Another nail in the coffin?

This does not sound promising at all.

The hounds of hell

When the Citizens United decision came down last year, I concurred with Glenn Greenwald who opined that, odious as the decision was, based on the law as it was written, the decision was correct.

I haven’t had a chance to really dig into the decision, but my initial reaction was along the lines of: “Well, they’ve just pulled back the curtain. It’s not like corporations weren’t running the show anyway.” Between the lobbyists and the money that has been funneled, bundled, PAC’d or 527ed, big money already plays a big role in U.S. politics.

I don’t know what hounds of hell this ruling may release, and I am a firm proponent of publicly finance elections, but I can admit I see the Constitutional merits. As offensive as I found Citizens United’s attempt to pillory Hillary Clinton through Hillary Clinton, The Movie, I understand that free speech for Citizens United* applies just as much to them as it does the likes of Michael Moore, who released Fahrenheit 911, a movie highly critical of George W. Bush, in the fall of 2008 to critical acclaim (and an Oscar nomination).

Constitutional purists from across the political spectrum, are saying that SCOTUS made the right decision, odious as it is to most of them the influence money has in politics. From what I can glean, their reactions have been “sauce for the goose” types of reactions. That is, the government cannot say one kind of political speech is permitted while another is not.  I remember the famous ACLU case in which they defended the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie. I got it way back then that no matter what the government  feels about what a group or person advocates,  government does not have the Constitutional right to silence them. I understood that if the government could silence THEM, the government could also silence ME.

That being said . . .

SCOTUS

SCOTUSblog asks some questions about who or what will be affected  (or not) by the decision:

• [A]re labor unions as free as corporations to spend as much as they wish — independently of candidates — to influence elections to Congress and the White House? 
• Another question, and this one the Court explicitly said it was not deciding, was whether foreign corporations with operations in the U.S. — placed under the same restrictions as domestic ones — might now be able to claim the same First Amendment protection if they want to spend large sums to try to influence U.S. federal elections. 
• The Court also did not rule on the flat ban — in effect for corporations since 1907, and for labor unions since 1947 — on donations that they might want to make directly to a federal candidate or a candidate’s campaign organization. 
• [M]ight this Court be willing, sooner rather than later, to cast aside the clear distinction it has drawn since 1976, declaring that political spending gets more constitutional protection than political donating?
• There is another broad question that largely goes unaddressed in this ruling, but it perhaps should be asked anew in the wake of this decision.  It involves a project that the Court, the Federal Election Commission, and politicians and their lawyers have been dealing with for years — defining the difference between a political message (in an ad, for example) that involves “express advocacy” and one that involves “issue advocacy.”  [...] One question is whether there is anyone in politics to whom that “express versus issue” distinction still applies?

I haven’t had a chance to really dig into the decision, but my initial reaction was along the lines of: “Well, they’ve just pulled back the curtain. It’s not like corporations weren’t running the show anyway.” Between the lobbyists and the money that has been funneled, bundled, PAC’d or 527ed, big money already plays a big role in U.S. politics.

I don’t know what hounds of hell this ruling may release, and I am a firm proponent of publicly finance elections, but I can admit I see the Constitutional merits. As offensive as I found Citizens United’s attempt to pillory Hillary Clinton through Hillary Clinton, The Movie, I understand that free speech for Citizens United* applies just as much to them as it does the likes of Michael Moore, who released Fahrenheit 911, a movie highly critical of George W. Bush, in the fall of 2008 to critical acclaim (and an Oscar nomination).

Constitutional purists from across the political spectrum, are saying that SCOTUS made the right decision, odious as it is to most of them the influence money has in politics. From what I can glean, their reactions have been “sauce for the goose” types of reactions. That is, the government cannot say one kind of political speech is permitted while another is not. I remember the famous ACLU case in which they defended the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie. I got it way back then that no matter what the government  feels about what a group or person advocates,  government does not have the Constitutional right to silence them. I understood that if the government could silence THEM, the government could also silence ME.

