{"id":1485,"date":"2016-05-21T22:35:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-21T22:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/?p=1485"},"modified":"2016-05-21T22:50:34","modified_gmt":"2016-05-21T22:50:34","slug":"the-legacy-of-citizens-united","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/2016\/05\/21\/the-legacy-of-citizens-united\/","title":{"rendered":"Questioning the legacy of Citizens United"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Political corruption illustrated; 1896 mural at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C.<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s a cliche\u00a0that \u00a0politicians are corrupt,\u00a0taking money in exchange for\u00a0bending the law to\u00a0favor their donors. But is the act of donating\u00a0money to a politician a form of free speech? Can it — should it — be regulated?<\/p>\n

The influx of cash into political races has always been controversial, and attempts to regulate it have always been difficult. \u00a0The 2oo2 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act<\/a>\u00a0(McCain – Feingold bill) was an attempt to limit the influx of cash\u00a0in federal elections.<\/p>\n

But that bill was overturned in the 2010 \u00a0Citizens United v Federal Election Commission<\/a>\u00a0case which, in a very narrow 5-4 decision, said that money equals free speech. According to Brendan Fischer<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Citizens United<\/em>, the court confidently predicted that unlimited \u201cindependent\u201d corporate spending wouldn\u2019t \u201ccorrupt\u201d politicians because it would be totally independent of candidates. The court upheld and praised existing laws that require the disclosure of campaign spending, assuring us that they would provide citizens with all the information necessary to \u201csee whether elected officials are \u2018in the pocket\u2019 of so-called moneyed interests.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, but as it turned out, disclosure is faulty and independence is elusive. In fact, politicians know very well where their contributions are coming from, and tailor their lawmaking accordingly.<\/p>\n

Take Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, who\u00a0raised millions to fight off a recall campaign and worked with secret donors to coordinate the campaign. \u00a0Similarly, Walker also pushed a mining bill favoring Gogebic Taconite company; the bill\u00a0 was vehemently opposed by environmentalists and Native American tribes. At the time, nobody knew that\u00a0Gogebic Taconite\u2019s CEO had secretly donated $700,000<\/a> to Walker’s campaign. So much for disclosure.<\/p>\n

Theoretically, this secrecy\u00a0is the one thing that Citizen’s United does not allow, but the Wisconsin state supreme court has said that this form of coordination and secrecy is also constitutionally protected.<\/p>\n

So now a\u00a0case testing that idea goes to the US Supreme Court at a time when the justices are split 4-4 along political lines, and no ninth judge is sitting that could break a tie. Where this will end no one knows, but it would not be out of keeping with tradition if politicians were not allowed to get away with secrecy along with their rampant corruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a cliche\u00a0that \u00a0politicians are corrupt,\u00a0taking money in exchange for\u00a0bending the law to\u00a0favor their donors. But is the act of donating\u00a0money to a politician a form of free speech? Can it — should it — be regulated? The influx of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1485"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1490,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions\/1490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}