In our last meeting, the topic selected for our September discussion was corporations and government. Our focus is democracy and human rights. With this in mind, we'll look at some articles from the following sources: NYTimes, Nation, AlterNet, and Wall Street Journal.
On the court's ruling in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission:
Background:
The case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, originated in a 2008 movie critical of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, wanted to promote the film ahead of the Democratic primaries, but the election commission called it an "electioneering communication" subject to McCain-Feingold restrictions. Theodore Olson, who represented Citizens United, said allowing corporations to buy political ads "will invigorate political discourse…and, ultimately, strengthen the very foundations of our democracy."
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016942930090152.html?KEYWORDS=corporate+contributions)
In its 5–4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which held that corporations cannot be prohibited from using their treasury funds to advocate the election or defeat of candidates for public office, the US Supreme Court relied on the premise that corporations are no different than people; since the First Amendment protects the right of individuals to financially support or oppose political candidates, all corporations are equally protected. (http://www.thenation.com/article/43146/how-citizens-united-twisted-decades-legal-precedent-empower-corporations)
Previously, they were prohibited from paying for ads directly, and could use only funds contributed by employees or members.
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703988304575413650676561696.html?KEYWORDS=citizens+united)
The decision left standing the federal ban on direct corporate contributions to candidates, enacted in 1907. Justice Kennedy cited earlier rulings justifying that ban as a measure to prevent corruption. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016942930090152.html?KEYWORDS=corporate+contributions)
The court did reach broad agreement on one point, finding that the McCain-Feingold provision requiring political messages to disclose their funder was constitutional. Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from that holding. He cited reports that backers of a 2008 California measure abolishing same-sex marriage, Proposition 8, were harassed by their opponents. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016942930090152.html?KEYWORDS=corporate+contributions)
Views opposing ruling:
Senator Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who leant his name to the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002: "It is important to note that the decision does not affect McCain-Feingold's soft money ban, which will continue to prevent corporate contributions to the political parties from corrupting the political process. But this decision was a terrible mistake," says the Wisconsin senator. "Presented with a relatively narrow legal issue, the Supreme Court chose to roll back laws that have limited the role of corporate money in federal elections since Teddy Roosevelt was president. Ignoring important principles of judicial restraint and respect for precedent, the Court has given corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns. Just six years ago, the Court said that the prohibition on corporations and unions dipping into their treasuries to influence campaigns was ‘firmly embedded in our law.' Yet this Court has just upended that prohibition, and a century's worth of campaign finance law designed to stem corruption in government. The American people will pay dearly for this decision when, more than ever, their voices are drowned out by corporate spending in our federal elections. In the coming weeks, I will work with my colleagues to pass legislation restoring as many of the critical restraints on corporate control of our elections as possible." (http://www.thenation.com/blog/teddy-roosevelt-was-right-ban-all-corporate-contributions)
Teddy Roosevelt principle: "All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law," said Roosevelt in the first years of the 20th century, when he was also proposing public financing of federal election. (http://www.thenation.com/blog/teddy-roosevelt-was-right-ban-all-corporate-contributions)
Senator Charles Schumer, D-New York: "The Supreme Court just predetermined the winners of next November's elections. It won't be Republicans. It won't be Democrats. It will be corporate America." (http://www.thenation.com/blog/teddy-roosevelt-was-right-ban-all-corporate-contributions)
Lisa Graves, the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, says: "We cannot just wring our hands, in my view, and let this stand. There is a great deal of work to be done." (http://www.thenation.com/blog/teddy-roosevelt-was-right-ban-all-corporate-contributions)
Graves, a lawyer with long experience in both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, offers a savvy analysis of the motivations behind the court's ruling: "When I worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee reviewing President George W. Bush's judicial nominees and their agendas, I feared this day would come. That's why I tried to help keep John Roberts off the appellate court, and then was so saddened the day he was appointed and when I saw President Bush promote him to become Chief Justice after I had left the government," she says. "In reading the biographies, writings, and speeches of right-wing nominees, it became clear to me that a revolution in the law was being fomented to undermine the power of ordinary people to regulate corporations in their communities. Today's decision is a huge gift to corporations from a Supreme Court that has been radicalized by right-wing ideology, whose political agenda was made obvious in the Bush v. Gore case and whose very political decision today only makes things worse. I think we have to rebuke the Court's arrogant decision and make sure the law puts Americans before corporations."