Liberal Glenn Greenwald writes in What the Supreme Court got right:

Denouncing court rulings because they invalidate laws one likes is what the Right often does (see how they reflexively and immediately protest every state court ruling invaliding opposite-sex-only marriage laws without bothering to even read about the binding precedents), and that behavior is irrational in the extreme.  If the Constitution or other laws bar the government action in question, then that’s the end of the inquiry; whether those actions produce good results is really not germane.  Thus, those who want to object to the Court’s ruling need to do so on First Amendment grounds. 

[...] The First Amendment is not and never has been outcome-dependent; the Government is barred from restricting speech – especially political speech — no matter the good results that would result from the restrictions.  That’s the price we pay for having the liberty of free speech.  And even on a utilitarian level, the long-term dangers of allowing the Government to restrict political speech invariably outweigh whatever benefits accrue from such restrictions.

[...] the speech restrictions struck down by Citizens United do not only apply to Exxon and Halliburton; they also apply to non-profit advocacy corporations, such as, say, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, as well as labor unions, which are genuinely burdened in their ability to express their views by these laws.  I tend to take a more absolutist view of the First Amendment than many people, but laws which prohibit organized groups of people — which is what corporations are — from expressing political views goes right to the heart of free speech guarantees no matter how the First Amendment is understood.

[...] What is overlooked in virtually every discussion I’ve seen over the last 24 hours is how ineffective these campaign finance laws are.  Large corporations employ teams of lawyers and lobbyists and easily circumvent these restrictions; wealthy individuals and well-funded unincorporated organizations are unlimited in what they can spend.  It’s the smaller non-profit advocacy groups whose political speech tends to be most burdened by these laws.  Campaign finance laws are a bit like gun control statutes:  actual criminals continue to possess large stockpiles of weapons, but law-abiding citizens are disarmed. 

Conservative Richard Viguerie echoes these sentiments in Today’s Supreme Court decision: Good Riddance to Incumbent-Protection Censorship; Hello Insurgents

In the 1960s I began using direct mail to finance political campaigns from tens of thousands of small donors, thereby greatly increasing reelection problems for incumbents.

As insurgents began to rely on new, alternative sources (direct mail and Internet) to finance challenges to incumbents, Congress began to pass incumbent-protection laws.

Congress passed anti-democratic, anti-free-and-fair election laws to make it much more difficult for outsiders, nonprofits and other independent causes to criticize and challenge incumbents.

The timing of the Supreme Court’s First Amendment ruling, combined with the anti-incumbent rage of voters and activists, couldn’t be worse for incumbents, and couldn’t be better for independent grassroots causes that seek to challenge the corrupt status quo.

Libertarian Bob Barr (who, by the way, opposes the Patriot Act, it’s renewal and all the other privacy invading things our government is doing):

Yesterday’s High Court opinion began where such a constitutional analysis ought to begin, by declaring the obvious – that political speech and money spent in furtherance of promoting and disseminating political speech is in fact protected by the First Amendment. The Court then correctly noted that historically and legally, corporations do enjoy First Amendment rights to free speech; and that the federal campaign law criminalizing the corporate act of simply using its lawful monies to disseminate lawful political speech, is in fact an unlawful restraint of protected speech.

Finally, Glenn and others have brought up this very salient point.

I want to add one other point just to underscore how irrational, discriminatory and ineffective these political speech restrictions are.  The invalidated statute at issue here exempted media corporations — such as Fox and MSNBC — from these restrictions, since the Government obviously can’t ban media figures from going on television and opining on elections (the way they do all other corporations).  But as Eliot Spitzer noted when urging the Supreme Court to strike down this law (h/t David Sirota), what possible justification is there for allowing News Corp. and GE to say whatever they want about our elections while banning all other corporations (including non-profit advocacy groups) from doing so?

A-yep. Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, et al, can foam at the mouth all the way up to and including Election Day, but Planned Parenthood, SEIU, the NAACP and others cannot? How about all the news magazines? Be it The Nation, Mother Jones,  The National Journal, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and on and on, all of them are permitted do all kinds of political and candidate advocacy and yet the Sierra Club cannot? 

The answer lies in public financing of campaigns, not in banishing voices from the public square.

