Brian Schweitzer teaches conservatives some US history:
IN Montana’s frontier days, we learned a hard lesson about money in politics, one that’s shaped our campaign-finance laws for a century and made our political system one of the country’s most transparent.
Those laws, and our political way of life, are now being threatened by the Supreme Court — which is why I recently signed a petition for a federal constitutional amendment to ban corporate money from all elections.All this is in jeopardy, though, thanks to the Supreme Court and its infamous Citizens United ruling. In February the court notified the office of Montana’s commissioner of political practices, which oversees state campaigns, that until further notice, we may no longer enforce our anti-corruption statute, specifically our restriction on corporate money.
The court, which will make a formal ruling on the law soon, cited in the 2010 Citizens United case that corporations are people, too, and told us that our 110-year effort to prevent corruption in Montana had likely been unconstitutional. Who knew?
The effects of the court’s stay are already being felt here. The ink wasn’t even dry when corporate front groups started funneling lots of corporate cash into our legislative races. Many of the backers have remained anonymous by taking advantage of other loopholes in federal law.
But it’s easy to figure out who they are: every industry that wants to change the laws so that more profit can be made and more citizens can be shortchanged.
I know this because I’ve started receiving bills on my desk that have been ghostwritten by a host of industries looking to weaken state laws, including gold mining companies that want to overturn a state ban on the use of cyanide to mine gold, and developers who want to build condos right on the edge of our legendary trout streams.
In the absence of strict rules governing campaign money, these big players will eventually get what they seek. I vetoed these bills, but future governors might sign them if they have been bribed by the same type of money that is now corrupting our State Legislature.
What’s interesting about the fight to re-regulate campaign finance is, it’s truly bipartisan. John McCain is in this, and we all know how much media personalities love John McCain:
Sens. John McCain and Sheldon Whitehouse are teaming up to take on Citizens United. The bipartisan duo filed a friend-of-the-court brief Friday in a Montana Supreme Court case that upheld the state’s ban on independent expenditures by corporations. That case, American Tradition Partnership vs. Bullock, is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a stay of the decision in February.
In the 31-page brief, McCain (R-Ariz.) and Whitehouse (D-R.I.) defends Montana’s ban and calls on the Supreme Court to review Citizens United’s finding that vast independent expenditures don’t have a corrupting influence in campaigns.
“Evidence from the 2010 and 2012 electoral cycles has demonstrated that so-called independent expenditures create a strong potential for corruption and the perception thereof,” their brief reads. “The news confirms, daily, that existing campaign finance rules purporting to provide for ‘independence’ and ‘disclosure’ in fact provide neither.”
McCain and Whitehouse said in a joint statement that they were “deeply concerned” about the rise of unlimited and undisclosed spending in elections. “This unregulated and unaccountable spending invites corruption into our political process, and undermines our democracy,” the senators said. “We urge the Supreme Court to make clear that legislatures can take appropriate actions against corrupting influences in campaigns.”
This is the bipartisan issue pundits have been yearning for, yet for some reason we keep on discussing how important it is to coddle, compliment and stroke “private equity”, while handwringing over that divisive monster, President Obama. Senator McCain and President Obama agree that deregulating campaign finance was an incredibly dangerous, radical and stupid idea. They’re on the same page. And, campaign finance is actually a HUGE issue that affects every single person in this country (particularly if every state campaign finance law starts to fall, under Citizens).
You’d think the opinion industry would be celebrating, and shouting this good-government-inspired bipartisan opposition from the rooftops. Oddly, they’re not. Why is that?
Greg
That’s a rhetorical question, right?
“It is difficult to get -a man- the media to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair
Valdivia
I hope the Village gets bored with the campaign and falls in love with McCain and this issue gets the bright lights of scrutiny. I am sure we will hear from Dowd how Roberts is the hero we have been waiting for.
Frankensteinbeck
McCain is a terrible person, but I ain’t too proud to accept his help on this issue if he can make the slightest bit of difference. Even if he uses it to resuscitate a reputation he never deserved. All I care about is fixing the problem, and if this improves our chances even a little, so be it.
Kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
The most amusing part of the whole thing is, Feingold has been measured in his words to the SCOTUS compared with McCain, who has basically been traveling the country ripping the conservative justices for months now.
Russ Feingold is the measured moderate, while the GOP nominee in ’08 is the wild-eyed court-basher.
