Another Day, Another Dollar

A recent Supreme Court ruling (Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission) took the restrictions off of corporate and union campaign donations from their own coffers. The strongly negative reaction of the current administration, focused heavily on an exchange between conservative Justice Samuel Alito and the President, as the latter delivered his State of the Union speech on January 27^th. Obama blasted the 5-4 decision, which reversed an earlier Supreme Court ruling, saying that on January 21^st, “the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.” Cameras caught stone-faced justices reacting to the blast, except for the apparent mouthing of the words, “not true,” by Justice Alito.

In a world of special interests – particularly Wall Street bankers – clearly triumphing over the average American, this decision, rendered under an interpretation of the application of the First Amendment, clearly favors the rich and powerful over the voiceless and often impotent masses. The justification? The January 21^st Atlantic.com summarized the decision as expressed by Associate Supreme Court Justice, Anthony Kennedy: “Justice Kennedy, in the majority opinion, reasoned that the government can't discriminate against speakers based on their corporate identities, and that ‘all speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech.’” Great theory of freedom, but the consequences for political domination by the super-well-funded are staggering.

There is one particular aspect of this ruling that may in fact be more bothersome than campaign financing for legislators and elected governmental executives: in many states, including my home state of California, judges are elected to every level from trial court, to appellate and even the state supreme court. How comfortable do you feel if the judge that is trying the case of a big corporation against you as an individual was elected only through the massive campaign contributions of big business… even if the specific corporation in question may not have been a contributor. Can American “big boys” buy justice?

Dorothy Samuels, editorializing for the January 30^th New York Times, noted that we have been duly warned: “That is not just because the ruling is another reminder of the court’s rightward shift since Justice [Sandra Day] O’Connor was replaced by the starkly conservative Justice Samuel Alito. Since retiring, Justice O’Connor has been warning about the threat to judicial independence from big-money state judicial campaigns and attack ads paid for by special interests hoping to influence future court decisions. The Citizens United ruling promises to make that problem worse, possibly much worse.”

Samuel’s editorial cuts deep with these facts: “Thirty-nine states hold judicial elections. Between 2000 and 2009, State Supreme Court candidates raised $205.8 million, according to the Justice at Stake Campaign, a watchdog group that monitors money in court races. That was more than double the $84.9 million raised the previous decade. One immediate result of the Citizens United ruling, as Justice John Paul Stevens noted in dissent, is that these states ‘may no longer have the ability to place modest limits on corporate electioneering even if they believe such limits to be critical to maintaining the integrity of their judicial systems.’… Another result is that all states are now effectively barred from adopting curbs on corporate and union spending on political campaigns, including judicial races. Business and other outside interest groups able to spend the cash could further dominate the airwaves and the debate in campaigns. Judicial candidates concerned about retaining control of their message will need to devote even more time to fund-raising.”

We all know that rich and powerful interests already have a leg up on the general public, no matter what restrictions are placed on these special interests. There’s just something particularly ugly when that advantage is reinforced to the extent that the average American is rendered virtually impotent in the political process. We truly need to reform this system and push some reality checks onto a nation governed increasingly for the benefit of special interests at the expense of everyone else.

I’m Peter Dekom, and guess how I feel about this issue!