only if absolutely necessary, and should rule as narrowly as possible. Here, the Court did just the opposite -- it decided the constitutionality of all restrictions on corporate spending in connection with elections in an obscure case in which many far more narrow rulings were possible.
The Court also ignored stare decisis, the historic respect for precedent, which Chief Justice John Roberts termed “judicial modesty” during his 2005 confirmation hearing. It’s hard to imagine a bigger blow to stare decisis than to strike down laws in over 20 states and a federal law that has been the cornerstone of the nation’s campaign finance system for 100 years.
Finally, the Court ignored the longstanding practice of deciding a case only after lower courts have fully examined the facts. Here, because the broad constitutional questions raised in the recent reargument of the case were not raised in the court below, there is no factual record at all on which the Court could base its legal conclusions.
Just a little over six years ago in the McConnell opinion, the Court said that the prohibition on corporations and unions dipping into their treasuries to influence campaigns was ‘firmly embedded in our law.’ The only thing that has changed since then is the composition of the Court. It is deeply disappointing that this Court, and particularly its newest members, had so little respect for precedent. This decision will surely undermine public confidence in the Court as well as damage our nation’s political system. |
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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bshmr
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Joined: 22 Aug 2006
Posts: 4003
Location: Central USA, Earth
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| Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 3:21 pm Post subject: |
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| It seems to me that the 'controlling clique' is openly corporatist now plus have stepped closer to permitting any institution more than 'citizen rights and privileges'. On the latter, the differences between Monsanto and the USAn Army is smaller today, etc. |
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Hephaestion
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Location: Where the Wild Things Are...
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| Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 7:32 am Post subject: |
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Corporate Personhood: Bill Would Force CEOs To Say "I Stand By This Message"
| Quote: | In reaction to the SCOTUS decision to allow corporations to advertise in political campaigns, a bill has been submitted in the U.S. House that will require CEOs to append "I'm So & So and I approve this message" to every ad.
| Quote: | | A bipartisan pair of House lawmakers have a response to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that allows unlimited corporate money to flow into elections. Reps. David Price (D-N.C.) and Mike Castle (R-Del.) told the Huffington Post in a joint statement that they plan to introduce a bill that would force CEO's to take ownership of their company's ads. For example: "I'm Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, and I approved this message." The two House members plan to push the "Stand By Every Ad Act", which would force a corporate chief to issue a similar message at the end of every commercial. Price was the lead sponsor of the original "Stand By Your Ad" measure, which became law as a part of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. It was that legislation that led to the ubiquitous claims of responsibility at the end of political ads that we know today. |
The bill also requires companies making robocalls to identify themselves at the start of the message, a move that will surely result in a massive number of hang-ups. Good. |
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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bshmr
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No Yards
Glutton for Punishment
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 2944
Location: Toronto Ontario
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| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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Watch this ad - "Murry Hill Inc For Congress" http://murrayhillincforcongress.com/
Now, Murry Hill is a real corporation, and this is really their ad.
Of course, Murry Hill is a "good" corporation and are doing this to prove a point, but so far there have been no real objections to their running if they want ... well, sorry, there is one objection, which comes from the right-wing-nuts ... their only objection is that Murry Hill has only been incorporated for 5 years, not old enough to run for congress.
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I follow, but more importantly, respect the Golden Rule. I fully and completely respect your right to be 'done on to' as you would 'do on to' others. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 7:29 pm Post subject: |
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Golly... is that satire, or the painful truth? 
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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bshmr
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Location: Central USA, Earth
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| Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 2:52 pm Post subject: |
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A few USAn Supremes act as though supreme, that is ultimate elite, persons while others enable them. BTW, judges can be impeached and tried.
Justice Thomas Omitted His Tea Partying Wife’s Income From Financial Disclosure Forms
By Ian Millhiser on Jan 22nd, 2011 at 4:03 pm
| Quote: | Federal judges and justices are required by law to disclose their spouse's income thus preventing persons who wish to influence the judge or justice from funneling money to them through their husband or wife. Yet, as the Los Angeles Times reports, Justice Clarence Thomas has not complied with this requirement for years:
"Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife's income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday.
"Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation's IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled 'none' where 'spousal noninvestment income' would be disclosed. [...]
"Virginia Thomas also has been active in the group Liberty Central, an organization she founded to restore the “founding principles” of limited government and individual liberty.
"In his 2009 disclosure, Justice Thomas also reported spousal income as 'none.' Common Cause contends that Liberty Central paid Virginia Thomas an unknown salary that year." |
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/22/thomas-disclosure/ |
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