Thinkprogress has the report.
In a ruling issued late Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Cacheris tossed out part of the indictment against two men accused of illegally reimbursing donors to Hillary Clinton’s Senate and presidential campaigns.
Cacheris says that under last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court case, corporations enjoy the same right as people to contribute to campaigns.
The ruling is the first of its kind. The Citizens United case had applied only to independent corporate expenditures, not to actual campaign contributions.
This means that Stephen Colbert's SUPERPAC or Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS could or example give collect unlimited funds and give them directly to the candidate of their choice, in additional to spending them independently.
Admittedly this is just a District Court Ruling and unless and injunction is issued against current FEC rules then this won't have much effect if and until it reaches the SCOTUS.
And if this is upheld it would completely blow the lid off of any rational controls to campaign spending.
If today’s decision is upheld on appeal, it could be the end of any meaningful restrictions on campaign finance — including limits on the amount of money wealthy individuals and corporations can give to a candidate. In most states, all that is necessary to form a new corporation is to file the right paperwork in the appropriate government office. Moreover, nothing prevents one corporation from owning another corporation. Thus, under Cacheris’ decision, a cap on overall contributions becomes meaningless, because corporate donors can simply create a series of shell corporations for the purpose of evading such caps.
There is a move in Congress to remove the Tax Except Status of Independent Political Spending Groups.
In an interview with Mother Jones, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the past chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and one of Congress' staunchest campaign-finance reform advocates, says Democrats and left-leaning groups are mulling a legal fight that would challenge the tax-exempt status of independent right-wing groups that sprung up in the aftermath of the Citizens United decision. Their targets include groups such as Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS and the American Action Network (AAN), run by former GOP Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, which together spent more than $43 million supporting conservative candidates and attacking Democratic ones, making up 23 percent of all outside conservative spending. "People are looking at different legal strategies through the courts because there's emerging evidence that these groups have abused the rules," Van Hollen says.
While Dems in Congress our using the courts, the President has proposed his own solution through executive order - only the House GOP is already trying to fight him on that.
Republicans in both chambers introduced legislation yesterday to counteract President Obama’s draft executive order that would require government contractors disclose their political contributions. The legislation comes after the House passed an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would block the draft order.
I've long argued that the only way to blunt all of this private/corporate money coming into the election process and tilting the scales is to provide free and equal airtime for all eligible candidates in political races.
All this would require is for the FCC to issue a ruling requiring broadcast television to provide this free Air Time, in the same way that the FCC since 1975 has required qualified local televisions stations to carry news programming as a public service.
if the proposed [newspaper/tv station] combination results in a new source of a significant amount of local news in a market, defined as a station that for the first time begins offering at least seven hours of local news programming per week. Broadcasters in combinations approved under this “new news programming” standard are required to report to the FCC each year to show they are in compliance.
If they can require stations to put on 7 hours of News Programming per week, they can require a set number of Free 30 Seconds Ads for each qualified candidate, in the same way that they used to have the Fairness Doctrine To offset the cost of these ads, the stations broadcasting them can be given a tax credit or deduction for the equivalent amount of ad revenue they would have otherwise received.
The Tax Cut would require a Congressional Change, but it could be sold to the GOP as a trade off for the FCC rule. They get something, we get something and everyone is happy. Independent and Corporate Groups would still be able to put up their own additional ads but this rule and tax credit would allow each and every candidate a minimum level of equal time that would make some of the outside spending less effective and moot.
If you have the better message as we've recently seen in the NY-26 Race which saw tons out outside cash flooding in or even during 2008 when several mega-millionaires such as Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorini and Linda McMahon tried to buy their way into Office with $217 Million - and Failed Spectacularly!
Instead of laying out a combined $217 million to run for office, Whitman, Fiorina, and McMahon could have saved America’s commuters some serious cash. They could have footed the toll bill for half of the 52.1 million vehicles that cross the George Washington Bridge yearly, or one-third of the 102.2 million vehicles that cross the Bay Bridge.
Whitman’s spending could have bought full tuition for 23,553 California residents at the University of California-Berkeley, which would almost double current undergraduate enrollment. She could have made 95,764 connections for at-risk youth through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles. Or, if she wanted to be known as the Savior of San Jose, she could have wiped out the megalopolis’ budget deficit twice over.
Sure, you can try and chase the money-changers with disclosure rules and removing their tax exempt status, but in the end as long as you have a guaranteed method to get that better message to the people you can defeat the unlimited money bomb.
All a good candidate needs is a fair chance.
Vyan