We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time. - Vince Lombardi

Untying CFR

by Hal_10000

The Supreme Court today dealt a bit of a blow to campaign finance reform efforts, ruling against the government in the Hillary: The Movie case.  Details in the links.  But note here how objective CNN’s lede is:

The Supreme Court has given big business, unions and nonprofits more power to spend freely in federal elections, a major turnaround that threatens a century of government efforts to regulate the power of corporations to bankroll American politics.

CNN, like most media outlets, hates the idea of free political speech.  They want to be the clearing house for all political information that filters into your ears.  Here is Jacob Sullum with the opposing view:

In overturning Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a 1990 decision upholding a state law that prohibited corporations from spending money on election-related messages, the Court rejected the very notion that the First Amendment allows the government to discriminate against speech by groups of people organized as corporations. “We find no basis for the proposition that, in the context of political speech, the Government may impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers,” writes Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion.

The five-justice majority notes that Austin’s rationale—that the government has a legitimate interest in preventing “the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth...that have little or no correlation to the public’s support for the corporation’s political ideas"—also applies to wealthy individuals and to media corporations, since they too enjoy “immense aggregations of wealth” that do not necessarily reflect the public’s support for their ideas. Media businesses such as Time-Warner and the New York Times Company are exempt from the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act’s ban on “electioneering communications,” but by Austin’s logic they need not be

As I’ve said about a zillion times, campaign finance reform is like curing that painful cancer with an analgesic. The disease is an entrenched power structure that uses the Federal Register and the tax code to reward their friends, punish their enemies and reign in everyone else.  Need an example?  Big Labor donated $68 million to the Democrats and got paid off with tens of billions in auto bailouts, stimulus jobs and a special tax dispensation in the healthcare bill.  Remove the ever-encroaching tentacles of government and it will stop being worth people’s while to influence it (or at least, less worth it).  We tried it the reformers way—we passed the McCain-Feingold Bill.  And the result has been some of the most corrupt, special-interest-controlled Congresses in American history.

I don’t like the idea of corporations buying big ads before an election to try to swing voters to support the candidates who is going to give them the most federal lucre.  But freedom isn’t about what I like or would prefer.  And it’s certainly not about carefully selected which powerful interest we’re going to let speak and which we won’t.  If Big Business (or Big Labor or anyone) is wielding too much influence, the answer is to fight back, to speak out in opposition.  In the Age of the Blog, that will cost you a laptop and a high-speed connection.

Good on the Court.  For once.

Update: Stephen Bainbridge has some fascinating commentary up about this.  The issue at stake is whether a corporation has the rights associated with a person.

Comments

Posted by on 01/21/10 at 01:22 PM from

It’s not freedom, it’s plutocracy. Democracy is truly for sale now.

Posted by on 01/21/10 at 02:38 PM from

Are donations for corporations and unions tax deductible?  Would making it non-tax deductible but permissible be an equal protection issue?

Posted by on 01/21/10 at 03:17 PM from

Ok, so how is enabling the regular corporations todo what the MEDIA corporations have been doing since the law was enacted, not a reinforcement of the First Amendment?

The only corps that were allowed to voice thier “opinion” was the left leaning Media and Fox. This levels the playing field a bit.

People should actually read the SCOTUS opinion before making honestly idiotic statements about “democracy being for sale”

Posted by on 01/21/10 at 03:58 PM from

Ok, so how is enabling the regular corporations to do what the MEDIA corporations have been doing since the law was enacted, not a reinforcement of the First Amendment?

You are assuming the Media corporations have an issue to support, instead of a candidate per se.  Whether or not Cnn wanted Obama to win and FNC didnt is irrelevant.  If, as an example, Exxon wanted a candidate to win in a state because that candidate would do something legislation-wise FOR EXXON, they can dump as much money they want into spots and possibly drown out anyone else.

Whoever has the guys with the deepest pockets behind them has an advantage.

Democracy for sale is a bit much, citizens still get to vote, but I am very curious to see how the first election cycle affected by this decision goes.

Posted by on 01/21/10 at 04:49 PM from

Exxon wanted a candidate to win in a state because that candidate would do something legislation-wise FOR EXXON, they can dump as much money they want into spots and possibly drown out anyone else.

history is replete with examples of this not making the slightest bit of difference…

Posted by HARLEY on 01/21/10 at 04:53 PM from

It’s not freedom, it’s plutocracy.

We were not a plutocracy before McCain-Finegold, so there.

Democracy is truly for sale now.

No, IT has been for sale ever since the voters figured out that they can get their representatives to give them what they want by dangling votes in front of them.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.

Posted by HARLEY on 01/21/10 at 04:55 PM from

You are assuming the Media corporations have an issue to support

They are run by humans that have opinions, so yes they do have a issue, did you not see that in the last election cycle?

Posted by Hal_10000 on 01/21/10 at 05:29 PM from

My problem with the “government for sale” meme is that government is already for sale.  It’s actually much cheaper for corporations to buy elections through campaign donations and junkets and ass-kissing than through issue advertising.

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