Supreme Court: Corporations Can Spend Money Freely in Elections

The Supreme Court just handed down a decision that is a setback for those advocating for restrictions on campaign financing. From The Hill:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down major provisions of campaign finance reform, though it remained to be seen if its decision represents a revolution in money and politics.

The court upheld disclosure requirements for corporations but also struck down the distinction between individual expenditures and corporate ones.

That should allow corporations to spend freely in support or opposition to candidates.

This decision is a big deal and really hasn't been covered that well in the corporate media. This decision allows for corporations to freely spend vast sums of money in order to support political candidates and will subsequently allow for corporate dollars to play an even larger role in the political process.

Here is part of the statement by Robert Weissman, the President of the group Public Citizen who played a key role in this case:

Shed a tear for our democracy.

Today, in the case Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes.

Money from Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and the rest of the Fortune 500 is already corroding the policy making process in Washington, state capitals and city halls. Today, the Supreme Court tells these corporate giants that they have a constitutional right to trample our democracy.

[...]

The court has invented the idea that corporations have First Amendment rights to influence election outcomes out of whole cloth. There is surely no originalist interpretation to support this outcome, since the court created the rights only in recent decades. Nor can the outcome be justified in light of the underlying purpose and spirit of the First Amendment. Corporations are state-created entities, not real people. They do not have expressive interests like humans; and, unlike humans, they are uniquely motivated by a singular focus on their economic bottom line. Corporate spending on elections defeats rather than advances the democratic thrust of the First Amendment.

I couldn't agree more. When corporations are protected by the First Amendment and are viewed as having interests that are comparable to the average citizen, you are just asking for more of an alliance between business and politics. The influence of lobbyists and corporations have been felt for years on issues of policy and even in elections, but this ruling today opens up the door for a tidal wave of corporate dollars to be spent on candidates that will stand up for policies that will not interrupt the bottom line.

Democracy did take a hit today and all those who value greater public participation in the political process should have serious concerns.

The Democratic and Republican Conventions, Sponsored by...

As this campaign season continues to move through the summer months, attention is starting to become focused on the national conventions of both major political parties.

The Democrats are first, rolling into the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado from August 25-27 and INVESCO field on August 28th. The Republicans then arrive in St. Paul, Minnesota where their convention will be held at the Xcel Energy Center from September 1-4. Both conventions will act as a 4 day political ad for each respective party with media attention focused on speeches and the nominating process itself. Each convention will have music, performances, speeches from various delegates, and will culminate in the acceptance speech by the presumptive nominees for President...John McCain and Barack Obama.

Both conventions will have their share of protests and as in 2004, the practice of limiting protests to "free speech zones", will be a strategy that the authorities use to attempt to keep the peace.

As these lavish political productions approach, it is interesting to take a look at who pays for all of the pomp and circumstance that surrounds the conventions and the connection between funding the conventions, policy making, and access to political candidates.

Take a look at an image of the welcome bag that delegates and entrants into the convention will receive at the DNC in Denver:


AT&T is one of 146 companies or organizations that have given money to the Democratic and Republican Conventions. 70 companies have given money only to the Democratic host committee to fund the convention, 39 companies have donated solely to the host committee for the Republicans, and 37 companies have donated money to both conventions according to the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute. It is interesting that AT&T's logo is on the welcome bag to the DNC considering it was the Democrats (including Barack Obama) who joined with the Republicans recently in passing the FISA legislation which gave retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies (like AT&T) which broke the law and spied on Americans.

The amount of soft money that has been given to these host committees for both parties, is very high and seems to work directly against the type of campaign finance reforms that both major party candidates have pledged to follow. In an interview on Democracy Now! this week, Steve Weissman from the Campaign Finance Institute stated:

“In return for this money, the parties, through the host committees, offer access to top politicians, to the president, the future president, vice president, cabinet officials, senators, congressmen. They promise these companies who are giving that they will be able to not only get close to these people by hosting receptions, by access to VIP areas, but they’ll actually have meetings with them.”

This sounds to me like a great opportunity for these companies to meet with some of the most important decision makers within both parties, and discuss issues and policies that would greatly benefit each organization. Money does indeed buy access.

There are three tables that the Campaign Finance Institute has put together to break down the campaign contributions of some of the companies that have donated to the conventions thus far.

This table shows the Organizational Donors to the Host Committee for the Democratic Convention and their Federal Contributions and lobbying expenditures.

This table shows the Organizational Donors to the Host Committee for the Republican Convention and their Federal Contributions and lobbying expenditures.

This table shows the Organizational Donors to the Host Committee for BOTH the Democratic and Republican Conventions and their Federal Contributions and lobbying expenditures.

Since the Campaign Finance Institute's first report was released, 39 other companies were acknowledged as donors and that information appears here. In addition to this information, the CFI wrote to all 146 and requested that they provide how much money they contributed to each convention's host committee. Not many companies responded, but of the ones that did you can see their contributions here.

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, wrote in a follow-up to her interview with Steve Weissman:

Disclosure of what corporations are giving is not required until 60 days after each convention, which is essentially Election Day, so there is no time to challenge a candidate on particular corporate donors. Weissman reports that most of the corporations that are giving to the convention “host committees” also have serious business before the federal government.

Serious business before the federal government, much like the lawsuits that have been filed in response to the newly passed FISA legislation which directly affects the likes of AT&T.

Corporate sponsorship of the biggest gathering of top-level decision makers within the government, complete with special access in order to discuss important policies. Call me crazy, but something doesn't sound quite right about this process. It should not strike anyone as odd when the Democrats join with the Republicans in passing legislation that benefits corporations while the majority of the population of this country does not benefit from the same policies. After all, those that disagree with such a process are locked away in "free speech zones", out of earshot of the convention. The free-flow of corporate dollars into the election process continues to pollute democracy. As the CFI suggests:

More fundamentally, Senators Obama and McCain should take steps to permanently end the soft money system for political convention financing. Specifically, they should support the recommendation of CFI’s diverse and bipartisan Task Force on Presidential Primary Financing for legislation that would ban host committee soft money for convention expenses and instead allow the parties to collect and spend limited hard money contributions to help fund their conventions.

This would be a step forward in ending the type of corporate funding of the conventions, but we also need to look beyond and support ways which will help to reverse the corporate sponsorship of our government.