Hillary Blasts Citizens United and Rightists on Supreme Court

The activist bent of the five GOP-appointed justices on the US Supreme Court has taken its toll on the rights of Americans against GOP racists aligned with predatory corporatists.

Hillary Clinton blasted the infamous Citizens United v. FED (2010) decision that absurdly granted American personhood status to for-profit corporations in an opinion that as predicted opened the floodgates to special interests money in politics as never before in history.

"I will do everything I can to appoint Supreme Court justices who protect the right to vote and do not protect the right of billionaires to buy elections," Mrs. Clinton said while on Day 1 of a two-day swing through Iowa. (New York Times)

Music to fellow Americans who still believe in the quaint notion that rights are conferred to human beings, and not legal entities.

As Justice Stevens notes in dissent (joined by Justice Ginsburg , Justice Breyer, and Justice Sotomayor) in Citizens United:

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. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.

Amen to that.

Elected Republicans still acclaim corporations enjoy personhood status as Americans to this day, directing the GOP's radical trajectory and associated attacks on the rights of political opponents to cast votes.

Democrats Unveil Tough Remedy to Radical 'Corperations Are People Too' Decision

As mainstream pundits continue stating the Democrats-are-in-trouble conventional wisdom, I see a perfect political storm developing against Republicans led by the Dem's hitting back on the radical U.S. Supreme Court decision, CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM'N ( No. 08-205 ).

Correcting the Court – Democrats Unveil Tough New Legislation to Remedy “Citizens United”

By Josh Glasstetter

Congressional Democrats have just introduced a new package of legislation – the DISCLOSE Act – to blunt the Supreme Court’s disastrous January ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened American elections at all levels to unlimited corporate spending. The 5-4 ruling gave companies like Goldman Sachs and Exxon Mobil the same right as individual Americans to spend money in elections, but unlike you or me these companies have billions in the bank and billions more at stake in Congress and state legislatures.

Now Democrats are racing to pass legislation before a wave of corporate cash sweeps through the mid-term elections. They have overwhelming public opinion on their side, but the US Chamber of Commerce and other corporate lobbyists are working hard to head them off and time is short.

The newly unveiled DISCLOSE Act is all about forcing election spending out into the open, where it belongs. Thanks to the Roberts Court, giant companies can spend unlimited amounts to support or oppose candidates – without disclosing a dime of it. They can simply pass the money through a front group or PR agency. The legislation would close this glaring loophole, as Sen. Chuck Schumer explained on Thursday:

Our bill will follow the money. In cases where corporations try to mask their activities through shadow groups, we drill down so that ultimate funder of the expenditure is disclosed.

Corporations would be required to disclose political spending to their shareholders, and a broad array of corporations and advocacy groups would be required to disclose previously confidential details about their political spending, including funding sources. Foreign corporations, government contractors, and recipients of government bail-outs would be altogether banned from spending money in elections.

The DISCLOSE Act is a huge first step in restoring genuine democracy in the wake of the Roberts Court's irresponsible activism, but it's just a first step. Only a constitutional amendment or new ruling by a more progressive Supreme Court can truly 'fix' Citizens United.

In the meantime, maybe we should require politicians to wear the logos of their "sponsors." Hey, if it works for NASCAR, why not Congre

Republican High Hypocrisy on the Supreme Court

Putting aside the truism that the contemporary Democratic Party and President Obama rival the Republican Party in feeding at the trough of Big Business, the GOP-composed opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (08-205) is revealed as an exercise in hypocrisy and partisan favoritism by examining another landmark election law case animated by First Amendment claims used in the fight against colossal wealth dominating the political process, Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party (95-1608) (1997).

In Timmons, a political party, the now-defunct New Party, sought to fuse its nominated candidates with other political parties' nominated candidates [that is nominating the same people] in an effort to expand the New Party under the protection of the First Amendment's guarantees of free expression and association.

For instance, progressive Democratic Party nominees like Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Madison) and Rep Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) might also be the nominees of the New Party under the political strategy of electoral fusion.

The goal ultimately was to remove the domination huge money has over the political process and specifically the two major political parties, a la the Gilded Age in the late 19th century when concentrated wealth led to the domination by hyper-concentrated money over the political system, also known as the time of the robber barons.

The New Party lost the Timmons case and its claim of First Amendment rights was rejected in the 6-3 opinion written by the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist (R) who wrote that the legislatures' right to regulate elections and insure "stability" outweighed First Amendment guarantees of free expression and association. [Let's put a R or D by Supreme Court Justices and dispense with the absurd notion that our Justices are neutral umpires applying the law and U.S. Constitution.]

Rehnquist was joined in his opinion by fellow Republicans sitting on the Court today, Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas.

Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas worte/joined the GOP opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (08-205), along with two Bush-nominated justices, Alito and Roberts. [The corporate Democrat Justice Stephen G. Breyer agreed with the result in Timmons but dissented in Citizens United.]

What is both amusing and repulsive in reading Kennedy's Citizens United opinion is the Court's claim to be championing the liberty interests of the First Amendment interpreted expansively, the opinion's author would have us believe. Writes Kennedy, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."

Never mind that Kennedy misstates the issue in the Citizens United case concerning how citizens can engage in political speech in the electoral process, where is this libertarian fervor of Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas in the Timmons case? It is absent. Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas joined Justice Rehnquist (infamously hostile to the liberties in the Bill of Rights) in Timmons in which Rehnquist writes: ''Ballots serve primarily to elect candidates, not as fora for political expression.''

But now these Republican jurists are the champions of free expression and free association, asserting the unmentioned imperative by Citizens United's litigants that for-profit corporations must be protected vehicles of free speech and the hell with precedent and law, much less the stability of the electoral system.


- via mal contends