* Though their goals may have been the same, Citizens United is not the same organization as Citizens United Not Timid, a 527 founded in 2008. Note, CU has no objection to the acronym, just that the other organization was riffing off their orginization’s name. Ugh.

High roads, low roads, pots, kettles

The Reclusive Leftist has an intriguing series called “If you vote for Obama this is what you’re voting for.”  So far the series has 11 “reminders.”

This Link will take you to all of them except for #6. Click here for that one.

The latest (#11) covers the names being bandied about as being on Obama’s short list for cabinet and SCOTUS positions. Oy.

Incompetent Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is on the short list for Attorney General, which makes me wonder if Obama and Patrick chipped in together for some kind of package deal with Axelrod. Obama’s entire propaganda line (hope and change, etc.) was an ad campaign dreamed up by Axelrod and first used by Patrick. Obama bought the whole shtick second-hand — even the text of the speeches — and we can only hope he got a good used-car price on the deal. I see no earthly reason for Patrick to be in an Obama administration, unless maybe that was in the fine print back when Obama purchased the rights to Patrick’s speeches.

But the number one pick for Attorney General isn’t Deval Patrick, but Virginia Governor Tim Kaine. That’s right, Tim Kaine: the pro-life, anti-abortion, pro-abstinence-education Tim Kaine. For Attorney General. Hey, you Stockholm Syndrome ladies over at NOW — are you paying attention? Maybe ask the patriarchy to adjust the duct tape so you can see better, ‘kay?

The Supreme Court short list includes Deval Patrick again (definitely some kind of package deal thing there), but the most terrifying possibility, and the real front-runner, is Cass Sunstein. Sunstein is an intellectual trainwreck of a man who is notorious for defending President Bush’s right to torture, imprison, and spy on anydamnbody he wants to with impunity.

Number 10 starts with the Bobby Kennedy smear, and then touches on all the smears of the Obama campaign during the primary.

Obama’s team pushed the RFK smear aggressively, just as they had pushed all the other smears against Hillary: the Somali garb smear, the Muslim smear, the darkening of Obama’s photo smear, the Bosnia smear, the fairytale smear, the MLK/LBJ smear, and on and on and on. The Obama machine functioned smoothly in all its parts, from campaign headquarters to media outlets, from netroots astroturfers to hysterical commenters shrieking for blood. They’d done it all before, but the RFK business ratcheted things up to a new level. The public hatred of Hillary reached a fever pitch. The sheer noise drowned out all rational speech. And the Obama camp’s cynical exploitation of race, history, and our nation’s tragedies made it virtually a thought-crime to point out that the whole thing was a put-up job — not to mention that if anyone was playing the role of Bobby Kennedy in this election, it was Hillary herself.

People who had been watching the race closely (as opposed to watching Obama campaign ads and gazing adoringly at copies of Dreams of My Father) already understood that behind the “hope and change” propaganda, the Obama folks were hard-core Chicago machine types, experts in dirty politics, ruthless and utterly without scruple. About as far from “a new kind of politics” as you could possibly get. But even so, the RFK smear was eye-opening.

This alone would have been enough to turn my heart stone-cold toward Barack Obama. Aside from all his flip-flops (FISA, public financing, et al), the smears against the Clintons and Hillary’s supporters were unconscionable, and not something to which I could ever give my approval or think of condoning with my vote.  Worse yet, we hear Obama, who has willingly allowed all of this to go on in his campaign, NOW saying that he did once admire John McCain – in 2000 – when he [McCain] ran a “clean” campaign against George W. Bush.  He thinks McCain has run a “dirty” campaign? Wow. Is this the pot calling the kettle black? (Am I a racist for using that age-old adage?)  Frankly, I’m amazed that the RNC has’t been running Reverend “God Damn Ameri-k-k-k-a” Wright ads 24/7. Frankly, it’s what I expected from the Republicans (based on past history).  If John McCain were running those sorts of ads, I might consider that he had taken the low road. But he has held back. Oh yeah, sure, he’s running the usual mantra that Obama will raise your taxes (standard Republican talking points, really, and to be expected), but he hasn’t gone for the jugular. And it’s not as though Obama hasn’t provided him with plenty of ammunition (Wright, Ayers, Rezko).  Still Obama accuses McCain of “slash-and-burn, say-anything, do-anything politics.”  Sound familiar? It should. It’s what they said about Hillary too.

