The Left Hates Corporate Free Speech … Sometimes
The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has produced a firestorm of upset, from Obama’s lamentable (and false) State of the Union comments to a number of furious emails I have received from liberals horrified that, you know, even corporations have First Amendment protection.
I recognize that there are potential negatives from corporate money flowing into the political arena — just like when labor unions, trade associations, and obscenely rich leftists like George Soros decide to influence the political process. But the danger isn’t what you might think. The money is not dangerous because special interests are directly buying votes. The real danger is that candidates who agree with the special interests (and therefore get contributions from them) have so much more money to spend than the candidates who might actually be looking out for the public good.
This last term, I taught state and local government at a local technical college. When trying to make this point, I gave my students a hypothetical race between three candidates trying to win a party primary:
Mr. Smith supports open borders and no laws prohibiting illegal aliens from working;
Mr. Jones supports our current policy of minimal enforcement of immigration laws, and no serious effort at stopping illegal aliens from working;
Mr. Green supports vigorous enforcement of immigration laws and fines for businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens.
“So, who are you going to vote for?” Every single student in the class — without exception — said: “Mr. Green.”
I had to break the bad news to them:
No, you are going to vote for Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones. Mr. Smith will raise several million dollars to run for Congress, hundreds of thousands from corporations that like cheap labor and ethnic identity groups who want more power. Mr. Jones will raise a similar amount, and from similar interest groups. Mr. Green will raise $5,000, mostly out of his own pocket and from a few friends. And you won’t see any television ads from Mr. Green.
Maybe, just maybe, a flyer from Green’s campaign will show up in your mailbox. And you will completely miss Mr. Green’s message.
That’s why corporate spending — and labor union spending, and trade group spending, and all the other special groups spending money on politics — is a bad thing for America.
That said, here’s the harsh truth: some corporations have enormous free speech rights to influence the political process, and the same people furiously angry about Citizens United don’t want that to change.
Which corporations? CBS. NBC. ABC. The New York Times. National Public Radio. Your local, nearly always liberal, daily newspaper. Your local, nearly always progressive, weekly “alternative” newspaper. (Okay, Fox News also, because liberals haven’t quite figured out a way to rationalize that Fox News isn’t really a news organization.) And yes, those are corporations. In spite of what you might think, the New York Times and the rest of the liberal/progressive media organizations are not people’s self-governing collectives. What the Citizens United decision says is that if overwhelmingly liberal news corporations get to influence the political process, so do other corporations — a few of whom may not be liberal.
There’s one more element to this process that just makes me both laugh and fume at the same time. There are a number of decisions where liberals have been high-fiving each other for years because the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of corporate freedom of speech — cases such as Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2001). In that case, the Court ruled that a federal law which prohibited virtual child pornography was unconstitutional. (This is virtual child pornography because it uses a computer-generated image of a child having sex, rather than filming an actual child.) Who argued for this? Corporations in the business of making “adult entertainment.”
Similarly, when the Bush administration started to enforce an existing federal law that prohibited obscenity — against a company that produces hardcore videos depicting rape, murder, and adult women dressed up like little girls — liberals saw the victory for corporate free speech as a good thing. Concerning the clearly legal but distasteful music that makes up “gangsta” rap, one may assume that the same crowd that objects to corporations engaging in political speech has no problem with “music” that degrades women as bitches and “hos.”
So what, exactly, is the liberal upset about corporate free speech? It isn’t corporate free speech that bothers them. It isn’t even corporate political free speech that bothers them, as long as that speech serves a liberal cause.
The great desperate fear is that finally, there might be some balance.
“The great desperate fear is that finally, there might be some balance.”
’bout sums it up.
The caterwauling leftists hate their own poison punch used against them.
Scary innit?
I think your conclusion is correct, though “balance,” in and of itself, is not an unconditional virtue.
Journalism and the ability to disseminate information, whether good or bad, need not tilt in a conservative or libertarian direction to be valuable. It need only be accurate and relevant to current conditions. I prefer my news to be newsy rather than opinionated, even if the facts contradict some conviction I’ve cherished for a while.
I will happily sacrifice balance for relevant, reliable facts, aggregated with their relevant context, and delivered without slanting or a tendentious framing. I think most Americans would agree.
Wonderful article and great point about getting some balance. But we can’t get our hopes up too high. What corporations have a strong incentive to spend their money to dismantle big government? Yet many have much to gain from getting in bed with the politicians to rape the public?
