FREE SPEECH IS AN OXYMORON
Speech is not free. Don’t even go there. I know you can speak your mind whenever, and on whatever subject you like with only certain, carefully crafted restrictions. It’s the First Amendment people!
But if you choose to be heard beyond the reach of your voice, or the nine people who read your brilliant blog or Facebook page, then it is gonna cost you
FREE SPEECH IS AN OXYMORON
Speech is not free. Don’t even go there. I know you can speak your mind whenever, and on whatever subject you like with only certain, carefully crafted restrictions. It’s the First Amendment people!
But if you choose to be heard beyond the reach of your voice, or the nine people who read your brilliant blog or Facebook page, then it is gonna cost you.
Sure you could get yourself a gig writing oped’s for the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal and speak to millions. Lot’s of luck on that. And if only the bookers at FOX News or MSNBC had your phone number you could be a talking head.
As Ira Glasser, former director of the ACLU said “Nobody speaks effectively without money. If you limit how much you spend on speech you are limiting speech”. Absolutely true and some speech needs to be limited. This is a very libertarian and idealized position for there is not one right guaranteed to us by our constitution that has not been restricted in some way.
Are your words any less valuable than say those of Sheldon Adelson or the Koch brothers? Of course not, but by the simple fact of their wealth they can buy the space to be heard louder and more widely than you, a sort of huge megaphone. And what is wrong with that? Actually nothing. Go ahead, if you can afford it, and make your media buys. It is gonna cost you big time and the bigger the “megaphone” the higher the cost.
However, as it relates to political candidates, there have been restrictions in place as far back as 1867. Congress has felt the need to restrict freedom of speech as it relates to political candidates for over 100 years. But Congress historically danced around this issue and never really passed anything that would eliminate one of the core problems that plague our electoral process – the corrosive effect of money.
In 1972 the Federal Election Campaign Act was passed requiring candidates for federal office to disclose the sources of their contributions. This act was amended two years later introducing statutory limits on contributions and creating the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), thus restricting hard money (direct contributions) to individuals and Political Action Committees (PACs). In 1976, in Buckley vs. Valeo, the Supremes struck down certain FECA limitations as unconstitutionally violating free speech.
In 2002, acknowledging that all previous efforts were largely ineffective, easily circumvented and rarely enforced, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was passed (better know as McCain-Feingold). McCain-Feingold revised the legal limits set way back in 1924 and prohibited unregulated contributions or soft money (indirect contributions). It is noteworthy that George W. Bush signed this bill into law. A challenge made its way to the Court in 2003 (McConnell vs. FEC) and the law was upheld.
And then the infamous Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs. FEC, on January 10, 2010, a day that will live in infamy. The ruling stipulated that the corporate funding of independent political broadcasts could not be limited pursuant to the free speech provisions of the First Amendment. Thus equating corporations with individuals in the realm of speech protections.
Justice Stevens wrote in his dissent “In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office”.
Corporations, or labor unions, are not people and deserving of the same protections. And before you roll out the canard that labor‘s contributions offset that of corporations, the disparity favors corporations on the order of 16:1.
In terms of bad law and harm to our national character, Citizens United stands second only to the odious Dred Scott decision in 1857 which declared that all blacks, slaves as well as free, were not and could never become citizens of the United States.
And here we are today awash under a virtual tsunami of money that is perverting and poisoning our political system.
Two major reasons why big money is a corrosive influence; it feeds the continuous process of fund raising, diverting the attention and energy of our public officials from governing and causing them to sell favors. “Dialing-for-dollars” or as one Senator said “The cruelty of perpetual campaigns”. Further, it alienates the average voter who is not able to rise to the level of a big donor and thus believes their votes don’t matter.
As it relates to the election of public officials it is not the spending per se but the consequence of it. Major contributors want something for their money and they invariably get it.
And the raising of the individual contribution limit in the recently passed budget bill further exacerbates this. Over a four-year election cycle the individual limit will be expanded to well over one million dollars.
What is the solution to this problem, the balancing of free speech with the corrosive effect of money in politics – simple, publicly fund all elections?
To show you how the monied interests trump the poor wage earner and to add insult to injury, under the bill, trustees would be enabled to cut pension benefits to current retirees, reversing a 40-year bond with workers who earned their retirement packages. Under ERISA, the 1974 law governing pensions in the private sector, benefits already earned by a worker can’t be cut.
Now they can. That’s right. Even if you’re retired and vested in a private pension plan, your benefits could be cut. The House Rules Committee added the Kline-Miller amendment to the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill last night. The measure would give multiemployer pension trustees the option to cut vested benefits in order to save plans headed toward insolvency and would increase insurance premiums to the financially troubled Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).
Hiding Bad Policy in a Budget Bill
When the long-lost grail of bipartisan compromise finally re-emerged on Capitol Hill this week, the spending bill for 2015 turned out to be weighted with some of the most devious and damaging provisions imaginable for good government. Written in secrecy, presented as the take-it-or-leave-it alternative to a government shutdown, the bill, which narrowly passed the House Thursday night, includes two regressive “riders” aimed at warming the big-money hearts of donors who leave Congress increasingly vulnerable to special-interest corruption.
One rider would allow a huge increase in the size of checks that deep-pocketed donors can write to win inner-sanctum clout with the major political parties. A donor now held to a mere $97,200 under party limits would be able to give a staggering $777,600. In a further invitation to luxury shopping, a couple yearning for the inside track could triple-down and give $3.1 million to party committees. This is pretty much the coup de grâce for the McCain-Feingold law’s ban on large party donations enacted to end the “soft money” corruption of Watergate.
The parties claim they need this big transfusion of lucre to compete with the stealth millions being raised by independent political operatives. But in truth, the rider would only enlarge the political casino’s runaway action, without any hint of ethical controls.
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The now infamous Citizens United ruling, second only to the Dred Scott decision n March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permitting slavery in all of the country's territories.
The case before the court was that of Dred Scott v. Sanford.
Justice Stevens, J. wrote, in partial dissent:
The basic premise underlying the Court’s ruling is its iteration, and constant reiteration, of the proposition that the First Amendment bars regulatory distinctions based on a speaker’s identity, including its “identity” as a corporation. While that glittering generality has rhetorical appeal, it is not a correct statement of the law. Nor does it tell us when a corporation may engage in electioneering that some of its shareholders oppose. It does not even resolve the specific question whether Citizens United may be required to finance some of its messages with the money in its PAC. The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case.
In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office.
Taney -- a staunch supporter of slavery and intent on protecting southerners from northern aggression -- wrote in the Court's majority opinion that, because Scott was black, he was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue. The framers of the Constitution, he wrote, believed that blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it."