Supreme Court to Remove Restrictions on Corporate Donations

[happy_liberal]

WASHINGTON — Even before a landmark Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance law expected within days, a series of other court decisions is reshaping the political battlefield by freeing corporations, unions and other interest groups from many of the restrictions on their advertising about issues and candidates.

Legal experts and political operatives say the cases roll back campaign spending rules to the years before Watergate. The end of decades-old restrictions could unleash a torrent of negative advertisements, help cash-poor Republicans in a pivotal year and push President Obama to bring in more money for his party....

Many legal experts say they expect the court to use its imminent ruling, in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, to eliminate the remaining restrictions on advertisements for or against candidates paid for by corporations, unions and advocacy organizations.

Even if the court rules more narrowly, legal experts and political advocates say that the 2010 elections will bring the first large-scale application of previous court decisions that have all but stripped away those restrictions. Though the rulings have not challenged the bans on direct corporate contributions to parties and candidates, political operatives say that as a practical matter the rulings and a deadlock at the Federal Election Commission have already opened wide latitude for independent groups to advocate for and against candidates.

“It will be no holds barred when it comes to independent expenditures,” said Kenneth A. Gross, a veteran political law expert at the firm of Skadden Arps in Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/us/politics/09donate.html?hp

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Ah yes, the Corporate States of America...

there are days I wonder what will take for people to finally wake up and take to the streets.

Nothing I fear.

Welcome to DU by the way.

[happy_liberal]

11. thanks

:hi:

Many people are just too busy with their lives to know what is going on. This story, for instance, should be top news. But instead we have some guy being arrested for kissing his girlfriend in the airport. Other people just don't care. You tell them what is going on in the country and they just openly say they can't be bothered.

[Atticus]

30. I wonder right along with you. When I've tried to encourage large-scale demonstrations and

marches here, I was told, essentially, that that sort of thing just isn't done anymore in this fast-paced digital world. Besides,they added, the whore media would just ignore us even if we did march.

I agree that the MSM often downplays our anti-war marches(been there, seen that happen)and totally "forgets" to mention rallies in support of anything that might rock the corporate boat.

But, I think the naysayers are sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy: they don't show up because "we'll be ignored" and, the march or sit in or whatever remains small enough to BE ignored.

If, as Country Joe said, "over 300,000 of you fuckers" would join me on the Mall demanding a Constiutional amendment or legislation to strip away or limit corporate "personhood", I bet we'd be heard.

[Orrex]

2. Money equals speech

Lovely.


Well, it was a nice experiment while it lasted...

[earthside]

3. The end of the Republic.

If the Supreme Court fully equates free speech with dollar bills and removes essentially all restrictions on corporations giving money directly to candidates and causes -- it will mean the final end to the Republic as we have known it.

The United States will have taken the final step into being a full-fledged plutocracy.

[slampoet]

41. oops wrong reply

[dkf]

4. Well now we know why dems sold us out.

[monmouth]

5. Goodbye America, we knew ye well.....n/t

[LoZoccolo]

6. Remember that Nader thought these Supreme Court justices were irrelevant to think about

as a political issue.

[anonymous171]

15. Nader has nothing to do with this. nt

[LoZoccolo]

28. Supreme Court nominees amount to "not a dime's worth of difference" between Bush* and Gore. n/t

[harkadog]

26. Where is your link to that?

[LoZoccolo]

29. OK then, back to the beginning. Why would you vote for Nader over Gore in 2000? n/t

[harkadog]

33. I was just wondering if you made up the quote.

I got my answer.

[Marr]

31. And your idols would appoint justices who agree with the current crop.

At least on this issue. So I don't really see your point.

[LoZoccolo]

36. No they wouldn't. n/t

[Marr]

37. You don't think an Obama nominee would be for allowing corporations

greater latitude in spending money on elections?

You really think a politician like Obama, who goes out of his way to service Wall Street, would be against this?

[LoZoccolo]

38. Do you think Clinton's appointees would? n/t

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rd_kent]

8. This really will be the beginning of the end........

Democracy is on its way out......a failed experiment, sadly.........

[Odin2005]

9. Democracy is dead.

:cry:

[emilyg]

10. +100

[tinrobot]

12. Long live Corporatacracy

:puke:

[donheld]

40. +1000

[liberal_at_heart]

24. +1

[happy_liberal]

13. an aside but did anyone notice this?

"The 2010 midterms will be the first big test of the changing rules in part because in 2008 both major party candidates — Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain — explicitly discouraged independent spending by their supporters."

Either then Senator Obama or President would have worked...they went out of their way to say Mr.