(http://www.thenation.com/blog/teddy-roosevelt-was-right-ban-all-corporate-contributions)
President Barack Obama: attacked the ruling and said it gave "a green light to a new stampede of special-interest money in our politics," particularly "big oil, Wall Street banks, health-insurance companies and the other powerful interests" that "drown out the voices of everyday Americans." He pledged to work with lawmakers to craft a "forceful response." (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016942930090152.html?KEYWORDS=corporate+contributions)
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.): "This will allow the biggest corporations in the United States to engage in the buying and selling of elections,"
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016942930090152.html?KEYWORDS=corporate+contributions)
Nader & Weissman: "The disparities between individual contributions and available corporate dollars mock any pretense of equal justice under the law. A total of $5.2 billion from all sources was spent in the 2008 federal election cycle (which includes 2007 and 2008), according to the Center for Responsive Politics. For the same two-year period, ExxonMobil's profits were $85 billion. The top-selling drug, Pfizer's Lipitor, grossed $27 billion in sales during that time. Such disparities invite corporations to spend whatever they believe necessary to further entrench the corporate state. The money they now spend will be used to reward friends and punish opponents. Corporations know that money makes a big difference when it comes to blocking protections for workers, consumers and the environment. Wall Street, health insurance and drug companies, fossil fuel and nuclear power companies, and defense corporations have been hard at work defeating common-sense reforms that would make them more accountable."
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704820904575055340863805062.html?KEYWORDS=corporate+contributions)
Justice John Paul Stevens called the majority opinion "a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have…fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt."
Views in favor of ruling:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who has long fought campaign-finance regulations, hailed the court for a "monumental decision" toward "restoring the First Amendment rights of [corporations and unions] by ruling that the Constitution protects their right to express themselves about political candidates and issues up until Election Day." (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016942930090152.html?KEYWORDS=corporate+contributions)
Justice Anthony Kennedy ...said the effort to divide corporate political spending into legal and illegal forms chilled political speech. "When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought," he wrote. Justice Kennedy wrote that, taken to its extreme, the restriction on corporate spending could silence media organizations or even allow banning such political-themed movies as "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." He rejected the view that government had an interest in preventing corporations or unions from "distorting" political debate by funding ads. To the contrary, "corporations may possess valuable expertise, leaving them the best equipped to point out errors of fallacies in speech of all sorts," he wrote.
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016942930090152.html?KEYWORDS=corporate+contributions)
Floyd Abrams, has represented the New York Times Co. from time to time: Could there be protection put into the law that will allow free speech notably in the landmark Pentagon Papers case of 1971 The First Amendment is the lifeblood of the press:
"I think that two things are at work," "One is that there are an awful lot of journalists that do not recognize that they work for corporations. . . ."A second is an ideological one. I think that there is a way of viewing this decision which . . . looks not at whether the First Amendment was vindicated but whether what is simply referred to as, quote, democracy, unquote, was vindicated. My view is, we live in a world in which the word 'democracy' is debatable . . . It is not a word which should determine interpretation of a constitution and a Bill of Rights, which is at its core a legal document as well as an affirming statement of individual freedom," he says. "Justice Potter Stewart . . . warned against giving up the protections of the First Amendment in the name of its values. . . . The values matter, the values are real, but we protect the values by protecting the First Amendment." "Hillary: The Movie," a harshly critical 90-minute documentary. It sued when the FEC denied it permission to broadcast the film via on-demand cable during the 2008 presidential primaries. "Here is a very committed, very conservative entity that does a film attacking then-Sen. Hillary Clinton when she seemed likely to be nominated for president by the Democratic Party," Mr. Abrams says. "I ask myself: Well, isn't it obvious that that sort of speech must be protected by the First Amendment? And then I hear in response to that, 'Well, they could have used a PAC. Or they could have put the film out farther away from the election. Or they could have refrained from taking any money from any corporate grantor.""And my reaction is sort of a John McEnroe: You cannot be serious! We're talking about the First Amendment here, and we're being told that an extremely vituperative expression of disdain for a candidate for president is criminal in America?"