For example … many states have laws requiring government approval for a hospital to build, add on or buy equipment. Pure communism. I represented a hospital fighting this authority. I won in the trial court, with the judge openly mocking the government’s position. Until oddly the trial judge “reconsidered” and switched from granting my client summary judgment to granting the government summary judgment. Then I won in the appellate court. Great. Justice prevailed, eventually. But then the hospital became more interested in cooperating with the authority. Had they met new friends who could deliver “justice” more cheaply, and could also offer monopolistic protection from competitors who hadn’t made such friends?
Don’t put your hopes in corporations being champions of freedom. We’ll have to do it.
@2. I dunno… Perhaps it’s cynicism, but I’m reasonably content when “news” people are simply honest about the interests and biases they have. I could wish for news to not be slanted, but I’m not sure if that’s hoping too much for human nature. Being up-front about your opinions is at least do-able.
@4: You could well be right, Anji. I was mostly expressing an “If I were God-Emperor of the Universe” sort of wish: nothing but clean, crisp facts, low on carbohydrates and with no oily aftertaste. (Cue the obnoxiously bad John Lennon ballad: “You may say I’m a dreamer…but I’m not the only one…”)
Oh, I must be one of those poor deluded liberals, because I think it is a bad idea that more corporate money will come into the election process. Don’t we have enough? I hate to break it to you, but Mr. Green’s idea is not the one that is going to be funded by the new ruling. The corporations want cheap Mexican labor.
Finally, this ruling has nothing to do with free speech. No corporation was previously being denied the ability to use their public relations arm, advertising or spokesmen to make any sort of claim. Furthermore, many of those corporations have their go-to people in the media who helped them get their message out already. Funneling wads of money into campaigns is not free speech, I wish the little minds here can understand that one.
What does this ruling have to do wiht the media? This ruling was about campaign donations, not news outlets. As a mater of fact, you’d think that the media would welcome a chance to reap more advertising money from corporations from the new ruling. The author of this dreck is dishonestly confating the ruling concerning campaign donations to the usual right wing obsession over “media bias”(of which they are not immune too), which seems to reek of the kind of corrupt bias that the author claims he is against. Delia, once again you topedp the list in both being first as well as your thoughtless ignorance.
#7JAVELIN:go throw yourself at#8 HORTENSE WELLS,and rid the republic of two free-speech-hating crypto-Stalinist trolls.That way,you could join Obama,the USSR, and the MSM libtard corporate media, in the garbage pit of history.
Horace you still bore us (yes, I remember you from 2009, sad clown boy and your spelling is still atrocious as ever). If you actually READ THIS ARTICLE then your comprehension skills are deplorable as well.
“The real danger is that candidates who agree with the special interests (and therefore get contributions from them) have so much more money to spend than the candidates who might actually be looking out for the public good.”
The [evil] filthy rich have been ponying up the dough for your Leftists for how long now? How did your dough-boi Barry make so much unaccounted for campaign moula? Jesus? Unicorns? Fairy dust?
How many [evil] filthy rich people are Leftists, Horace? Hmm?
Javelin writes:
Absolutely, and that’s part of why I emphasized that corporate money in politics isn’t necessarily a good thing–but neither is labor union money, or trade associations, or rich billionaire leftists. All of them warp the system. My point is that liberals love corporate free speech, as long as it is leftist politics corporations are promoting, or producing porn. So liberals don’t object to corporate free speech per se.
Next you are going to tell us that burning the American flag isn’t free speech, and virtual child pornography isn’t free speech. Whoops! But then you wouldn’t be a liberal!
TL writes:
Yup. Corporations reflect the values of the obscenely rich people that run them–which means, overwhelmingly liberals and progressives who contribute heavily to liberals and progressives so that they don’t feel so guilty about screwing over their workers.
It has to do with the fact that news organizations influence election results because they are corporations that get to still spend a lot of money influencing election results–while other corporations are not. Imagine if all the pro-Obama coverage in 20008 had been subject to campaign finance rules!
While corporations are generally left of center (rich people run them, after all), not all corporations are left of center. Alas, news organizations that aren’t left of center can be named on one hand.
Deguello: I about choked when I read your comment. . . crypto trolls? that is great!! Even my small mind could enjoy that!
The real danger is that candidates who agree with the special interests (and therefore get contributions from them) have so much more money to spend than the candidates who might actually be looking out for the public good.
