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Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Today is the Anniversary of the Citizens United Decision


Citizens United, the Supreme Court and Election Financing   

Back when Hillary Clinton was campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2007, a conservative group known as Citizens United produced a film attacking her. The 2002 McCain-Feingold legislation regulating political campaigns did not allow such attacks within 60 days of an election.  In litigation which finally reached the United States Supreme Court in 2010, the Court, by a 5 to 4 vote, ruled that the McCain-Feingold legislation could not deprive Citizens United of its First Amendment rights of freedom of speech.  They reasoned that entities such as Citizens United were entitled to the same freedom of speech as individuals and made it clear that this pertained to corporations, unions, political action committees and other groups.  Today is the second anniversary of this Supreme Court decision and perhaps it is time to review the havoc it has caused and will continue to cause.  

                               

While there are regulations concerning the money that political parties and candidates raise and strict disclosure rules as to where it comes from, regulation of issue-oriented, ostensibly non-political groups such as Citizens United is much looser, enabling enormous sums of money to be raised and spent on political campaigning with minimal and delayed disclosure of its sources.  Such campaigning is apart and separate from the campaigns carried on by political parties and candidates.  It does not need their approval and often is directed at issues or candidates in a negative manner.  SuperPACs, or political action committees, are particularly active in this manner with money made possible by the Citizens United decision.

If the G.O.P. Presidential primary campaign is any indication of what’s to come, the Citizens United decision has enabled large amounts of money to be used to campaign against some candidates with no real indication of where it is coming from. The organizations sponsoring such campaigning may have vague and general names (I’ll make one up: “Concerned Americans for Constitutional Liberty”) but they are entitled to the same right of free speech as any individual American citizen.  That’s what the Court said. Such groups have become a significant tool in the primary campaign and will be a still bigger tool in the General Election.  More money will probably be spent in 2012 by such groups than either the Democratic or Republican parties and their candidates will spend.  

By law, these groups do indeed have to report the source of their financial support early this year, but I suspect such reporting will be intentionally vague, and by then the Republican primaries will be history.  There are tactics to circumvent such disclosure. For example, civic leagues, social welfare organizations and local associations of employees can qualify as tax-exempt non-profit organizations under IRS Sec. 503C(4). By law, these organizations do not have to disclose where they get their money, so let us assume that a donor who wants his privacy protected gives $5,000,000 to the "Dakota Civic Social Welfare Association" (I made that one up, too), a 503C(4) tax-exempt non-profit group. That group then donates that amount to a SuperPAC (like the one I made up in the preceding paragraph) and the "Dakota C.S.W. Association" is disclosed as being the donor but the true donor remains hidden.  Then, under the Citizens United decision, this money can be spent in any way the SuperPAC wants to influence an election, without restriction, with no one knowing where it came from. Thank the Supreme Court for this.

President Obama has made two appointments to the Supreme Court, Justices Sotemayor and Kagan.  These appointments did not change the Court’s balance since these appointees replaced Justices who were of a similar mindset.  To bring about a change in the Supreme Court, and open the way for an eventual reversal of the Citizens United decision, President Obama must have the opportunity to appoint a Justice to succeed one of those who were in the majority on the case.  These were Justices Alito, Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy and Chief Justice Roberts.

For this opportunity to occur, and the decision to be reversed, the President will have to be re-elected for four more years since none of these five Justices can be counted on to leave the Court imminently.  Only when that happens will the danger of a Presidential election in this country being bought be eliminated.  And the enormous amount of money unleashed for election campaigning by the Citizens United decision can do exactly that.  Make no mistake about it!

                                         

Reversal of the Citizens United decision should be high on the agenda of anyone who believes in fair campaigning in this country, and this includes leading Republicans who were viciously smeared in their primary campaign by independent organizations (which no one ever heard of before) supporting their opponents.  Needless to say, the five Justice majority on the Supreme Court should be ashamed of itself for the worst decision that Court has made since the Dred Scott decision.
Jack Lippman

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And from the pen of Sid Bolotin's, here's ...

                                                   THERE WAS A BOY - 2012

Sid Bolotin

The sun burned across the old man’s half closed eyes. He was sitting on the porch of his youngest son’s home in Northampton, a town in western Massachusetts. He listened to the pulse-pulse-pulse of the lawn sprinkler as it propelled itself in a circle to water the lawn and adjacent vegetable garden. He watched his two grandsons gleefully careening through the arched flow of the water’s arc and heard their squeals of sheer delight. These were two of his 9 grandchildren that he’d soon be leaving behind when he relocated to Florida. The heat, the whirring of insects, the fluttering of the butterflies exploring the blossoms on the Buddha (butterfly) bush combined like an opiate that lulled him to sleep.
                                 

The old man tossed in his sleep. His mind was racing with old images as his 7 decades of life unreeled like video on rewind. It was as if he was skipping from stone to stone going upstream along the shore of the river of his life. Each stone brought a pause, an instant stop-play of his life’s adventure. There were his grandchildren, then his children, and his wife as he traveled backward in his reflection of his life. He could see his struggles with his questions about the way of life’s meaning. The ones always asked but still not answered. Gurus, workshops, retreats, books, discussion groups, and, of course, therapy had never produced the answer that he sought for a question never really articulated. Suddenly the imaging paused on him as a young teenager in a state of awe listening to the song, Nature Boy. The old man’s tossing quieted as he absorbed the scene and its emotions. Once again he was in that state of grace, that feeling of well-being, that connection with the Eternal that had embraced him so long ago. He began to sing along with Nat King Cole as the wondrous story of the strange, wise, sad eyed, magic boy purred from Nat’s velvety throat. Tears welled up and rolled down his cheeks as he intoned the song’s immortal message: “the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return.”


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Downsizing in the Supermarket

One of the games food companies play is the reduction in the weight of their products, while leaving them in what appears to be the same size packaging.  Last year, the amount of orange juice in a typical orange juice container shrunk from 64 ounces to 59 ounces, while being packaged in the same size container.  The cost did not drop 7.8% as the quantity of juice in the container did.  And all of the companies, led by Tropicana and Minute Maid, did it at the same time.  The supermarket “house brands” followed suit within a few months.


The latest such rip-off involves tuna fish.  Up to six months ago, a typical can of tuna fish contained 7 ounces of fish, and often, an excess of water or oil.  Now, most are down to 5 ounces but the cans still look to be the same size.  (There even a few versions down to 4.5 ounces.)  Formerly, there was enough tuna in a 7 ounce can, when mixed with mayonnaise and perhaps some celery or onions, to fill two nice sized sandwiches.  Now, those two sandwiches will look a bit skimpier because the 5 ounce can is 28% smaller than its predecessor, but of course, the price is the same.

                                 


If the free enterprise system were working properly, one smart orange juice company or tuna fish packer would put a product on the market containing the original weight.  This would probably bring that company sufficient new business to more than equal the profit it would be throwing away by not conforming with their industry’s reduced quantity practices.  But that does not appear to be happening.  And I wonder how many other products have been “downsized” and escaped this consumer’s notice.
Jack Lippman
  
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The Potpourri Poll 


The poll, at the top of the right sidebar, is being revised.  It will deal strictly with the race for the Presidency.  The questions may change as we get closer to Novermber 6, but the theme will remain the same.  Who will be elected President in November.? 


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Jack Lippman
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