Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS, where he was greeted by raucous applause. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guest on any TV show get the kind of ecstatic reception Sanders got.
It made me wonder why Democrats aren’t following his lead. He and AOC have spoken live to over a quarter million people this year. They clearly are providing what an enormous constituency wants: progressive responses to national problems.
But one thing he said stuck out for me. Why aren’t people getting what they want? Sanders said, in essence, that money in politics prevents the people of this country from getting what they want. That’s when I decided I had to address this issue on Daily Kos.
One of the key stepping stones to the oligarchy we see today is the ability to spend unlimited sums of money in elections. A key enabler was the Citizens United vs FEC decision (2010) (usually abbreviated Citizens United) by the Supreme Court, which held:
Limiting independent expenditures on political campaigns by groups such as corporations, labor unions, or other collective entities violates the First Amendment because limitations constitute a prior restraint on speech.
[Justia, Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010)]
There are a number of flaws in this ruling, including:
- Corporations aren’t the same as humans, and they do not have the same inherent rights.
- The presence of money from groups of people drowns out the voice of people.
- Money isn’t speech.
- Corporations have vastly more power than labor unions and other collectives.
- The workers in organizations should not be forced to have their work product used for political expenditures, since those may be at odds with their views.
If we want people to take back control of government from money, we need to eliminate Citizens United and other Court decisions that have allowed the wealthy elite to control politics.
Of course, it’s very difficult to make this change because of the influence of big money in politics. How do you change legislation or the Constitution when all political efforts to do so can be stymied by spending by entrenched wealthy interests?
I’m going to discuss how we can do that, despite the uphill battle.
First
As a first step, we should negate the negative effects of Citizens United. And for this, the Court has provided us a toehold. We can use an aspect of the ruling itself to jerk the rug from under the right wing.
The Court found that the disclosure requirements of federal campaign regulation is still valid.
BCRA [the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002] Sections 201 and 311, which require disclosure of information of the funders of such speech, [are] valid.
The Court’s ruling states:
This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.
[Both from Wikipedia]
Every time Republicans and their supporters campaign in any way (ads, promotional material, right-wing media, lobbying), Democrats need to question and expose the source of the money behind those efforts. Which billionaire is supporting this? Which multi-billion-dollar company is doing this?
And for a corporation, do they have the free and uninfluenced backing of their employees? If this is from the corporate treasury, that’s illegitimate on its face, because it is using the work of employees to support an opinion they might not share. The workers in corporations should not be forced to have their work product used for political expenditures without their informed, written, prior, and un-coerced consent.
Yes, transparency would allow the electorate to make informed decisions, so when an advertisement runs, does it list the people who put up the money? It should list anyone who made a material contribution.
And let’s stipulate that paying more than about 5% of the costs would be material. If someone is contributing more than that, it would be likely to influence whether someone voted for or against a candidate. If you knew, for example, that Elon Musk contributed more than 5%, you might well decide to vote for or against the target candidate.
(Frankly, if I knew Musk contributed a single dollar, that would probably influence my vote, because it would taint the ad.)
I’m using the accounting principle of materiality here because I think it is a good frame for looking at whether someone should have to disclose their participation in any political effort. The key question for materiality is: Would it influence the decision of a stakeholder? In this case, the stakeholder is the electorate.
An organization that is taking contributions solely for the purpose of politics doesn’t have the issue of whether its employees back the efforts. But a commercial corporation does. By attacking this use of corporate funds for political purposes, we are attacking the ethical breach of a corporation deciding to do something that its workers don’t support. In all cases where there are commercial corporations, Democrats should attack their political efforts on that basis.
This applies to lobbying, as well. There should be an ongoing Democratic effort to expose lobbying efforts by all corporations, especially ones in Washington, but also at the state level.
The basic strategy here is to expose those who are using money in politics to show the public who is behind the attacks on our candidates and tie those efforts directly to particular humans behind them. Let’s call this the “George Soros Strategy”, after the tired Republican trope of saying that all Democratic efforts are funded by Soros.
Well, who are the Soroses of the political right? Who are these evil people? Does the public know about them? Will they come to hate them?
Sure, you can spend money. But the electorate has a right to know who you are.
And judge accordingly.
Second
We should write this into law.
Democrats should pass legislation, when they are able, that requires campaigns to note in an effective way the names of all humans behind the politics. For a political ad, this means a panel that displays all of the names of the sponsors, which is then read in voice over while it is displayed, and is part of the closed caption. It should be completely impractical to run any campaign ad anonymously.
This should apply to other content. The criteria should be, if someone pays the company distributing the content, rather than media paying for the content, then it needs to show the sponsors. And “paying for” needs to mean paying regular market price for. So, running something for free is an in-kind contribution to the campaign.
This gets away from the question of treating different entities differently. Of course we treat them differently depending on who is paying and who is providing the service. Just like we tax one entity if it sells something to a different entity. You couldn’t logically have a tariff if you didn’t treat the importer differently from the entity they are buying from and from the entity they are selling to.
Third
The long-term goal should be to amend the Constitution to totally eliminate the problem. That amendment could be as simple as stating that constitutional protections of rights apply to natural persons, not legal persons.
I suppose you have to figure out something that will work for AI and for space aliens. After all, we could suddenly have someone show up from Mars (an actual Mars native, not a transplant from Earth) who qualifies as a sentient being, and we would not want to discriminate against them just because they came from space.
Same with AI. If we ever achieve an actual sentient AI, we shouldn’t discriminate against them just because they run on hardware rather than squishware.
Fair’s fair.
For definiteness, here’s a sample of an amendment we might add to the Constitution.
All rights protected by this Constitution apply only to sentient beings. Such rights may be restricted by law for legal persons.
[Proposed Amendment]
Politicians can wordsmith as necessary, but I think this covers the essential points.
Fourth
Once this is passed, the SCOTUS will have to scramble around and fix Citizens United.
One of the biggest problems with that ruling is the assumption that money is speech. No, money is a megaphone. It enables some people to shout louder than others. That’s not fair, and it has been screwing up our politics.
I value Elon Musk’s opinion.
I value it exactly as much as anyone else’s opinion, but I can’t hear them if he spends a quarter billion dollars shouting them down.
When the court gets another case about money in politics, they need to correct their erroneous thinking. Remember the problems with Citizens United?
- Corporations aren’t the same as humans, and they do not have the same inherent rights.
- The presence of money from groups of people drowns out the voice of people.
- Money isn’t speech.
- Corporations have vastly more power than labor unions and other collectives.
- The workers in organizations should not be forced to have their work product used for political expenditures, since those may be at odds with their views.
The government should regulate money in politics so that humans can get their say. Corporations don’t have freedom of speech.
The government should treat commercial corporations differently from labor unions and collectives. Labor unions have votes for their members to tell their leaders what they want the union to promote. Collectives are promoting the views of their members. These should not be held to the same standards as commercial corporations.
Once we are freed of the misconception that freedom of speech applies to money, freedom of speech will again apply to people.
I think that should be the goal.
Liberal Thinking will be taking a short break from articles on Daily Kos until August to pursue political and non-political projects. I will continue to comment, and hope to see you here. Have a great summer!