Hunter Gathers
3rd party political ads ensure that they (The Villagers) continue getting paid. Media outlets make money through advertising. The vast majority of 3rd party spending is on advertising. Therefore, it is in the best interest of The Villagers to ignore the implications of Citizens United. Hard to be a principled, Burkean centrist moderate without making seven figures a year.
Bulworth
Because it doesn’t end, I mean save, Medicare and Social Security.
jl
@Hunter Gathers:
I second that. How the media handles the campaign finance issue bears close watching. I would prefer to think that all those himbos and dudettes on the tube are intrepid journalists bravely seeking and reporting out the the truth and telling it to authority.
On the off chance that they are corrupt corporate hacks, then we need to document the atrocities.
danielx
@Hunter Gathers:
This. Also, too:
Because the opinion industry mostly consists of Villagers, and in their hearts they believe that the great mass of unwashed voters out there need a deluge of corporate/billionaire financed negative campaign ads to tell them how to vote.
Vote the right way, that is.
Walker
In Assassins Creed II, they imply that Justice Roberts is a Templar agent, and that he was put on the bench for the sole purpose of Citizen’s United — so that the Templars could expand their power over the masses.
This seems less like fiction every day.
Kay
@Hunter Gathers:
That actually scares me to death. I envision lobbyists from the campaign industrial complex, I really do.
Just layers and layers of corruption and conflicts of interest….it’s very dispiriting.
Stooleo
O.T. So have you all heard about Scott Walker’s baby mamma?
Todd
Fewer statements about corrupting influence, and more on “corporations are creatures of statute, and the principals enjoy limited liability for their actions through the immunity granted by government”, please.
CVS
And, campaign finance is actually a HUGE issue that affects every single person in this country (particularly if every state campaign finance law starts to fall, under Citizens).
Indeed. And a few years from now when the last defenders of our democracy are printing pamphlets from their hidden locations, Citizens United will be recognized as the final nail in the coffin of our Grand Experiment.
Amir Khalid
@Stooleo:
Mistaken identity. Some other Scott Walker (different middle name) was the baby daddy.
Stooleo
@Amir Khalid:
Thanks, I thought it sounded too good to be true.
Ash Can
STATES’ RIGHTS ::sputter flail::
Oh, wait…
BBA
@Todd: The Delaware General Corporation Law, under which most major corporations are chartered, does not impose any restrictions on corporate involvement in politics. If the government of Delaware were to impose such restrictions it would quickly lose much of the corporate tax money that provides its main source of income to a state with more permissive corporate statutes, likely Nevada.
burnspbesq
@jl:
And I would prefer to think that the Mets are going to keep winning. Who’s more likely to get what they want?
Corner Stone
@Stooleo: This sounds like it may have some import to the recall election. IMO, it needs to be front paged immediately.
Bruce S
It has to be said: “Good news for John McCain.”
He needs a lot of redemption post-Palin, but this is a start.
RosiesDad
I for one would like to see the five justices who ruled this way removed from the Court on the basis that they are corrupt.
Cato
Corporate cash is going to continue to POUR into this election, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Just look at the big assist they’ve given Walker in his recall victory.
newtons.third
Does Citizens really state, in legal terms to be sure, that corporations are people? If it does, would it then be possible for a state to prosecute the “person” for a crime, and detain them. The detaining that I would envision would constitute something like all bond holders wiped out for the duration of the sentence, maybe stock value as well, as all profits during the time would go to the state. Board wiped out, and corporation run by, and possibly sold by, a state appointed board. Death penalty? Some form of the above, only permanent.
As the joke goes, I will believe that a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.
kay
@newtons.third:
They have huge problems with Citizens, because they’ve already indicated they’ll limit it to US corporations, which is a distinction that doesn’t make sense.
They’re going to have to get into these ridiculous scenarios where they’re quite literally pretending corporations are human beings.
I look forward to it :)
How far will they go to defend this horrible decision?
How far will people in media go to defend Justice Roberts’ honor?
newtons.third
@kay: So what would it take for a progressive DA to try and prosecute a major corporation for a crime committed in his/her jurisdiction?
As an aside, I reall wish we had a neuter pronoun so that we would not need to use the he/she construct.
barath
@newtons.third:
My understanding that a 19th-century railroad case was where corporate personhood was first established, and it was supposedly done with some controversy (the justices themselves didn’t write it in, but a court reporter did):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad
Then that mistake was propagated by later rulings that cited the earlier case.