Mr. Abrams's view, Citizens United advances rather than hinders democracy: "We want, for example, more Gene McCarthys and Ross Perots and individuals to come upon the scene and have a chance to build a war chest and go on out and try to reform the country as they think best.""The decision in Citizens United provides significant protection for the press in the future," says Mr. Abrams. "The press cannot depend, and indeed ought not depend, upon the largess of Congress to exempt it from regulations on speech that affect the rest of American society. I'm a strong believer not only in protecting the press, but that the press has been the instrumentality which has helped to establish broad protections for all of us through the years."
If Citizen's United had gone the other way, Abrams can argue in the alternative: he cites Justice Stewart, who held the view that "the institutional press was the only entity set forth in the Bill of Rights as deserving of special protection." Accordingly, Mr. Abrams says, "I would argue . . . that because of the role of the press, it was unconstitutional . . . to bar the press from doing everything it now does."
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704094304575029791336276632.html?KEYWORDS=corporate+contributions)
Bradley Smith, professor of law at Capital University Law School and chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics. He served as a commissioner of the Federal Election Commission from 2000-2005:
"...Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which the Court struck down a blanket government prohibition on corporate political speech, is a wonderful decision that restores political speech to the primacy it was intended to have under the First Amendment.""Hopefully, this ruling marks an end to 20 years of jurisprudence in which the Court has provided less protection to core political speech than it has to Internet pornography, the transmission of stolen information, flag burning, commercial advertising, topless dancing, and burning a cross outside an African-American church." "It is true that the Supreme Court's ruling will lead to more corporate (and union) political speech. But even if one thinks that is a bad thing, there is little empirical reason to believe the horror stories of corporate dominance of the democratic process.""But the First Amendment is all about distrusting government to make those decisions about who has spoken too much. That's why Thursday's decision is such a breath of fresh air."
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704509704575019112172931620.html?KEYWORDS=corporate+contributions)
Other views:
Vin Weber, a former Republican lawmaker from Minnesota who is now a lobbyist and political consultant:"It's harder to get corporations to do this than a lot of people thought it was going to be." "People think that most businesses are Republican, but by and large, companies don't think that it makes much of a difference which political party controls Washington." (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703988304575413650676561696.html?KEYWORDS=citizens+united)
Minnesota Forward was created in the wake of the court decision precisely to collect donations from corporations. Established in part by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, it is funded by a handful of companies in the state, including Target, Best Buy and snowmobile-maker Polaris Industries. "The group decided to create Minnesota Forward to put jobs and the economy at the top of the agenda during the 2010 campaign," said Brian McClung, who runs the organization. "We think it's appropriate that the business community weigh in about the best candidates." The organization isn't overtly partisan. It announced Thursday that it would support three GOP and three Democratic candidates in the state. Earlier, the group backed Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, who supports a constitutional amendment protecting "traditional marriage."
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703988304575413650676561696.html?KEYWORDS=citizens+united)
"About 120 million Americans went to the polls in 2008. If each citizen also had a chance to contribute democracy dollars, their donations would overwhelm the sums that corporations are likely to spend under the recent Supreme Court decision."
($50 refundable tax credit when filing an income tax return. Oregon and other states already do this.)
Questions:
1. How does this ruling effect democracy, human/civil rights, if at all?
2. Why is this issue divided along party lines?
3. It appears that those in favor of the ruling argue that it is good for free speech; they seem unconcerned about its effect on democracy. While those who are against the ruling argue that it will allow corporations to run the government, leaving the average citizen in the cold, without a voice in the government. Is there a middle ground? Is there another way of looking at this?
