BDx13 - 1-22-2010 at 03:00 AM
Damn, if you thought special interest groups were bad before...
Corporations can straight up buy an election now, free and clear.
"But the fact that the high court grounded its ruling in the 1st Amendment -- holding that corporations have the same rights as individuals to use
their funds to express political views -- will make it hard for Congress to legislate substantial restrictions."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100121/ap_on_go_su_co/us_suprem...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-fallout22...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34822247/ns/politics-supreme_cou...
Six66Mike - 1-22-2010 at 05:36 AM
It'll be funny when all the banks are lining up behind the Republicans in the next election (with your tax payer dollars no less) in an effort to
overturn/reject Obama's new plans for tight restrictions & controls announced this week.
lifeisabitch - 1-22-2010 at 10:20 AM
yup it's over
power to the people or power to the corporations...
barc0debaby - 1-22-2010 at 11:15 AM
I was gonna post about this but forgot.....definitely ain't voting now.
clevohardcore - 1-22-2010 at 11:24 AM
they always had control. Side note. Obama is visiting my city today. In fact the local community college
lifeisabitch - 1-22-2010 at 11:28 AM
they had control but now they have it legally and almost the right to vote
barc0debaby - 1-22-2010 at 11:48 AM
I met Justice Anthony Kennedy a few years back and he was naturally shifty with his question answering. Probably didn't help that I was wearing a
Dead Kennedys shirt. Anyways he is a shithead and his arguments for this decision were pretty much that the Constitution protects the right of the
people to be exposed to a multitude of ideas and that by instituting limits on contributions even in the name of fighting corruption, you are
essentially robbing people of political ideas.
DaveMoral - 1-22-2010 at 10:40 PM
Yeah, we were fucked before... now we are royally fucked. Hello oligarchy.
Time for one of those revolution things that Tommy Jefferson said should happen every 20 years or so...
Critics raise specter of foreign campaign spending
BDx13 - 1-30-2010 at 07:01 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100130/ap_on_bi_ge/us_campaign_...
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court's decision on campaign finance has jumbled a seemingly simple rule of American politics — foreigners should play no
role in U.S. elections.
President Barack Obama and other critics say the court's decision to let corporations spend their money to directly influence elections opened the
floodgates to foreign involvement. In last week's address to Congress and the nation, Obama asserted the court had allowed special interests,
"including foreign corporations, to spend without limit on our elections."
That was a step too far. At the moment, foreign corporations may not spend any money in U.S. elections under a provision of federal election law that
was untouched by the high court.
The court's majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy specifically left for another day "whether the government has a compelling interest in
preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our nation's political process."
But Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissenting opinion that the reasoning underlying the ruling "would appear to afford the same protection to
multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans."
The more complicated question is how to treat U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies or American corporations that are controlled by foreign
investors.
Before the court ruling, the issue was much more clear. Corporations, including some with foreign ties, could form political action committees (PACs),
funded with voluntary and limited contributions from their executives and employees. But they could not spend money from their general treasuries to
advocate for or against candidates for federal offices.
For the purposes of determining who could play, U.S. citizens and some legal immigrants could, and everyone else could not.
"The court has suddenly made the prohibition on foreign nationals a much more complicated affair to enforce," said Tara Malloy, associate legal
counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, which wanted the corporate ban upheld. "Now you may have a multinational corporation, and it's unclear who is
funding what, or even what groups in what countries have what interests."
Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer who argued the case in favor of striking down the ban on corporate campaign spending, said existing rules
that apply to PACs to limit foreign influence could have the same effect on corporate spending generally.
"That said, if it's an American company, it would presumptively be governed by American law," Abrams said.
Fred Wertheimer, a longtime advocate of limiting money in politics, said the existing Federal Election Commission rules are inadequate and that the
FEC itself is ineffective in enforcing them.
The FEC is reviewing the court ruling and has taken no action so far, a commission spokeswoman said.
But several congressional Democrats are readying legislation that is aimed at blunting the court's ruling generally and the influence of foreigners
specifically.
In crafting their response to the decision, lawmakers have focused on the possibility that investment funds controlled by foreign governments, known
as sovereign wealth funds, could end up playing a role in U.S. elections.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said the bill he is drafting with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., aims to prevent foreign governments from trying to
influence elections through investments by their sovereign wealth funds. "That's the potential," Van Hollen said. "If that potential is there, we have
to do what we can to shut it down."
But less clear, in a world where states compete for foreign investment and giant U.S. firms are happy to attract international money, is whether
election law's distinction between domestic and foreign corporate money makes sense.
For example, would money tied to Japan's Toyota Motor Corp., which builds cars and trucks in four states and has parts suppliers in many more, be
inherently any worse than contributions from Ford Motor Co., the American car maker that also has operations around the world?
DaveMoral - 1-31-2010 at 12:46 PM
^That's the least of my concerns. Dems won't acknowledge that we've got plenty of bad seeds running corporate America that we don't need to worry
about a foreign CEO.
Shit, China can already tell us to go screw because they hold so much of our national debt. It's not their corporations we have to worry about, it's
our own.