Barack Obama has wasted no amount of air time to tell us constantly the John McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time [omigod, that ad is on every fifteen minutes, I swear]. Click here for what Barack doesn’t tell you about his voting record in the Senate. Hint: 40% no vote and an amazing rate of avoiding controversial votes (ie: 75% no vote on choice issues) - post at link cites Project Vote Smart. 

And then there is the question of Barack Obama’s fundraising. Though he is not required to do so, McCain released the names of all his small donors. Obama will not. Why not? It’s a legitimate question. Especially in light of this Washington Post story.  Are we talking campaign finance fraud? Money laundering? 

So, no, I do not approve, condone, nor rationalize that the “ends justifies the means.”

Bingo

And this, my friends, is today’s Democratic Party leadership in a nutshell.

Conyers said he wants a public discussion of the issues being raised by Kucinich, but does not plan to take any action on the resolution. “We’re not doing impeachment, but he can talk about it,” the chairman said.

What good is a “public discussion” if the people that can actually do something about it refuse to?  Could you imagine if our police force or district attorneys just “talked” about someone’s illegal activities and then just went out and had a beer? Jeebus on a triscuit.

Substitute any issue important to your liberal heart, and that’s pretty much the current state of affairs.

• We’re not doing universal health care, but she can talk about it
• We’re not doing campaign finance reform, but he can talk about it.
• We’re not doing protection of civil liberties but he can talk about it

Feel free to add your own in the comments.  (H/T to BartCop)

She’s ba-a-ack!

cathylee at Fiery Side has gotten her blog-legs and is starting to post up a storm.

I love this: Regarding Obama’s decision to decline public financing, she asks, “why?”

Why…

• when gas is approaching $5 a gallon,
• when grocery bills have doubled and tripled,
• when health care is simply unaffordable for so many and so expensive for so many more,
• when traveling has become prohibitive because our dollar is in a subterranean hole
• when so many of us are losing the roofs over our heads and whatever savings we’ve managed,
• when we have already given enough of our small salaries to the Obama campaign to have allowed it to break all fundraising records,
• and when so many of us must refuse our children so much,

why, why should we be asked to give more because Senator Obama slammed the door shut on $84 million in public funding?

The arrogance boggles the mind.

The exploitation of the electorate is shocking.

But the lordly, vainglorious callousness is unforgivable.

“Vainglorious”

Love. It.

Except . . .

Obamacans: Is this the kind of change you all had in mind?

Obama opts out of public funds against McCain

Obama said in a video message to supporters he would refuse $84 million in public funds available for the November general election. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to bypass the system since it was created after the Watergate scandal in the mid-1970s.

Just another example of Obama’s rhetoric not matching his actions.

“It’s not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections,” Obama said in the video message.

Obama’s thought bubble: “Except for me.”

ETA (6/20/08): I spoke with a staunch Obama supporter last night and even he is disappointed with Obama over this. Not so much over the money part (insert standard rationalizations here) but with Obama’s rhetoric (!). If the system is so broken, my friend said, shouldn’t Obama set the example? I pointed out to him that all the things he objected to (RNC, 527s) already exist and Obama’s not taking public financing won’t make any of that go away. He agreed.

ETA #2- Russ Feingold thinks this is a bad move. Bob Shrum (excuse me while I go throw up) thinks otherwise. When Ben Smith says this move is not out of character for Obama, he doesn’t mean it in a good way.

Obama’s move wasn’t out of character. In fact – though he has at times adopted popular reform causes – Obama has never been a traditional reformer.

He came to politics through the community organizing movement, whose radical founder, Saul Alinsky, mocked highbrow reformers, and focused instead on the acquisition and use of power, with the ends often justifying the means.

