Justice Roberts Hearts Billionaires

[babylonsister]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/04/mccutcheon_v_fec_campaign_finance_decision_justice_roberts_doesn_t_believe.single.html

Justice Roberts Hearts Billionaires

The chief either doesn’t believe, or doesn’t care, that money corrupts politics.
By Dahlia Lithwick


Five years ago, when the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, polls showed that the American public—or at least a mere 80 percent of them—disapproved. Now of course public approval hardly matters when it comes to interpreting the First Amendment, but given that one of the important issues in the case was the empirical question of whether corporate free speech rights increased the chance of corruption or the appearance of corruption in electoral politics, the court might care at least a bit about what the public thinks constitutes corruption. Or why the public believed Citizens United opened the floodgates to future corruption. Or why it is that campaign finance reform once seemed to be a good idea with respect to fighting corruption in the first instance.

Now, in a kind of ever-worsening judicial Groundhog Day of election reform, the Supreme Court has, with its decision in McCutcheon v. FEC, swept away concerns over “aggregate” campaign finance limits to candidates and party committees in federal elections, finding in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts—who wrote the plurality opinion for the court’s five conservatives—that the “aggregate limits do not further the permissible governmental interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption or its appearance.” In other words, since bajillionaires should be able to give capped amounts to several candidates, they should be allowed to give capped amounts to many, many, many candidates, without raising the specter of corruption.

snip//

And why does this collective speech matter? Why are we talking about corruption? Because, writes Breyer: “Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard. Insofar as corruption cuts the link between political thought and political action, a free marketplace of political ideas loses its point.” And yes, there is a silent “duh” in there. Breyer may seem hopelessly naïve or idealistic next to Roberts, but what he writes in dissent today seems to reflect fairly accurately what most Americans view as the appearance of corruption when the 1 percent of wealthiest political contributors are allowed to give unlimited funds to political candidates and party committees: “The ‘appearance of corruption’ can make matters worse. It can lead the public to believe that its efforts to communicate with its representatives or to help sway public opinion have little purpose. And a cynical public can lose interest in political participation altogether,” Breyer notes. “Democracy, the Court has often said, cannot work unless ‘the people have faith in those who govern.’ ”

That assessment is both a fairly accurate description of the status quo, when it comes to money in politics, and a predictor of how the public will likely react to the news that one of the last remaining efforts to curb the influence of big money in politics was just vaporized by the Roberts court. Breyer goes on to detail in his dissent how aggregate contributions can be used to work around the democratic process. (Actually, he pretty much writes the handbook.) But he almost needn’t bother. He may be childishly wedded to the old-fashioned notion that pouring ever more billionaire dollars into electoral politics is nobody’s idea of freedom, good government, or equality. But I believe him. I suspect most Americans will as well.

That leaves three possibilities for the chief justice’s divorced-from-reality decision about the relationship between corruption, huge money, and politics today: Either he thinks Americans really don’t see any connection. Or he doesn’t care what we see or believe. Or he really doesn’t think that candidates dialing for big dollars constitutes corruption. None of these alternatives is pretty. But I worry that the court has located itself so outside the orbit of the 99 percent that it simply doesn’t matter to the five conservatives in the majority that the American public knows perfectly well what bought government looks like and that Breyer is describing a level of cynicism that has already arrived. Worse still, I worry that it matters very little to them that we will stop voting, donating, participating, or caring about elections at all in light of this decision to silence us yet further. In which case McCutcheon is a self-fulfilling prophecy in exactly the way Breyer predicts: Money doesn’t just talk. It also eventually forces the public to understand that we don’t much matter. It silences. It already has.

[moondust]

1. At some point it's not worth defending.

(At least not by poor kids.)

So we can retire the military to museums and history books and save trillions, right?!!!

No more war!!! No more war!!! No more war!!! No more war!!! No more war!!!

[Cha]

2. Sen Ted Kennedy and then Sen Obama had it exaclty right about John Roberts..

snips from a previous post//

And, why Senator Ted Kennedy didn't..

"In explaining his decision to vote against Roberts, Kennedy specifically mentioned Feingold's pointed questioning of Roberts.

Recalling the discussion of the Roberts's efforts to block the strengthening of the Voting Rights Act when the nominee served in Ronald Reagan's administration, the Massachusetts senator noted that, "Both Senator Feingold and I tried to find out whether he came to agree with the strengthened Voting Rights Act after President Reagan signed it into law. Even when Senator Feingold asked whether Judge Roberts would acknowledge today that he had been wrong to oppose (limits on the ability of minorities to seek protection under the Voting Rights Act), he refused to give a yes-or-no answer."

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0923-25.htm

And from then Senator Barack Obama..

snip//

"I was impressed with that statement because I view the law in much the same way. The problem I had is that when I examined Judge Roberts' record and history of public service, it is my personal estimation that he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak. In his work in the White House and the Solicitor General's Office, he seemed to have consistently sided with those who were dismissive of efforts to eradicate the remnants of racial discrimination in our political process. In these same positions, he seemed dismissive of the concerns that it is harder to make it in this world and in this economy when you are a woman rather than a man.

I want to take Judge Roberts at his word that he doesn't like bullies and he sees the law and the court as a means of evening the playing field between the strong and the weak. But given the gravity of the position to which he will undoubtedly ascend and the gravity of the decisions in which he will undoubtedly participate during his tenure on the court, I ultimately have to give more weight to his deeds and the overarching political philosophy that he appears to have shared with those in power than to the assuring words that he provided me in our meeting."

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB124390047073474499

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4773616