Five Years After Citizens United, Billionaires Are Buying Democracy
Five years after the Supreme Court's disastrous 5-4 decision in Citizens United, there's a lot to be angry about.
With election spending out of control, and super PACs empowering giant corporations and billionaires like no time since the Gilded Age, Big Money is not just influencing who's elected to office in this country, but what elected officials do.
Consider how the new Congress has opened: A House of Representatives leadership effort to skirt normal procedure and rush through a repeal of key Dodd-Frank provisions to rein in Wall Street speculative activities. A House of Representatives vote to authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. A House vote to handcuff consumer, health, safety, environmental and other regulatory agencies so that they cannot issue new rules to address corporate abuse and protect the American public. Another House vote to repeal the Dodd-Frank measure, after the initial rush effort failed to garner a needed two-thirds majority. Meanwhile, in the slower-moving Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has decided Keystone legislation will be the first significant matter taken up.
Why is this the starting agenda for Congress? Most Americans are unfamiliar with derivatives clearing requirements, but they surely know they don't want to enable more of the aggressive Wall Street gambling that threw our nation into recession. Americans don't want dirty air, unsafe food and water, dangerous workplaces or to be ripped off by unscrupulous businesses; and by overwhelming margins, they want our regulatory agencies strengthened, not weakened. And there's no serious case for the Keystone pipeline, given that it will do nothing for consumers, create only a few dozen permanent jobs, and significantly exacerbate the greenhouse gas emissions that are endangering the planet and humanity.
The Congressional agenda is the agenda of the billionaire class, plain and simple. The Koch brothers spent more money than we'll ever know on the last election. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was the largest "dark money" organization in the 2014 elections, at least in terms of spending required to be reported to the Federal Election Commission. The Chamber invested very heavily and successfully in the 2014 elections to elect corporate-minded candidates in the Republican primaries and in the general election. Now these and other giant donors are being rewarded with their return on investment.
More here:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/five-years-after-citizens_b_6516246.html
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