The "NRA exemption" to the Disclose Act is undoubtedly a travesty, but in harping on it, we're missing the forest for the trees.
The much grander debacle is Democrats' failure to push for publicly funded elections, and their failure to put forth a Constitutional Amendment to stymie the flood of corporate spending on elections that the Citizens United decision permits. I'm running for Congress in Rhode Island, and if I win, I'll vigorously support both efforts -- just as I have as a state representative.
The Disclose Act -- which forces more intensive disclosure of which corporations are funding particular campaign ads -- allows Democrats to have it both ways: They can appease their progressive base by purporting to take action against corporate control of governance -- while still permitting most corporations more influence over our elections than they'd had for decades prior to the January Supreme Court ruling. (Corporations won't hesitate to support Democrats who are likely to do their bidding, and many are more than willing.)
We need Congress to pass the Fair Elections Now Act, now -- and to offer to the states a Constitutional Amendment to undo the Citizens United ruling.
The Fair Elections Now Act would provide public funds to contenders for House and Senate seats who opt into the system and collect a large number of small donations -- allowing them to run viable campaigns for office, even while remaining accountable to rank-and-file human beings, rather than to wealthy donors.
Experience from Maine and other states demonstrates that most candidates would take Fair Elections funds -- and those who didn't would be stigmatized and lose support for running on private dollars. (In Rhode Island, I've been a co-sponsor of our state Fair Elections law, and have been organizing with the coalition that supports since its inception.)
Congresswoman Donna Edwards and others have proposed offering to the states for ratification an amendment to the Constitution to reverse the Citizens United ruling, but it appears to stand little chance of passage.
If we're going to change these financing structures we need to do so now -- power structures seek to perpetuate and strengthen themselves, and so as people gain election under the new rules, it'll only become harder to reform them.
If Congress fails to act on the constitutional amendment -- and we can't expect Congress, as a structure, to take action that disadvantages itself -- there's another option, devised precisely for this predicament:
The Constitution dictates that a federal Constitutional Convention would be held pursuant to the request of 2/3 of the states. Conventioneers would propose amendments to the constitution for ratification by the several states -- via the same ratification process that follows from a Congress-proposed amendment.
Working with Change Congress, I've introduced a resolution in Rhode Island calling for a convention to address the Citizens United decision -- Larry Lessig discusses it in detail here. Such a convention has never happened, but the mere act of agitating for one can have profound effects: Congress offered the 17th amendment -- requiring that U.S. Senators be elected rather than appointed -- only after two-thirds of the states, minus one, had called for a convention to demand the reform.
It's very difficult to ratify a Constitutional amendment -- but with large majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents opposing the court's ruling, corporate spending on elections is precisely the sort of amendment that would gain support across party and geographic lines. No matter how it happens, the time for such action is now.
Stuart Whatley: Orrin Opens the Hatch
It doesn't take much to see the irony in a politician simultaneously condemning waste in government while championing measures that further enable special interest participation in policy making.
It would be a game of "52-pickup," wherein the whole deck up cards is thrown against the ceiling. All of the old Constitution would be up for grabs. Better still, it would be "50-pickup," with one state, one vote. California, one vote; Alaska, one vote. True, Congress and some state legislatures would purport to limit the Convention's authority, at which time the most important lawyers in the old United States would be the JAG's.
We really don't want to go there unless we absolutely have to.
Of course we need campaign financial "reform," consisting of this: no politician can take any money or any promise of anything of value. Ever. Live on your paycheck. Campaigns have become like strip joints for the masses, distracting, diverting, robbing, stealing, thieving from the public, doing the multi-year circus of politicians not even going to work for years at a time because they're out "campaigning." They use the cost of a two-year campaign as an excuse to take money to sell their votes. We need a new law that limits campaigns to some Tv time taken for public purposes at no cost, free internet usage, and that's about it. This campaigning is nonsense and the money spent is obscene. As is the current make-up of the Supreme Court.
If you read the decision in CU you would have seen that this quid pro quo money for votes situation is exactly what the court is looking for in restricting campaign contributions. The limits on direct contribution stand, so an article about direct contribution that cites CU as a need for change is either misinformed or lying. The court claimed that issue advertising within certain time limits surrounding elections did not create this quid pro quo situation.
I'm not a fan of the perpetual campaign, but I would never think it appropriate to use the government to stifle the expression of political speech by limiting the ability of an individual in the ways you describe.
Second, spending money is not the same as speech. You go to the mall and guy stuff, that's spending. Your secret intent is to look good and communicate to the world that you're cool. But it's just spending money. Speech is entire different.
Third, courts routinely recognize that corporations are not really "people," they're just discussed in that manner for some limited purposes. For example, they don't get to vote. Business speech is restricted and different, and courts routinely evaluate it differently.
Corporations don't "speak," they just corrupt. They are destroying our system by buying politicians and political positions. The citizens are free to prevent them altogether from any involvement in our politics, which is what we should do. Roberts et al have ignored existing law and ruled in a manner clearly intended to allow corporations and any foreign government that sets one up to take over our country. As long as they keep paying bribes to the politicians, there will be no democracy. And thanks, J, but I read the decision already.
Would you please explain how forcing people to pay to promote an ideology with which they may disagree will solve the "problem" of issue advertising?
Foutunately for our rights of speech, assembly and peitition, the issue is of Constitutional dimensions, and a so-called "legislative fix" is d.o.a..