A tsunami of dark money is flooding our justice system -- and it's only getting worse

[marmar]

A tsunami of dark money is flooding our justice system — and it's only getting worse
Will a right-wing electronics tycoon's unprecedented $1.6B donation force us to face the tide of corruption?

By AUSTIN SARAT
PUBLISHED AUGUST 30, 2022 6:30AM


(Salon) "Idon't care too much for money," sang the Beatles in a 1964 hit — "money can't buy me love." But if that well-known lyric suggests that money can't buy what truly matters, a worrying trend in American politics suggests a different lesson. Vast sums of unregulated dark money are increasingly used to buy influence in the justice system, opening up a whole new world of possibilities for money to buy something that should be beyond price.

Revelations last week by the New York Times and ProPublica highlight the urgency of addressing this problem. As the Times reported, "A new conservative nonprofit group scored a $1.6 billion windfall last year via a little-known donor…The source of the money was Barre Seid, an electronics manufacturing mogul, and the donation is among the largest, if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit."

The beneficiary of that unprecedented sum is a newly-created political group controlled by Leonard Leo, a right-wing activist with deep connections to Republican donors and politicians, as well as conservative forces within the Roman Catholic Church. There is little question, as the Times puts it, that Leo has helped to "engineer the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court and to finance battles over abortion rights, voting rights and climate change policy."

Justice is supposed to be blindfolded, not to hold her hand out for people to grease her palm with cash from dubious sources. But, as ProPublica reports, Leo has successfully used dark money to "influence the Supreme Court… and… shift the balance of power throughout the judiciary — in federal district and appellate courts, and state supreme courts, too."

....(snip)....

Although the infusion of dark money to Leo's group is unprecedented in scale, it is just the latest example of the application of dark-money funding to the judicial appointment process at the federal and state levels, which has become a well-financed and highly politicized process. To put it mildly, such a process threatens the independence and impartiality of judges who are the beneficiaries of such largess.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat who has long been a forceful critic of the corrupting role of dark money in the judicial process, warns: "Due to the rise in dark money spending in judicial nominating fights, judges can oversee cases involving litigants who spent millions to get them on the bench, creating the potential for serious conflicts of interest that undermine public confidence in the judicial system." ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/08/30/a-tsunami-of-dark-money-is-flooding-our-justice-system--and-its-only-getting-worse/

[empedocles]

1. So huge. LIV golf/trump$ huge.

'Justice' Anthony Kennedy sickening. Citizens United sickening.

[Farmer-Rick]

2. Well, is money really all that dark anymore?

Capitalism gives capital and therefore power to just a handful of people. Those handful of filthy rich oligarchs control America, just like that really short guy Putin controls Russia.

The filthy rich are a danger to a peaceful society because to keep their stolen loot and control, they must constantly corrupt others with their wealth. They must constantly agitate to keep the masses from coming for their stolen loot.

The filthy rich are corrupted and evil. The Religious have joined hands with them for the money and power. The combination of money and religion is a recipe for hell.

[NullTuples]

3. That and a few other substantial donations are why I put little stock in reports of...

how much the GOP is spending in a state as indicators of their willingness or ability to gain election advantage in that state.

They are not spending from their usual (S)PACs, that's true. But that may be because most of them are dwarfed by these donations. Perhaps media pundits have been keeping their eye on the bright shiny object while missing the slight of hand.

[appalachiablue]

4. K/R