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| Photo by obraq.org |
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission
is to be heard by the Supreme Court Oct. 8th
Non-existent is how I would describe House
Speaker John Boehner's leadership. Not totally his fault. The Republican Party is being highjacked by about 45 Tea
Party members who don't allow the word "compromise" into their vocabulary. They are obstructionists that act like children and have no morals and do not care what anyone wants except for the most rich, greedy, uncaring people, in this world, much less the country. People that will not accept anything but 100% of what they want or they have temper tantrums. They are motivating people like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and others by threatening to spend money to defeat them in primary elections if they don't do exactly as the Tea Party wants, and more. Anyone who doesn't please them are enemies as shown when a VP, Andy Roth, of Club for Growth, a right-wing organization, said that "Sen. Bob Corker became a Democrat on the floor of the Senate today." The Tea Party is funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, and PACs like Karl Rove's Crossroads, and Freedomworks. If other house
Republicans would stand up to them instead of worrying that
they will face a primary challenge from the Tea Party, the Republican Party, would be better
off and the legislature might actually be able to get something done. That all leads us to the real problem we face in America. Money in politics.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.,) On Thursday, speaking at an event held by the Constitutional
Accountability Center, argued, "If the court continues in the
direction of Citizens United, we may move another step closer to
neutering Congress' ability to limit the influence of money in politics
and another step closer to unlimited corporate contributions given
directly to candidates and political committees." She was speaking about McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission .
True democracy is impossible when you allow
unlimited contributions from anonymous donors. Not only can the Koch
brothers and others sway elections, but, think of it, you can actually
have foreigners pouring crazy amounts of money into our elections. That
is just nuts! Let's repeal Citizens United, at least not make it even worse!
In a HuffPost article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/26/elizabeth-warren-supreme-court_n_3997916.html The case;
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission,
set to be argued on Oct. 8 was outlined. It challenges the aggregate limit on
campaign contributions that an individual donor can make in a single
election. Currently, a donor may only give $123,300 in total, made up of
sub-limits of $48,600 to candidates and $74,600 to party committees and
PACs.
The plaintiff, Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon,
hopes that the court will eliminate these limits, arguing earlier this year that the issue is "a very important First Amendment case about freedom of speech."
On Thursday, speaking at an event held by the Constitutional
Accountability Center, Warren argued, "If the court continues in the
direction of Citizens United, we may move another step closer to
neutering Congress' ability to limit the influence of money in politics
and another step closer to unlimited corporate contributions given
directly to candidates and political committees."
Warren also endorsed the research of her former academic colleague,
Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, on the framers of the
Constitution's original definition of corruption and on the ways in
which Congress has become warped by monied interests.
Lessig, who followed Warren on Thursday, September 26, 2013, with a presentation on his
research, sought to frame the McCutcheon case, and the money-in-politics
issue generally, in terms the conservative justices on the Supreme Court would respond to. Lessig and the Constitutional Accountability Center have
filed an amicus brief in the McCutcheon case based on his research and arguments.
The Supreme Court -- most dramatically in the 2010 Citizens United
decision -- has stated that the only type of corruption able to be
regulated is quid pro quo, cash-for-votes corruption. But, according to
Lessig, this is not the way the framers understood corruption and, thus,
neither should the five conservative justices on the court.
Two chapters from the Federalist Papers are of particular interest
to Lessig. In Federalist 52, James Madison writes that the federal
government created by the Constitution should have at least one branch
"dependent upon the people alone." In Federalist 57, Madison writes that
the people on whom that branch depends should be "not the rich, more
than the poor."
Lessig argued that the oversized reliance of members of Congress on
their campaign donors is an institutional corruption of the dependence
that Congress is supposed to have "upon the people alone." The
foundation for his argument is a number of statements and writings by
the framers concerning corruption of this nature -- evidence a
constitutional originalist would take into consideration.
Lessig said he had found at least 325 specific instances in which the framers used the term corruption (collected
here
in a Tumblr blog). Of those, only six explained corruption as a trading
of favors, while there were 29 mentions of corruption as an "improper
dependence." He also found that 57 percent of the mentions of corruption
were about institutions, rather than individuals.
This argument is designed to paint into a corner the five
conservative justices, who commonly favor eliminating campaign finance
limits, by suggesting that their efforts conflict with the original
intent of the framers.
In the McCutcheon case, he argued, the elimination of campaign
contribution limits would likely reduce the overall number of donors to
campaigns and, thus, make Congress even more dependent upon an even
smaller slice of donors, who are not representative of the people.
Lessig used
research done by National Institute of Money in State Politics executive director Ed Bender
that shows that contribution limits expand the number of donors while
the elimination of contribution limits reduces the number of donors.
"If you eliminate the cap on aggregate contributions, the number of
funders in the system will fall even more than it has so far," Lessig
said. "And if the number of funders drop, then the dependence corruption
within the system, as I've just described it, only gets worse."
But Lessig said he is optimistic that the justices will look at the
McCutcheon case and the original definition of corruption used by the
framers and form a strong majority to uphold the aggregate campaign
contribution limits.
Contact YOUR SENATORS, use this link to find who they are and how to call and e-mail them.
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Contact YOUR CONGRESSMEN, use this link to find who they are and how to call and e-mail them.
http://www.house.gov/representatives/
What is Citizens United? | An Introduction
What is Citizens United? The short answer is it’s two different but related things: a
Political Action Committee (PAC)
in Washington, D.C., and a Supreme Court case about election spending
in which the aforementioned PAC was the plaintiff. Both lie at the
center of a debate over the role corporations play in society. Read on
for the long answer.
It’s a Political Action Committee
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| Citizen's United Logo |
Citizens United, the PAC, was founded in 1988 by
Floyd Brown, a longtime Washington political consultant, with
major funding from the
Koch brothers (industrialists who own
“the second largest privately owned company in the United States”).
The group promotes corporate interests, socially conservative causes
and candidates who advance their goals, which it says are
“…limited government, freedom of enterprise, strong families, and national sovereignty and security.” It gained fame in 2009 for suing the
Federal Election Commission, leading to a controversial Supreme Court case (now also commonly known as
Citizens United) eliminating some restrictions on how corporations can spend money in elections
.
It’s a Supreme Court Case
In the 2008 election season, Citizens United the PAC sought to broadcast TV ads for a
video-on-demand film criticizing presidential candidate Hilary Rodham Clinton, but doing so would violate the 2002
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act
(known also as the McCain–Feingold Act), which barred corporations and
unions from paying for media that mentioned any candidate in periods
immediately preceding elections.
Citizens United challenged the law, suing the
Federal Election Commission (which
sets campaign finance laws and election rules), and the case
made its way through lower courts until an appeal was granted by the U.S. Supreme Court.
If we don't want the 1% to gain even more power and influence over our government and our lives, we must tell our elected politicians that if they don't stand up to the group of well-backed group of greedy, selfish, right-wing extremists, that they won't have to worry about being primaried by the Tea Party because WE WILL FIRE THEM in the next election.
Don't let them hold the full faith and credit of this country hostage. Raising the debt ceiling is not giving permission to spend more money, it's simply allowing us to pay the bills we've already racked up. Look at what happened with the last two times we had a government shutdown!
Here is contact information of The U. S. Supreme Court :
http://www.supremecourt.gov/contact/contactus.aspx
Contact YOUR SENATORS, use this link to find who they are and how to call and e-mail them.
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Contact YOUR CONGRESSMEN, use this link to find who they are and how to call and e-mail them.
http://www.house.gov/representatives/