On the press and democracy:
Article provided by Jason Smick.
"The O’Reilly Factor - How the Fox host used raw corporate power to crush a critic" (http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_oreilly_factor.php?page=all) - Terry Ann Knopf
"What’s clear is that over the past twenty years or so, thanks in part to government deregulation, the number of companies owning or having a dominant influence over our news and information outlets has dwindled from about thirty to just a few—Walt Disney, News Corp., Time Warner, Viacom—and, if the FCC approves, Comcast-NBC Universal. Such media consolidation means reduced competition and greater shareholder pressures and, possibly, attention to profits over the pubic interest. Indeed, some critics argue that such concentration of power is dangerous to our democracy, leading to a less vigilant news media and what one business journalist has called “a more muted marketplace for ideas.”
Questions:
1. What does this mean in terms of our democracy?
2. What is a way around this? What can we do about it?
On net neutrality:
"What if We Google 'Democracy' and get 'Oligarchy'?" (http://www.thenation.com/blog/154042/what-if-we-google-democracy-and-get-oligarchy) - John Nichols.
Activists with civil rights, social justice and free speech groups are upset. "Instead of a free and open Internet that will take Americans wherever they want to go — thanks to the net neutrality principle that is best understood as the first amendment of Internet governance — the Google-Verizon deal threatens to create a circumstance that would allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to speed up access to some content while leaving the rest in the dust.
This "pay-for-priority" approach would mean that big corporations could effectively buy speed, quality and other advantages." To make his point, he gives an example about BP and the oil spill.
"If the fastest and highest-quality service only takes you to the sites of paying customers, the small "d" democratic promise of the Internet will collapse and this incredible invention—which has so much potential to connect us all to one another and the world—will become he cable TV of the twenty-first century. Or worse."
"This is a debate about whether the digital communications that shape our lives and choices in the twenty-first century will serve the bottom line of a few powerful corporations or the best interests, the ideals and the democratic aspirations of a people who have understood since they days when Tom Paine was penning pamphlets that there is no democracy unless all Americans have easy and equal access to all the information and all the ideas that are necessary to govern their own affairs and protect their own freedoms."
In "Verizon & Google Want to Kill the Open Internet -- Media Mogul Confirms Their Bad Intentions" (http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/147921) - Rep. Alan Grayson
"We've already seen examples of political censorship over mobile networks. In 2007, Verizon refused to run a pro-choice text message from advocacy group NARAL, due to its supposedly 'unsavory' nature. Yes, this happened; yes, this kind of censorship would be continue to be legal under the Google-Verizon deal;"
Questions:
1. Are you concerned about net-neutrality? Why?
2. Is there another side to this debate? 3. Should we do something about this? If so, what?
On the government:
In "The Corpo-Obama-Geithner-Petraeus State " (http://www.thenation.com/article/154017/corpo-obama-geithner-petraeus-state) - Barbara Ehrenreich.
"The government ... is not only expensive, "bloated" and all the rest. It has become a handmaid to corporate power — a hiring hall from which compliant officials are selected for vastly more lucrative private-sector jobs, as well as an emergency cash reserve for companies that fall on hard times. No wonder so many Americans unthinkingly conflate "big government" and "big corporations." "
Questions:
1. Do you agree?
2. Can the government be a tool for progressive social change?
3. Whose government is it anyway? What does this mean in terms of our democracy, human/civil rights?
"In the years since government ... has shed its role as a kindly change agent, it has assumed a new one as über-cop: building more penitentiaries, snapping up stoners, harassing blacks and Latino-looking people on the streets. Nonviolent protests have dwindled, not only because of activists' lingering deference toward Obama but because the police response to any outdoor gathering so resembles the assault on Falluja."
Questions:
1. Was the government ever a kindly change agent or is this a myth of the past?
2. Do agree with this, i.e. we have become a brutal police state?
3. Do you have a different perspective on the goverment?
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