Saturday, December 31, 2011
Law Montana bans corporate campaign cash
Posted by Max Brantley on Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 7:15 AM
Heartening news from Montana. The state Supreme Court there has upheld the state law that bans direct corporate spending in state and local elections. It's an affront to the odious Citizens United ruling by which the Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court gave personhood — and essentially greater power — to corporations than it gives to U.S. citizens.
The corporate interests may take this back to the U.S. Supreme Court to see if the Republican justices will trump states' rights in this case. The practice is that these justices are federalists unless they don't like what the federated states are doing on their own time.
Don't hold your breath for Arkansas to follow Montana's example. We've long endorsed corporate contributions to political campaigns — including multiple contributions by the different corporate faces of the same individual using that to evade campaign finance limits.
Free Speech for People has a good rundown on the Montana victory. From Chief Justice Mike McGrath's opinion:
“…Issues of corporate influence, sparse population, dependence upon agriculture and extractive resource development, location as a transportation corridor, and low campaign costs make Montana especially vulnerable to continued efforts of corporate control to the detriment of democracy and the republican form of government. Clearly, Montana has unique and compelling interests to protect through preservation of this statute.”
Speaking of...
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A futile jab at Citizens United
May 21, 2012Attorney General Dustin McDaniel issued a statement today that he'd joined 22 other a.g.s in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider its Citizens United decision lifting federal restrictions on corporate campaign spending. /more/
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Tom Cotton shows his colors
April 19, 2012Tom Cotton, Republican candidate for 4th District Congress, has issued a news release boasting about his $10,000 contribution from the PAC of Citizens United. /more/
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Occupy LR asks for support for good government; rejected
March 16, 2012Occupy Little Rock has, according to reporting in the Democrat-Gazette, floated some ideas about moving its small demonstration encampment to a site less offensive to the eyes of City Director Lance Hines, who wants the blight removed from potential glimpse by speeding I-30 travelers. /more/
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Super PACs: A handful of super wealthy take over politics
February 27, 2012It's only further elaboration on the well-established, but I recommend Thomas Edsall's examination of how a handful of super wealthy are exercising inordinate influence over presidential politics with their mammoth contributions to Super PACs. /more/
- More »
Comments (31)
Showing 1-31 of 31
You probably don't want the supreme court deciding that the first amendment doesn't apply to the states.
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This is not a first amendment issue. Corporations have no unalienable rights from God, but are accounting structures created to limit investor risk.
Like it or not, the supreme court says it is.
Do groups of people have rights?
Just a reminder, Citizens United also gave the same rights to unions.
In fact, one of the first big union Citizens United actions came right here in Arkansas.
Remember Bill Halter?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/06/14/citizens-united-rulings-surprising-impact-in-arkansas.html
I don't remember Max gnashing his teeth over Citizens United then.
Great news! Somewhere, an 1% oligarch will have to spend more money to maintain their criminal dominance. Least we can do is keep raising that cost until we make it clear a bribe based system is criminal - criminal in a manner which will land you in prison!
Aside from the feds, Would our state constitution prohibit this or allow it from a statutory standpoint?
I've been etch-a-sketching a few electoral reform ideas, which would both reduce the corrupt money influence in our system and dramatically increase direct democracy, and trying to sort out which avenues (State, Fed, courts) would be possible or necessary ways to push them through.
Here's one of those short idea/work lists. With a key of how I think it would or could have to play out. Any thoughts on this greatly appreciated.
Note: Key at the bottom of the list. At the time I worked on this I wasn't considering constitutional amendment to be anything but a federal level amendment process. perhaps that could be an addition to the key - part of a state consideration as well?
1) End corporate personhood (or anything fictitious or which does not have a pulse) (Con A) (CT)
2) Outlaw the legal concept of money as a form of speech (Con. A) (CT)
3) Establish public campaign finance only
4) Establish multiple party access (SL)
5) Establish proportional representation (SL?)
6) Establish the ability to hold national referendums… two kinds… 6A) 50 percent plus one for specific issues, 6B) Matters of popular vote being able to directly amend the constitution by two thirds or more vote.
Other possibilities: Some of which may or may not be considered worthy of amendment process.