I’ve rarely seen someone with such a faint grasp of a concept take such a vehement position on it. Here’s the problem and its one that doesn’t have a left or right. If corporations or unions are allowed to spend as much as they like on a campaign or issue, then they can strategically manipulate the electoral process without ever asking for anything from politicians. An entity need only choose a congressional district to make an example, poor as much money as they can against the congressperson, flood the advertising market and destroy that politician. The fact that they have the resources to do that again and again to anyone who stands against them on the issue is no doubt enough to make others fall in line. The problem is that if there are no limits to spending, it will be the corporations that achieve supremacy in this strategy. Unions will be left in the dust, they’re already spending about as much as they can; the only thing that the limits did was keep the corporations in balance with other organizations. Now that balance is gone. You’ll never even notice how they’re shaping your electoral environment or how they’re managing issues and policies–you, especially, writer of this column. You’d be the last one to figure it out.
16. Original Child Bomb,
Calls for ‘transparency’ much?
Please, tell me where Barack’s money came from and then we can talk.
“Unions will be left in the dust”
OCB, you say that like it’s a bad thing?
The typical American adult is supposedly too stupid to think for themselves. They must be protected from the allegedly evil corporations by the more sophisticated elites. Alas, advertisers only wish they were as powerful as described by John Kenneth Galbraith. The reality, of course, is that even the best ad campaigns may only persuade a relatively small segment of the buying public. Major beer advertisers are thrilled if they are even credited with an annual 5% increase in sales. Ultimately, the consumers (or voters) will sort through the available evidence and reach their own conclusions.
Can you read? If you can find a sentence, or even word, relating to your response then please post it. Otherwise, don’t waste my time with knee-jerk reflex response.
Mr Cramer,
So according to you, even the corporations are leftist, which is total crap, so why would you favor more corporation money in politics? You are truly a treasure trove of reactionary populism, even the rich are liberals according to you. So does that mean that only the poor losers are on your side? Also, your cheap crack about all the pro Obama media coverage proves nothing unless Obama secretly paid them off. Maybe Obama made a good impression on the educated intelligent types in the media, unlike some old guy with stupid toddler mauling mutt and her creepy brood. Don’t forget that almost all the talk radio universe, which has a lot of influence and is a big business these days, were rabidly anti-Obama, Should they be subject to your media bias analysis
If you are so vain and petty that you have to reply to my objections with the usual “you’re a liberal” type of juvenile talk radio response, then you just proved that you are just another cheap hack pandering to the knuckledraggers here. Glad you tossed in Soros, every good populist bigot needs some rich international Jew as a boogeyman
Delia
You should hook and mate with Deguello, since you are both such hate filled crackpots. Then you can breed a little army of homunculus to assist in your bloody counter revolution.
Here’s an oldie but a goodie: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/20/AR2009072003363_2.html?sid=ST2009072003679. The sixty-forty split in health care industry political contributions was also achieved without the Supreme Court’s assistance. The quote about how “nobody” gets special treatment is tremendously poignant–loopholes for everyone!!
Problem is, with all these eloquent speechmakers, promises yet to be broken get written down and videotaped. An explanation for this would be nice: http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/02/federal-lobbying-soars-in-2009.html. Much like “is,” the problem is how to spin “change.”
If only corporations and unions, not to mention government critters, had to make a matching deficit-reduction donation…
Opine
bt
Sen Schumer legislation proposal follows FYI w/ my included comments.
end
Semper Fi
bt
SUMMARY OF CITIZENS UNITED LEGISLATION
To Be Introduced by Senator Charles E. Schumer & Congressman Chris Van Hollen
1. PREVENT FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN U.S. ELECTIONS
The legislation prevents foreign governments, foreign companies and foreign nationals from influencing U.S. elections by banning corporations from spending money on U.S. elections if:
They have a foreign ownership of 20% or more;
A majority of their board of directors is foreign principals;
Or:
Their U.S. operations, or their decision-making with respect to political activities, falls under the direction or control of a foreign entity, including a foreign government.
Include foreign Institutes, Foundations, Charitables and Organizations supporting such.
2. BAN PAY-TO-PLAY
Prevent Government Contractors from Spending Money on Elections. Government contractors would be barred from making political expenditures.
Government contractors that rec federal subsidies, or federal contracts, would be barred from DIRECTLY providing funds to Campaigns as opposed to simply making political expenditures.
Prevent Corporate Beneficiaries of TARP from Spending Money on Elections. Corporations that received bailout funding from the federal government should (WILL NOT) be permitted to use (Identifiable )taxpayer money for political expenditures.
