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
* * * * *
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.”
* * * * *
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
* * * * *
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.?
Most readers of this blog are alerted by Email every time a new posting appears. If you wish to be added to that Email list, just let me know by contacting me at Riart1@aol.com. Also, be aware that www.Jackspotpourri.com is now available on your mobile devices in a modified, easy-to-read, format.
Our
family of web sites includes:
and
our parent site, the blog where it all started, www.jackspotpourri.com. Check all of them out and feel free to submit
your thoughts and articles for publication on these sites, which, while
operative, are still “under construction” in varying degrees.
Jack
Lippman
* * * * *
To send this posting to a friend, or enemy for that matter, whom you
think might be
interested in it, just click on the envelope with the arrow on the
"Comments" line directly below.
No comments:
Post a Comment