[netania99]

19. I think the protocol

is to say "President X" at the first mention (here the second paragraph), and then Mr. X (or Ms. X) subsequently?

[Tesha]

22. That's the Times' "house style"; they *ALWAYS* write that way. (NT)

[90-percent]

14. Well, that's good

This means we will be able to know the EXACT DAY IN HISTORY when America became a fascist corporate state. This is like Gore vs. Bush, only with a Serf vs Overlord kinda vibe. The guys with the most money get to buy the politician of their choice! To concentrate the wealth to an even higher percentage towards the top .1%

Is the concentration of wealth starting to come close to the numbers that triggered the French Revolution?

-90% Jimmy

[happy_liberal]

16. yes, exactly!

It has been a long process, but we are finally there.

[NashVegas]

17. GOOD. Let Them Spend Stockholder Money On Donations

Instead of squeezing it out of employees.

[NuttyFluffers]

18. but thank goodness we have all this dry powder here...

:crazy:

told ya so when we let each one of these corporatist judges get a seat these past 8 years. and now it's checkmate. fucking dumbasses telling us it's keeping our powder dry...

[Frosty1]

20. Isn't that just a little misleading?

Do you know this for a fact or is it just speculation?
I'll believe it when it happens. This is why a conservative appointed supreme court is such a danger.

[highplainsdem]

21. Wow, we'll have the best faux democracy corporations can buy!

[Tesha]

23. Well, if corporations attain full "personhood", maybe we can start giving them the death penalty...

...when they commit heinous capital crimes.

Tesha

[liberal_at_heart]

25. We already get bombarded by negative ads.

If it gets any worse I'm going to have to get rid of my tv.

[Fire1]

27. Well, no need to vote. n/t

[starroute]

32. The final triumph of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

This is David Bossie's Citizens United suing the FEC over its anti-Hillary hit piece. There's a lot of backstory to this, and all of it is nasty -- but basically it amounts to what Hillary Clinton was mocked for way back when she described it as the "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" that was out to get her and Bill. And now it's having the last laugh.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=David_N._Bossie

David N. Bossie, the president of Citizens United and president and manager of The Presidential Coalition, "earned a reputation as a relentless sleuth -- or right-wing hit man, depending on one's political persuasion -- during his years as a high-profile Republican congressional investigator and conservative activist." . . .

Hillary Clinton is "ahead in the polls and on course to become the Democrats' presidential candidate for 2008. So it is no surprise that a right-wing smear campaign is gathering speed to derail Senator Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House. . . . Top of the list of projects is a planned movie, being filmed by veteran Republican operator David Bossie. Bossie is raising money for the film through his conservative group Citizens United, which is appealing for video footage, stories about Clinton and money. It plans a release by the end of the year, just as the first primary elections are held in New Hampshire. Bossie is being helped in the project by Dick Morris, a former top Clinton aide who has become a leading Clinton critic." . . .

"Through the 1990s, Bossie spent much of his time assembling caches of documents to push his admittedly ideological agenda. He was a ready promoter of stories about President Bill Clinton's sexual and ethical lapses, proved and otherwise. . . . Not long into the Clinton Presidency, Citizens United produced the video Clinton Chronicles, based largely on dirt Bossie had been digging in Arkansas. The video, filled with a plethora of factual errors and uncorroborated or disproven rumors, has been almost completely discredited." . . .

"David Bossie, a veteran conservative operative and self-described 'accidental filmmaker,' provided one of the event's most memorable offerings" at the November 10, 2006, weekend Liberty Film Festival in Hollywood, Max Blumenthal wrote November 16, 2006, in The Nation. . . . In 1998, Bossie was "fired from his job as chief investigator for the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight" after being "caught selectively editing tapes of former Clinton Administration official Webster Hubbell's prison conversations in a false effort to implicate Hillary Clinton for overbilling his law firm. ... Now Bossie has begun applying his tape-doctoring skills to film, installing editing equipment in the basement of Citizens United's offices and funneling millions of dollars from his group's coffers into producing full-length 'documentaries'," Blumenthal wrote.

[G_j]

34. the last nail in the coffin

RIP Democracy

[Land Shark]

35. If it happens, it is a REVOLUTION AGAINST DEMOCRACY. Let's not let this acclimate acceptance of that

The danger is that if things happen "as expected" then we yawn when in fact it is a revolution to react and take action to.

[G_j]

39. K&R

[OneBlueSky]

42. so . . . not only do the corporations own the legislative and executive branches of government . . .

they also own the judiciary . . . that's a clean sweep no matter how you look at it . . . and it means that no part of our government is looking after the interests of the average American . . . not when there's corporate profits to protect . . .

[Kablooie]

43. So? Not any different than it is now.