7) Recall by vote. Establish ability for the people to remove/recall a president, senator or congressperson from federal office. (Con A)
8) Consider abolishing the US Senate (Con A)… or shortening the term to four years. (Con A)
9) 9A)Regulating media ownership by large corporations or very wealthy people. 9B) Also establishing our right to utilize the peoples airwaves in order to conduct public financed campaigns with equal access for all candidates or parties. (Stat)
10) Expand the number of members in the US House…. this is long overdue. (Stat)
11) Expand the numbers of Justices on the Supreme Court. (Also long overdue). (Stat)
12) Limit on corporate lobby money
13) Require signed paper ballots. A signed paper ballot should be given on request. (SL) (Stat)
14) Establish independent commission for reapportionment. End Gerrymandering. (SL)
15) Ban federal officeholder from entering any corporate sponsored institution or lobbying organization for a period of ten years after leaving office. (Stat) (Con A)
16) Abolish voter I.D. requirements (SL) (Stat) Con A)
17) Establish election day asa holiday. Or perhaps extend through weekends. (SL) (Stat) (Con A)
Key: Constitutional Amendment required (Con A)
Statutory - legislature may do this (Stat)
Could be changed in courts (CT)
State Legislature can do this (SL)
A corporation is a group of people only in the sense of obscuring its real function. To define it as such is to miss the entire rational for its existence, akin to defining a voter as a collection of atoms.
Perhaps the real group of people that comes closest to the function of a corporation is a mob. The morality of individuals is subsumed by the group and disappears entirely. There are good people working for Goldman Sachs, but collectively they did evil.
It is striking to find libertarians arguing that legal fictions have the same rights as human beings. A government which creates such an equivalence is one which by definition has no respect for the rights of real people.
Just look around. You are arguing theory when there are clear facts in front of your eyes, like arguing that the moon is made of cheese when we have landed on it. Corporations have more rights than you do, and you are arguing they need more. You do not want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; you simply want the real world adjusted to fit your theory and the real consequences on our freedom be damned.
A government that would define an organization as a person might define anything from the Mexican National Guard to Grandma's knitting club as a human being, grant it citizenship and begin routing our tax dollars to it.
InPec, In my mind there is no equivalency between corporations and unions. A corporation's over riding goal is to increase the bottom line. Unions exist to improve working conditions and wages, give whistle blowers cover when they complain about unsafe work conditions, etc., and generally stand up for real people---you know the kind with two legs who actually have to take responsibility for what they do. "Corporations are people, too" is going to haunt the hell out of Mitt if, as seems likely, he is the nominee.
The New York Times is owned by a publicly traded corporation. Should the NYT be allowed to endorse candidates?
If corporations want to be "people", then pay taxes at the "people rate". Otherwise, their status is separate and unequal.
That SCOTUS ruling shows that the ReTHUGlicans have control of 1-1/2 and almost 2 branches of government and they represent only the 1% or even better, the 0.5%. And Scalia can take his "original" meaning and shove it up where the sun never shines since the only corporations at that time were actually chartered by the king (pick any country).
Gyl, In this instance, I believe that the editorial board is doing the endorsing, not the corporation. Big difference.
Not that editorial boards make a lick of difference in any election outcome Gyl has a valid point since we're hyperventilating on electoral fairness.
I must agree with Gyl. No, they should not, as a corporate entity, be allowed to endorse without putting their individual names to the endorsement nor should any other corporate entity have the same right including the Chamber of Commerce, a special corporate beast, which in many cases includes endorsements done with tax payers' money.
Couldn't disagree with couldn't be better more. This systemic fail is as bribed, bipartisan, as it gets.
There are any number of things Democrats could have done about the supreme court makeup as it is today.. also any number of things they could have done in response to many decisions they occasionally pretend to disagree with... including Cit U, which they have not done.
The vast majority of both parties leadership are themselves the 1%, and they certainly are designed and determined to represent them/maintain ever rightward neoliberal status quo. The devilish details make this more than obvious across the board.. it's not even a close call.
What we have witnessed with the bankster bailouts alone makes this clear. Over a hundred trillion in cash, coverage and gimmicks, and rising with no end in sight and no strings attached... led by both parties... All against the will of the vast majority of the American people.
It's my understanding the largest shareholder /owner of the NYT is a Mexican billionaire who earned it the old fashioned way.... via buying it through government gained contracts in the telco business.
And some want his editorial employees to tell you how to vote/think in America? Without signing their name or making it clear each and every time this is how they work...
eL, I think the editorial board is pretty transparent since their names most likely would appear under the masthead somewhere in the paper. If not that, it is easily obtained information. Now if Senor billionaire is throwing his weight around, that is a different matter.
So as long as the message is signed by an individual, corporate resources can be used to send political messages?
Am I understanding that correctly?
That's not what I said Gyl. I'm not defending endorsements by editorial boards. I'm just saying it's not the same thing as an endorsement by a corporation by way of spending gobs of money to sway an election.
My last post was more in response to elwood, but how is it different? The NYT editorial page takes gobs of money to publish, and it, at the margins at least, sways elections.
GYL, it's a huge subject which deserves lots of discussion and debate. Used to take place in the AR Blog posts and threads much more frequently when Bush and Cheney were in power... but clearly the same problems exist today. Lot of people who paid attention to these matters used to HOPE the old fairness doctrine would return at least in some updated form or another. But that form of false hope was a lie. Hence the crickets from the entire D party once they regained power.
