💲Citizens United Is Destroying America, 2010 Supreme Ct Ruling: Unlimited $ In Politics
- Citizens United Is Destroying America, Why Nobody Is Talking about It, By Thom Hartmann, Daily Kos, Oct. 27, 2023. Ed.
I talk with around 6 million people every week on my nationally syndicated call-in radio/TV show. What I’m hearing, increasingly (I’ve been doing this program for 20 years now), is frustration bordering on despair about the inability of America to get basic, necessary things done.
Why is it, people ask, that we can’t do anything about guns amidst all these mass shootings? Or homelessness? Or affordable healthcare and education? Why are we moving so slowly on climate change? How did social media get excused from responsibility for its own content and then become overrun by Putin bots and Nazis?
And why do we let the billionaires who own social media (along with all the other billionaires) get away with only paying an average 3.2% income tax when the rest of us are making up for it by paying through the nose? Why can’t Congress pass a simple budget or raise taxes enough to stop running deficits?
What happened, people ask, that caused America’s politicians — in the years after JFK — to stop listening to the people who elect them?
Why is it that (other than tax cuts), when Republicans have power or the ability to block Democrats efforts, nothing gets done? The simple and tragic answer to all these questions comes back to a single root cause: money in politics. Or, to be more specific, Republicans on the Supreme Court having legalized political bribery (and, thus, functional ownership) of judges and legislators, both federal and state...
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/27/2202007/-Citizens-United-is-Destroying-America-Why-Is-Nobody-Talking-About-It
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- Citizens United Explained, Brennan Center for Justice, 2019.
- The 2010 Supreme Court decision further tilted political influence toward wealthy donors and corporations.
January 21, 2020 will mark a decade since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a controversial decision that reversed century-old campaign finance restrictions and enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections.
While wealthy donors, corporations, and special interest groups have long had an outsized influence in elections, that sway has dramatically expanded since the Citizens United decision, with negative repercussions for American democracy and the fight against political corruption.
What was Citizens United about? A conservative nonprofit group called Citizens United challenged campaign finance rules after the FEC stopped it from promoting and airing a film criticizing presidential candidate Hillary Clinton too close to the presidential primaries.
A 5–4 majority of the Supreme Court sided with Citizens United, ruling that corporations and other outside groups can spend unlimited money on elections.
What was the rationale for the ruling? In the court’s opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that limiting “independent political spending” from corporations and other groups violates the 1st Amendment right to free speech. The justices who voted with the majority assumed that independent spending cannot be corrupt and that the spending would be transparent, but both assumptions have proven to be incorrect...
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained
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