04.03.14
A Bad Day For Democracy In America
SCOTUS sides with the Plutocrats (as usual), With McCutcheon Ruling, An Activist Court Opts for Full-On Plutocracy.
Any doubts about the determination of an activist United States Supreme Court to rewrite election rules so that the dollar matters more than the vote were removed Wednesday, when McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission was decided in favor of the dollar.
The court that in 2010, with its Citizens United v. FEC decision, cleared the way for corporations to spend as freely as they choose to buy elections has now effectively eliminated the ability of the American people and their elected representatives to establish meaningful limits on direct donations by millionaires and billionaires to campaigns.
The Citizens United ruling, coming after many previous judicial assaults on campaign finance rules and regulations, was a disaster for democracy. But it left in place at least some constraints on the campaign donors. Key among these was a limitation on the ability of a wealthy individual to donate more than a total dollar amount of $123,000 total in each two-year election cycle to political candidates and parties.
With the ruling in the McCutcheon case—where the court was actively encouraged to intervene on behalf of big-money politics by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky—a 5-4 court majority (signing on to various opinions) has ruled that caps on the total amount of money an individual donor can give to political candidates, parties and political action committees are unconstitutional. In so doing, says U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, says the court has further tipped the balance of power toward those who did not need any more influence over the affairs of state.
“It is far too often the case in Washington that powerful corporate interests, the wealthy, and the well-connected get to write the rules,” says Baldwin, “and now the Supreme Court has given them more power to rule the ballot box by creating an uneven playing field where big money matters more than the voice of ordinary citizens.”
And this from Ari Berman, The Supreme Court’s Ideology: More Money, Less Voting.
In the past four years, under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court has made it far easier to buy an election and far harder to vote in one.
First came the Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which brought us the Super PAC era.
Then came the Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the centerpiece of the Voting Rights Act.
Now we have McCutcheon v. FEC, where the Court, in yet another controversial 5-4 opinion written by Roberts, struck down the limits on how much an individual can contribute to candidates, parties and political action committees. So instead of an individual donor being allowed to give $117,000 to campaigns, parties and PACs in an election cycle (the aggregate limit in 2012), they can now give up to $3.5 million, Andy Kroll of Mother Jones reports.
The Court’s conservative majority believes that the First Amendment gives wealthy donors and powerful corporations the carte blanche right to buy an election but that the Fifteenth Amendment does not give Americans the right to vote free of racial discrimination.
These are not unrelated issues—the same people, like the Koch brothers, who favor unlimited secret money in US elections are the ones funding the effort to make it harder for people to vote. The net effect is an attempt to concentrate the power of the top 1 percent in the political process and to drown out the voices and votes of everyone else.
It’s all part of the plan to make sure certain people don’t vote.
Here’s Sen. Bernie Sanders on Democracy Now talking about the decision.
If you like that be sure and check out, Bernie Sanders: ‘I Am Prepared to Run for President of the United States’ [Updated on March 19].
PDiddie has more on the decision.
And many more links from billmoyers.com:
The big one: McCutcheon.
- Rick Hasen explains the “subtle awfulness” of the decision at Slate.
- The NYT’s Nicholas Confessore on how McCutcheon “could fundamentally reshape the political terrain in the 2014 elections and beyond.”
- At ThinkProgress, Ian Millhiser writes that the decision opens the way for new political money laundering schemes.
- Sam Kleiner writes at TNR that Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision shows that he has no clue how money actually works in politics.
- That criticism was echoed in a blistering dissent penned by Justice Stephen Breyer. Read highlights from it here at BillMoyers.com.
- Jonathan Rauch argues in The Daily Beast that progressives need to consider the possibility that fewer limits on disclosed donations could help stem the flow of anonymous dark money.
- Kai Newkirk, an activist who co-founded 99Rise, writes in The Guardian about why he disrupted the Supreme Court’s proceedings, and what needs to be done next.
- At SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston says that the court may next move on to the ban of direct donations to federal candidates by corporations in a case called Iowa Right to Life Committee v. Tooker.