E.J. Dionne, Jr.: The Citizens United Catastrophe

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_citizens_united_catastrophe_20120205/

The Citizens United Catastrophe
Posted on Feb 5, 2012

By E.J. Dionne, Jr.


We have seen the world created by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and it doesn’t work. Oh, yes, it works nicely for the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, especially if they want to shroud their efforts to influence politics behind shell corporations. It just doesn’t happen to work if you think we are a democracy and not a plutocracy.

Two years ago, Citizens United tore down a century’s worth of law aimed at reducing the amount of corruption in our electoral system. It will go down as one of the most naive decisions ever rendered by the court.

snip//

If ever a court majority legislated from the bench (with Bush’s own appointees leading the way), it was the bunch that voted for Citizens United. Did a single justice in the majority even imagine a world of super PACs and phony corporations set up for the sole purpose of disguising a donor’s identity? Did they think that a presidential candidacy might be kept alive largely through the generosity of a Las Vegas gambling magnate with important financial interests in China? Did they consider that the democratizing gains made in the last presidential campaign through the rise of small online contributors might be wiped out by the brute force of millionaires and billionaires determined to have their way?

snip//

Those who doubt that Citizens United (combined, it must be said, with a comatose Federal Election Commission) has created an entirely new political world with far broader openings for corruption should consult important news reports last week by Nicholas Confessore and Michael Luo in The New York Times and by T.W. Farnam in The Washington Post. Both accounts show how American politics has become a bazaar for the very wealthy and for increasingly aggressive corporations. We might consider having candidates wear corporate logos. This would be more honest than pretending that tens of millions in cash will have no impact on how we will be governed.

In the short run, Congress should do all it can within the limits of Citizens United to contain the damage it is causing. In the long run, we have to hope that a future Supreme Court will overturn this monstrosity, remembering that the first words of our Constitution are “We the People,” not “We the Rich.”

[qb]

1. "Naive" has to be one of the most dreaded labels of a Supreme Court justice.

It is well-deserved, although I would go further and call some of them corrupt.

[unblock]

3. to call them naive is to give them far too much credit, ethically.

they know damn well what they're doing.

[enough]

4. Dionne does go farther in the article.

another snip from the article>

But ascribing an outrageous decision to naivete is actually the most sympathetic way of looking at what the court did in Citizens United. A more troubling interpretation is that a conservative majority knew exactly what it was doing: that it set out to remake our political system by fiat in order to strengthen the hand of corporations and the wealthy. Seen this way, Citizens United was an attempt by five justices to push future electoral outcomes in a direction that would entrench their approach to governance.

In fact, this decision should be seen as part of a larger initiative by moneyed conservatives to rig the electoral system against their opponents. How else to explain conservative legislation in state after state to obstruct access to the ballot by lower-income voters—particularly members of minority groups—though voter identification laws, shortened voting periods and restrictions on voter registration campaigns? Conservatives are strengthening the hand of the rich at one end of the system and weakening the voting power of the poor at the other. It’s a clever set of moves if you can get away with them.


end quote

[3waygeek]

6. Someone needs to tell Dionne about

the Powell memo; it connects quite a few dots.

[unblock]

2. of course they thought imagined a world of super pacs and disguised donor identity

it's the exact world they wanted to create.

only in their twisted, plutocratic world, heavy influence of money in politics is not "corruption" but "freedom of speech".

the fact that government then does the bidding of the highest, uh, bidder is not corruption in their eyes.

and the fact that ordinary people's voices get trampled but the crush of rich money is not limiting freedom of speech, but expanding it, in their eyes.

welcome to the ideology of greed.

[Blue_Tires]

5. It's funny how many people are honestly surprised like they were expecting something else

Most DUers had this predicted from the start