3. ENHANCE DISCLAIMERS TO IDENTIFY SPONSORS OF ADS
Require Corporate CEO’s To Identify that they are Behind Political Ads. If a corporation spends on a political ad, the CEO will be required to appear on camera to say that he or she “approves this message,” just like candidates have to do now.
For Shadow Groups, Require Top (ALL) Corporate Donors To Appear in Political Ads They Funded. In order to prevent individuals and corporations from funneling money through shell groups in order to mask their activities, the legislation will include the following requirements:
The (ALL) top funders of the advertisement must also record a stand-by-your-ad disclaimer. (Printed or Televised at BEGINNING of Ad).
The top five contributors to an organization for political purposes that purchases advertising will be listed on the screen at the end of advertisement.
4. ENHANCE REQUIREMENTS FOR DISCLOSURE OF POLITICAL EXPENDITURES
The legislation ensures that the public will have full and timely disclosure of campaign-related expenditures made by corporations and labor organizations. The legislation imposes disclosure requirements that will mitigate the ability of corporate spenders to mask their electioneering activities through the use of intermediaries.
Disclosure method will be via the Inter Net. Access to .gov sites, such as Hill.gov or Senate.gov or House.gov. or Thomas.org.
i. SETTING UP ‘PAPER TRAILS’ WITH THE FEC
The legislation would require corporations, labor unions, and organizations organized under 501(c) 4, 5, or 6 laws—as well as 527 organizations—to, for the first time, establish separate “political broadcast spending” accounts to receive and disperse political expenditures.
All funds received into these “political activities” accounts must be publicly reported to the FEC. The following information must also be disclosed:
Name of the individual (or Organization That or ) who controls the account.
Name of donors and transferors.
Date of each donation and transfer in excess of $10,000,
Election or name of the candidate if the donation or transfer was so designated.
All funds disbursed from the “political activities” accounts must be publicly reported to the FEC with the following information:
Name of the person making the disbursement
Amount of each disbursement of more than $ 200 during the required period, the election to which the disbursement is made
Independent Expenditure-related candidate and whether the expenditure is directed in support of or opposition to the candidate
Electioneering Communication-related candidate who is the subject of the communication and whether the candidate is being supported or opposed through the expenditure.
Certification by the CEO or the head of the entity responsible, that the independent expenditure or electioneering communication is not made in coordination with a candidate, candidate committee or party committee.
Information so disclosed WILL be made public on the Inter net sites of the FEC, or other such Federal Government agencies that have access to the data.
All funds transferred from the “political activities” account for the purpose of a political expenditure, or that is not restricted for use for a political expenditure, must be publicly reported to the FEC with the following information:
Name of the transferor
Name of the recipient
Date and amount of the funds transferred
Whether the transferred funds are intended for use in a particular election or directed to a particular candidate and, if so, disclose the election and/or candidate.
ii. PROVIDING NOTICE TO SHAREHOLDERS DIRECTLY AND THROUGH
SEC FILINGS
All political expenditures made by a corporation should be disclosed within 24 hours on the corporation’s website with a clear link on the homepage; disclosed to shareholders directly on a quarterly basis; and comprehensively disclosed within the corporation’s annual report.
iii. REQUIRING LOBBYISTS TO DISCLOSE THEIR ACTIVITIES
All registrants under the Lobbying Disclosure Act must disclose the following information:
Every campaign expenditure in excess of $1000
Date it was received
Recipient
Name of each “covered candidate” or political party expressly identified in any electioneering communication
Running total of the political expenditures.
Such data disclosure is to be made available on .gov Web sites; as applicable.
5. PROVIDE LOWEST UNIT RATE FOR CANDIDATES AND PARTIES
If a corporation buys airtime to run ads on broadcast, cable, or satellite television that support or oppose a candidate, then that candidate and political party or political party committee is allowed to receive the lowest unit rate for that media market.
The broadcaster must also ensure that the candidate or political entity has reasonable access to airtime. This ensures that candidates and parties are not forced to run their advertisements at, say, 2:00 am when no one is watching, or be blocked from purchasing any advertising time at all.
Such criteria is to ONLY APPLY to the purchasing of Advertisement in support of or opposition to, election candidates. No further inroad into the Freedom of Speech via Broadcast Methods is allowed.