One can look at the Stephens, Hearst, Scaiffe Mellon, Murdoch oligarchs, the Bain (Romney and Limbaugh), Time, Disney, GE, Comcast corporations and on and on... and see things are just not right, haven't been for a long time, if ever. What to do? A lot, and even though most of the names I just listed are American oligarchs, I would begin with establishing an impossibility of foreign ownership/interference as the individual or corporate majority owners of both FOX and now the NYT, Wall Street Journal etc. managed to slip through. I mean clearly Murdoch bought his citizenship... he should not have been able to buy the media influence he has.
Revocation of Cit U might help... but i keep reminding people that elimination of Cit U alone won't fix much at all.
We are in systemic fail... from legislation and court rulings that are decades in the making/pileup.
Gyl, if a murder occurs in the boardroom of Tysons does the arrest warrant go to Tysons, Inc?
If any of you want to know why Gyl and Eureka are full of fail in their assertions that both sides do it, and if you want to know why their support of Ron Paul is morally bankrupt, Charlie Pierce sums it up for you (Damn, I wish I could write like him).
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/davi…
And this from Driftglass in the comments sectionof Pierce's piece.
"The day that the GOP stops kicking gays in the teeth, recruiting klansmen, demonizing muslims, lionizing monsters who blame 9/11 of feminists and the ACLU and calling people like me traitor for opposing my government...that’s the day I will be happy to beat my pronouns into plowshares and talk peace and compromise.
But of course, they can’t let the crazies go. First and foremost -- as Barry Goldwater prophetically warned -- because the crazies now run their fucking party, from crotch to crown. The gargoyles have taken the cathedral, and Falwell and Dobson sits upon the Throne, while the Hagels and the Grahams are now the “fringe”.
And second, if they ever did kick the freaks out, they wouldn’t win another election. Ever. Anywhere. Seriously. As I’ve said before, without their Christopath Legions and assorted other reprogrammable golem shock troops, the GOP would be the Constitution Law Party, squatting impotently in the swamps of Mississippi, muttering angrily about Negroes."
Also, too. Mr Libertarian personified, Ron Paul, supports personhood for fertilized eggs and introduced a bill to make it so:
"H. R. 2533
To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
May 20, 2009
Mr. PAUL (for himself and Mr. BARTLETT) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
A BILL
To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled...."
If the two of you want to support a racist, homophobic misogynist for president, it is your right. Just don't try to claim any moral high ground while doing it.
And don't even get me started on Paul's gold-buggery!
(h/t to Kay at BalloonJuice for the "personhood" story.)
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/12/31/ca…
I don't know about criminal. I'm pretty sure one could bring a civil suit claiming the corporation was responsible for the death.
Why should government be able to prohibit speech made by people organized in a certain manner?
Outlier, you support a man that claims the right to kill anyone, for reasons he keeps to himself.
So what if Paul is racist (he isn't), he won't murder tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
"you support a man that claims the right to kill anyone, for reasons he keeps to himself."
A tad hyperbolic, wouldn't you say, Gyl.
"So what if Paul is racist (he isn't)"
Are you accepting that he is misogynist AND homophobic, while denying his racism, Gyl?
Not at all hyperbolic.
I don't particularly care about those things. I don't think Paul would seriously try that hard to act on them.
Obama, on the other hand, has a proven track record of large scale murder.
Are you saying it is better to have a murderer?
Gyl, go read this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_pos…
Paul is all over the place on so many issues that he is in danger of becoming a pretzel as he back pedals and flops around. Given the sum total of what he stands for and the sum total of what Obama stands for, yes, I stand with President Obama.
Nice to know where you stand on gay and women's rights. Your true colors are out there for us all to see. Funny how you give weight to lives lost in war and no weight at all to the lives and rights of a majority of U.S. citizens.
Fess up, Gyl. For you, it's really about property rights and money. Drone attacks are just a smoke screen for your real agenda.
outlier, you really ought to pause and read today's Greenwald... and the Stoller Post linked in the middle of it. I've spent a few months thinking about it in these terms before deciding i will use my primary vote in support of Paul rather than Obama for largely these reasons.
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/progressives_and_the_ron_paul_fallacies/singleton
Gyl was not being hyperbolic at all... lord knows i wish he/she were... again you need to read Greennwald and all the facts, very well sourced facts.
On women's rights issues I simply am no more comfortable in pretending they are in good hands under the likes of all our AR Dem representatives or Obama. He's really weak there and has only made things worse. (Stupak at the last minute with O on the health looting bill and Secretary Sebelius recently .. may not make him as frightful as Paul, but it's no reason to feel safe with O and the D's on this point.
I really hope you read a wider variety of opinions than BJ.... it's about the only site you refer folks... and it has a lot of problems (don't we all /s). Variety is the best way i know in order to see a whole picture... or at least a much bigger picture as best I can.
