Robert Barnes of the Washington Post writes at length about the SOTU Citizens United Justice Alito controversy. Mind you, there’s no discussion whatsoever of Citizens United; just back and forth about who dissed whom. Typical.
David Savage has a similar article at the Los Angeles Times, but at least Savage provides some background on what the Citizens United case is about and lets us know there is genuine controversy over the decision.
One of the weirder comments today is from Adam Winkler, who tells us soothingly that Alito was right —
Alito was right. The president was wrong about the Supreme Court decision. Obama said, “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.” …
…There are a lot of grounds to criticize the Supreme Court’s campaign finance decision. It will allow corporations to spend shareholder money to influence the election of candidates many of those shareholders don’t support. And it does open up a loophole that allows foreign corporations to influence federal elections through their U.S. subsidiaries.
So how is Alito “right”?
But the Court did not overturn “a century of law.” The provision upended by the Court was only seven years old. It was a novel innovation of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law adopted during the Bush Administration.
Oh, is that all? The thing about opening up a loophole to allow foreign corporations influence U.S. elections is not a concern?
David Savage writes that the Citizens United ruling did strike down a century of law:
Since 1907, Congress has prohibited corporations from using their money “directly or indirectly” to elect candidates for federal office. After World War II, Congress extended this ban to labor unions and made it clear that the ban applied to independent election spending, not just contributions to a candidate.
But last week’s decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission struck down this election spending ban. “The 1st Amendment does not permit . . . these categorical distinctions based on the corporate identity of the speaker,” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.
I’ve yet to see anyone explain how the ruling would not allow foreign corporations to influence elections, and IMO the idea that this case will somehow enable the free speech of the common person seems to me to be hallucinatory. All we get from the Right is knee jerk affirmation that the ruling is Good.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of smart people who are opposed to Citizens United and clearly state their reasons why. These include Justice Stevens, who said in his dissent that the ruling “would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans.”
Joe Conason says that Alito so much as acknowledged that the ruling would allow interference by foreign corporations, but is OK with that.
“Well, Mr. Olson,” he [Alito] asked, “do you think that media corporations that are owned or principally owned by foreign shareholders have less First Amendment rights than other media corporations in the United States?” Replied Olson, “I don’t think so, Justice Alito, and certainly there is no record to suggest that there is any kind of problem based upon that.”
No problem with foreign-owned media corporations publishing and broadcasting in the United States, perhaps — although some critics have wondered from time to time whether the Washington Times and the Unification Church were acting as instruments of a foreign power. But if foreign-owned corporations possess fully the same rights as citizens to participate in elections under the majority decision — as Olson and Alito indicated — then we could face a serious problem indeed.
But of course, the Libertarians at Reason magazine think this is just dandy, because they love liberty so much. Now global corporate interests have more freedom to manipulate our elections.
One other thing — several writers, including Barnes and Savage, recall that Senator Obama was adamantly opposed to confirming Alito, and that Alito has snubbed the President ever since. Corrupt and petty; no wonder Republicans love Alito.
See also Eric Alterman, “Court Disposes, Media Yawn.”
OT – Somehow I doubt you’ll hear much about THIS from corporate owned MSM.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/28/senate-gop-paygo/
To be fair, even though Winkler thinks Alito was right on the facts, he does say that Alito’s visible reaction was “remarkably bad form.”
I’m still trying to fathom why he thinks the logic of the decision does not overturn the laws previous to McCain-Feingold, particularly since so many others, including members of the Court, think otherwise. Winkler seems fixated on a distinction without a difference. Yes, the specific ruling was on a McCain-Feingold provision, but the breadth of the decision, once applied to other law, has the effect Obama was complaining about.
The strange thing to me is that so far I haven’t even seen the supporters of the decision dispute that. The best ‘defense’ I’ve seen are the intellectual equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and saying “Na-na-na, I can’t hear you!” – simply refusing to simply walk the logic of the decision out to its full conclusion. Even Winkler’s point relies on how the Court has “traditionally” interpreted laws, as if this decision didn’t represent the Court saying it was done with the way it has traditionally done things.
Seems like just last week the righties were railing against a One World Government. But this week they’re all for corporate domination of the planet.
Go figure.
Adam Winkler is thinking like a small-minded wingnut when he tries to assure us that Citizens United v FEC only overturned provisions of McCain-Feingold. Man, am I relieved. It is characteristic of wingnut thinking that they cannot or will not see the bigger picture.
While the foreign corporations kerfluffle is significant, and is easy to seize on and talk about, I’m far more concerned with the basic unfairness of diminishing free speech and the competition of ideas, by allowing those with the bucks to drown everybody else out. It is characteristic of wingnut thinking to isolate facts from the larger ecosystem they operate in. Sadly, it is characteristic of liberals – and I include myself – to be unable to explain these larger, and longer-to-explain ideas. Sadly, our times favor the sound bite, and anything taking more than 5 or 10 seconds is lost.
In other news, I read about some poll results in Obama Still Loved by the ‘Over-Educated’. What happened to “well-educated” rather than “over-educated”? It’s a bad sign when having a good education is a stigma.
Maybe the only change we need to The Constitution is to subject the Supreme Court Judges to elections every 5 to 10 Years.
I’d actually be aginst that.
But, in retrospect, it might no be such a bad idea.
You could vote on the actual sitting judges at whatever interval was determined. If that judge loses, the President gets to appoint one, with the usual Senate song-and-dance act.
But, especially, where there has been a replacement, like (exerable) Roberts for (exerable) Rehnquist, or (the exerable) Alito for (reasonable) Connor’s, you, the non-corporate, voter, could make a difference. The vote would take place the following year.
Just thinking out loud…
Hell, with this decision, why can’t foreign nationals VOTE in our elections…
I’d LOVE to put a smiley, but I do not think it appropriate.
I completely agree that the Supreme Court decision in Citizen’s United was completely wrong and I also think the majority on the Supreme Court is way too partisan Republican for my taste. During the last 150 years though, there have been scant few periods when the Court did not extend greater rights and privileges and immunities to corporations than it did to people. So Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, Roberts and Thomas are right in synch with their mediocre predecessors. But for the record, as Glenn Greenwald points out, nobody else on this Court disputed that corporations have First Amendment rights. Totally wrong in my view but that would take a law review article to explain. Suffice it to say that two Justices of the US Supreme Court, Douglas and Black did dissent once from the “personhood” idea of the 14th Amendment but they were quieted by Justice Jackson, who correctly pointed out that the dissenters had never raised the issue when it counted.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=337&invol=562
(scroll down to separate opinions).
The best rejoinder to the Citizen’s United opinion has been Sen. Patrick Leahy who compared the Court’s decision to a recent decision where it upheld the right of a school administration to sanction a student for a public display of dissent off of school property! Other examples abound but the bottom line is that the Court has, with a few exceptions, favored the rights of property (corporations), even when it comes to Free Speech, over the rights of individuals. That’s a matter of “equal protection” or “substantive due process” if you will.
Yes, the specific ruling was on a McCain-Feingold provision, but the breadth of the decision, once applied to other law, has the effect Obama was complaining about.
To borrow a phrase: I do not think a SCOTUS decision means what these Wa-Po incompetents think it means.