In Obama’s political life, that approach has translated into pragmatism. He’s kept his distance from elements of the Democratic Party that demand purity, from Washington reformers to more ideologically-motivated liberal bloggers. Instead, his campaign has sought the Kennedy mantle, modeling the candidate after a revered Democratic family not known for its scruples.

“Their campaign is brutally pragmatic,” said one Democratic operative. “They have the most exciting candidate since JFK and like that operation, they have their share of talented, ambitious and at times ruthless people. Barack gets to stay above the fray, while his campaign does whatever it takes to win.”

And now this is a good thing? When Hillary was accused of “doing anything to win” it was a bad thing.

Forgive me, but I’ve spent the last 7 1/2 years in Opposite Day Land with the Bush administration. I’d like leave.

Is ‘Lobbyist’ a dirty word?

Gee, to hear John Edwards and Barack Obama talk, all lobbyists should be painted with the same broad brush. (Isn’t this what the right wing does to us?) When Hillary Clinton defended taking lobbyists money, she said that many lobbyists represent people like you and me. And you know what? It’s true. There are lobbyists for autistic children, seniors, the disabled, union workers, women, and on and on. Thomas Edsall over at The Huffington Post in his article “Who Is The Purest of Them All?” sheds a little more light on this controversy and takes a closer look at who Obama and Edwards get their donations from. They may not get them from “Washington lobbyists” but they get plenty of high dollars from industry bigwigs and have their own ties to lobbyists.

Edwards and Obama may not be taking contributions from federally registered lobbyists, but that does not mean that their money is as pure as they’d like us to believe.

Edwards’ 2004 campaign manager, Nick Baldick, who is currently a senior adviser to the 2008 campaign, is a founder of the Washington lobbying firm Avenue Solutions, which includes among its clients Aetna, Northwest Airlines, the Healthcare Leadership Council, Medco, Travelers Cos. Inc., and the Financial Services Roundtable.

Baldick left the firm in 2006 to found Hilltop Public Solutions which, according to its website, has “managed winning campaigns for clients that have included the nation’s largest financial services firm, one of the nation’s largest airlines, a major fast food retailer, the world’s largest healthcare provider, and numerous additional industry leaders.” It generally performs these services at a state level and is not federally registered.

At least three staffers on the Obama campaign were registered as federal lobbyists, although two worked for such pro-Democratic clients as the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Environmental Defense Fund. The third, Emmett Beliveau, worked at Patton Boggs LLP, which includes among its clients Giner Electrochemical Systems, the Offshore Marine Service Association, ABT Associates, and Preferred Communications Systems.

In addition, the campaign web site Opensecrets.org reports that Edwards has received $6.5 million from lawyers, many of them trial lawyers; $668,590 from employees in the investment banking industry; $254,297 from officials of the health care industry and $218,290 from operators of hedge funds.

Obama has been no slouch in this territory, according to Opensecrets. Employees of investment banking firms gave him $3.2 million; real estate companies $1.3 million; health companies, $701,993; and hedge funds $652,105.

Clinton’s contributions fit much the same pattern.

Oops.

Edsall ends with this:

The reality is that CEOs, managers and officers of companies with large stakes in public policy are major sources of campaign contributions. Except for mega-rich self-funders like Steve Forbes and Ross Perot, every serious contender for the nomination has tapped into the same general universe of donors.

At the Kos debate, a number of the candidates, including Clinton, agreed that the only way to resolve the issue of special interests and campaign contributions is public financing of campaigns.

So Hillary’s challenge to us to look at her record vs her donors is really important . And it’s just as important to do the same with every other candidate.

Tuesday Tidbits

Campaign finance is so broken, I wonder if it’s possible to ever fix it. (NYT)

A look at the New Way Forward in Iraq. Oy. (NYT)

And what is it about Florida? This story will make you gasp. (AP via RGJ)

I love Sheila Leslie. Her comments on Gibbons’ SOTS last night (RGJ):

“I think it is pretty long on advisory boards and short on new ideas,” Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said. “The two new ideas he had — the homestead exemption and the coal fuel plant — I don’t think are very well thought out.”

Leslie later called those two initiatives “two of the wackiest things I saw in the budget.”

The Nevada Appeal does a good round up of the State of the State address.