If corporations are to be treated as individuals then the next time they kill someone by defective products or unsafe conditions at one of their facilities arrest the top management and try them for murder.
If they are going to be corporate citizens then they can pay the same taxes & have the same everyday risks as individual citizens.
Eureka, I did read GG's post. And I do read a lot more than BJ. I am partial to it for the variety of the front pagers and the diversity of the commentariat there.
Go ahead and support Paul, if you like.
He would have voted against the civil rights bill as an infringement on business owners rights.
He would abolish medicare and social security. I'll get my oven fired up and start baking cookies for the fund raisers to pay people's doctor and hospital bills. I see quite a few of those fund raisers in Carroll County already, so what's a few more?
Sorry, but I feel a whole lot safer with the Dem's and Obama on women's and gay issues. The track record is there for all to see, and if you don't see it, then you are delusional if not out right blind.
Paul would abolish the EPA. Good bye Lake Maumelle, hello rivers on fire.
Paul's ideas about gold would put monetary policy in the hands of gold miners leading to either hyperinflation or depression and likely a cycle of both. I have a big problem with gold miners today based on environmental and human rights concerns---see Copper River, AK and South American gold mining labor standards (actually extreme lack of them).
Other writer's on my list are Digby, Juan Cole, Josh Marshall, TruthDig, TBogg, Charles Pierce, ATblog, on a regular basis, and myriad others at least a couple of times a week.
I happen to love Kay on election/health care/labor issues----writing at BJ shouldn't disqualify her. Tom Levenson over there is smart as a whip. DennisG informs me on the modern Republican Party whcih he equates with the old Confederacy. ABL gives good insight into what a lot (if not most) of blacks are thinking.
Who else do you suggest I read, and I will do it? No tin foil hat conspiracy theorists though.
I think a lot of things you worry about, i do as well... but i also think O and the d;s are heading in the same direction paul would or worse on many of them (SS med, fed). If Paul could simply get some light cast on the fed it would be incredible. Congress would never go to the gold standard.. that's too limiting... with fiat there is more to steal/burn. Oddly, when I thought about gay rights I quickly realized if it weren't for States rights and courts.. there would have been very little improvement these last few years. So, who knows, perhaps Paul is onto something. More Democracy? O did say you can be gay openly as long as you murder for US in uniform. Paul would fight tooth and nail to keep all Americans out of war. I say that's all better. Much better! My God we've gone mad.. with O it's worse!
I think you neoliberal apologists are missing an opportunity here.. at least for the next couple months to get some fear bargaining in on the D's.
As rightward as O and the D's have been I shudder at the thought of his admin in a lame duck scenario. We might not survive that any better than a Gingrich admin... seriously! O is weaker willed and kneed than Carter ever could have been and O likes to out flank the right on the right! Carter stood some D soul ground.
Ending the war on drugs could be almost as significant for minorities as the Civil Rights Act (and many others too). It's an ongoing atrocity upon ourselves. Paul is the only one on that point too. Obama has been horrific on so many fronts in this regard.
Love many on your list, have worked with some on a daily basis and read all for years, but it's not the variety I was urging you to consider. They could all be under one blog. Look around.
There is nothing close to an ideal primary choice... but it's time for real progressives/liberals to do some serious thinking about the neOliberal.
Oh and ...... Happy New Year! Laughing - we probably know each other in real life.
Eureka, I don't know how anyone could click "dislike" on your post. I negated it for you. I am open-minded about most things and am still curious about that "one blog" which encompasses everything. Why won't you tell me?
I have asked around in the crowd I mingle with about who Eureka might be--- blank stares. Are they in cahoots with you to maintain your anonymity? This was back when I figured out you were the late night blogger on FDL.
I hope you aren't going to tell me that FDL is the blog where I can find the variety you think I am missing. I will give her a read, again. Is your animus toward BJ due to the fact that so many there loathe Jane?
In the end, Eureka, you are going to do what you have railed against---vote for what you deem the lesser of the evils. How is that different from what I am going to do?
Whatever, old friend, I wish you well and have a prosperous (not necessarily $, although having enough of that is nice) New Year and all the years to come. I think humanity is on the cusp of a giant leap forward in terms of how we live our lives. Granted, it will be dragged kicking and screaming into that new way of being, but we (meaning all of humanity) emerge better on the other side of the abyss we are staring into.
One of the amazing things about my kids is how grounded they are in the important things in life. The week I just spent with them reinforced that. I honestly don't know how I got them that way. It took me over 50 years to gain the wisdom they seem to have. One of my dearest friends says they are both very old souls.
While on the subject of future things, do you think we need to gang up on DBI and do an intervention? The dark clouds seem to consume him. I am mostly an optimist about the future. We will muddle through.
Cheers!
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