6. PREVENT CORPORATIONS FROM COORDINATING THEIR ACTIVITIES
WITH CANDIDATES AND PARTIES
The legislation ensures that corporations and others are not allowed to coordinate campaign-related expenditures with candidates and parties in violation of rules that require these expenditures to be independent. (These rules MUST be contained within the proposed legislation. A blind order is not tolerable.)
Current FEC rules bar corporations and unions from coordination with candidates and parties about most ads distributed within 90 days of a House or Senate primary election or within 90 days of the general election. For Presidential contests, current FEC rules allow coordination on ads referencing a presidential candidate 120 days before a state’s Presidential primary election and continuing in that state through the general election.
This legislation would do the following:
For House and Senate races, the legislation would ban coordination between a corporation or union and the candidate on ads referencing a Congressional candidate within 90 days of the primary through the general election.
For all federal elections, at any time before the 90- or 120-day window opens, it would ban coordination of ads between a corporation or union and the candidate when they promote, support, attack or oppose a candidate.
Include, For all Federal Elections, the same set of FEC rules apply to Foreign Institutions, Organizations, or Corporations or any other entity masking its intents via second or third level funding methods.
I didn’t say that all corporations are leftist. Certainly, nearly all the multimillionaires and billionaires I know (and I know quite a few from my time working in electronics startups) are liberal to Marxist. (Yes, multimillionaires who blather on about how brilliant Noam Chomsky is, when they aren’t racing their vintage Ferraris.)
The left consists largely of affluent to rich and extremely poor. Conservatives tend to be middle class. This is why in the 2004 election, Kerry had a clear advantage among white voters making $100,000 a year or more, while Bush had a majority of white voters making less than $100,000 a year. Something similar happened in the 20008 election, where Obama’s support was stronger than McCain’s among $100,000 a year and even more so, among $200,000 a year voters.
Soros being Jewish is quite irrelevant; Soros being a convicted fraud who has a history of manipulating currencies for his benefit–well, that’s just the sort of nasty capitalist that funds the left in America. Then there’s Bernie Madoff, another financier/crook who heavily funded the Democrats. And the Sandlers, who sold Golden West S&L and its subprime mortgage bomb to Wachovia just in time to make $2.4 billion (so that they could continue funding the Democrats).
Rich people aren’t ALWAYS on the left, but often enough that they keep the Democrats in business.
If you had read my article, you would see that I made exactly that point in a slightly different way: it isn’t direct bribery (although that sometimes happens), but the funding of politicians that agree tends to make them successful. If I could remove all money from the campaign process, I would. But then news organizations (overwhelmingly on the left) would then have even more influence than they have now, defeating the good of removing big money from the electoral process.
#22 HORTENSE WELLES: Why Hortense,how nice of you to stop sewing hammer and sickle emblems onto fake Stalinist memorabilia,and take a moment to think about my personal happiness!And they say Commies are heartless!See my post#9.It seems that your fellow feeble-minded libtard Javelin took my comment literally,(the one about throwing himself at you to rid the republic of 2 more free-speech-hating libtards)and is now lodged in your brain.Not to worry,it won’t affect the content of your posts!
deguello
Just wondering, does a hate filled crackpot who is so mentally and morally degenerate and unbalanced that he has to call anyone he disagrees with a Stalinist or similiar then threaten them have any friends or even family who still acknowledges kinship or friendship? I figured that two ugly crackpots like you and Delia might actually find some love and decency in each other, those qualities in you two that have eluded detection from the rest of the world.
Mr Cramer, Obama did very well in donations of all sizes and from all social classes. Maybe if your crappy article had any merit or soundness to begin with, you wouldn’t have to join the rest of the braindead geeks on this putrid message board to assault your critics with more dishonest addendum.
#29 HORTENSE WELLES:Stop wondering Hortense,I know the truth hurts ,but that’s the price you have to pay for being exposed. Anyone who trashes the first amendment the way you do,deserves contempt and loathing.Like all “liberals”,you are a crypto stalinist,who hates freedom,and wants to impose demented government control by force.Now get back to tie-dyeing your Che t-shirts,and sewing pictures of Stalin on anti-macassars.BTW:How are you coping?What with climate change exposed as another statist fraud;3 catastrophic elections;one more demtard senate seat going Bayh,Bayh;The marxoid affirmative action dweeb’s polls tanking,not to mention the pro freedom SCOTUS decision, you must be reaching for your crack. How’s that hope and change working out for you HORTENSE? Free speech’s a bitch ain’t it?