Meehan: “Worst Campaign Finance Reform Case in History”
Posted by Marie on 22 Jan 2010 at 04:19 pm | Tagged as: Federal, Greater Lowell, History, Lowell
UMass Lowell Chancellor Marty Meehan
Marty Meehan - UMASS Lowell Chancellor and former member of the U. S. House of Representative - who co-author the ground-breaking campaign finance reform bill in 2002 told Globe staffer Susan Milligan that he was devasted by the U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down yesterday. Passage of campaign finance reform was a hallmark of Meehan’s career in the Congress. The sharply divided Supreme Court came down on the side of corporations and labor unions in a ruling that allows them the same standing as an indivdual having constitutionally protected rights of free speech - to wit the right to spend any amount of money in support of a candidate as long as it is “disclosed.”
“I think it’s the worst campaign finance reform case in Supreme Court history,’’ Meehan said in an interview. “The court has abandoned longstanding judicial principles and precedents, and I believe this decision will result in influence-buying and corruption. The decision will empower financial companies, banks and energy companies to spend millions of dollars to elect federal candidates.’’
Read the full article here.
This is an astounding ruling. It nullifies nearly a century of election finance reform legislation. It means that all future political contestants will have to deal with the constant threat of overwhelming financial onslaught from powerful unions, corporations, and other special interests.
The opinion is grounded on the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech, not the freedom of speech guaranteed to citizens, but a free speech guarantee as interpreted to apply to other legal entities i.e. corporations, unions, etc.
This opinion ignores the public good. It sets the stage for massive, single issue campaign spending by the most financially powerful institutions in the country. It changes the dynamics for all future political campaigns, and it will be another powerful deterrent to un-connected political aspirants. Only persons with firm ties to deep-pocketed special interests will stand a chance of competing in such a rapacious arena.
I don’t always agree with Justice Stevens, but I think he got it just about right in his dissent when he argues, “…In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it,’’ and “They cannot vote or run for office.’’
This Supreme Court went out of its way to select this case. Then, instead of making a limited ruling which would have satisfied the issues raised, the court chose to go well beyond what was necessary. This court chose to sweep aside much of our existing financial restraints on elections.
The result in this case gives us every reason to believe that this Supreme Court may now be embarking on an intentional course of judicial activism. We could be in for an era of real surprise and real change from this court. We should all stay tuned.
[...] Times also ran an editorial that puts the impact of this decision in perspective. As Marie reports here, UMass Chancellor and former U.S. Representative Marty Meehan had a similar reaction to the [...]
Why should I donate any money to someone’s campaign now. I will be out spent tenfold by corporations.
Corporations will crush unions to a point that they no longer excise. This gets down to the town selectmen and city council level. We may have political ads on TV(like car insurance companies do now) and robo calls 365 days a year.
All this does is bring us back to where we used to be, and the world revolved just fine. Dems got elected. Repubs got elected. Everyone bitched about money ruling campaigns, etc, etc..
It’s not like anything chaged with finance reform. Money still decides things. I didn’t hear you folks complaining when Obama was piling up the dough. Though I guess you’re upset now because those giant loopholes the unions could funnel money through don’t mean so much now that big business will be able to outspend them, huh?
@Right in Lowell:
What is stopping, say Pfizer, from spending a bajillion dollars on ads attacking some senator because he supports drug reimportation, or the government negotiating pharma prices for Medicare to keep costs down? You really don’t see a problem with this?
And if Dems and Reps still get elected at the same rates after this, it will be because candidates will learn to pander to giant corporations even more than they do now.
If you don’t see the difference between the situation before and the situation now than you are out of your mind!
Yes there were a lot of loopholes in campaign finance law, but those were still loopholes being exploited by individuals. Unions are not the same as businesses. Unions are membership organizations. Unions don’t create profits on their own, they simply argue for better wages for their workers (call it extorting the poor businesses, whatever). Do unions have a ton of cash on hand that they use for political purposes, yes, but that is problem. But comparing unions, nonprofit membership organizations, to corporations is insane. A more apt comparison is something like the Chamber of Commerce. They could do anything unions have done for years. This “loophole” you speak of is neither right nor left.
But what was the situation before? Before you may have had high level union personnel or high level business executives on an individual level deciding to put their money and their names on donations to political causes. Now the floodgates are open for businesses to campaign for or against candidates as if they were advertising a product. You don’t see the stark difference there?
Before if I go to Wal Mart, I know that there’s a decent chance that Wal Mart executives may use their own individual funds to donate to candidates I don’t like. But that is them as individuals. That is something people should be able to understand, its their own individual money and they are entitled to their opinion just like anybody else. Now lets see, I go to Wal Mart, Wal Mart as a corporation makes profits and uses these profits to directly influence our elections.
Why do individuals make campaign contributions? Many different reasons. Maybe they are hardcore conservative businessmen but they support gay marriage so they decide to support candidates on more progressive issues. Do you think Wal Mart corporation would allow such individual thought? Of course not. They will only support candidates that make business conditions for their individual business. Personally I am willing to sit back and say, hey I make barely enough money to pay the bills and Mr. CEO makes hundreds of times that, but at least we each are playing by the same rules. People and corporations do not play by the same rules. Because corporations (or unions) are not people. Corporations ARE special interests.
“Now lets see, I go to Wal Mart, Wal Mart as a corporation makes profits and uses these profits to directly influence our elections.”
Reinvestment to make even more profit.
“Now lets see, I go to Wal Mart, Wal Mart as a corporation makes profits and uses these profits to directly influence our elections.”
Reinvestment to make even more profit.
—–
Thats exactly the problem, one of the fiercest criticisms of government is that too many special interests are trying to game the system. Allowing entities that serve a specific goal (maximizing profits) the same (and truthfully, more) rights than people who are complex individuals are not good. And I am not a fan of PACs or things of that matter.
Defenders of this ruling are basically supporting one specific set of special interests above all others. Profit-seeking/making enterprises are a cornerstone of our society. Obviously our country cannot succeed without them. However they are not deserving of better or equal rights to influencing elections as individual private citizens.
I think there is a big difference between political causes and business interests. One is a concious decision made by a donor or volunteer for a cause. Others are profits made from market exchange.
Joe, James, EPD, et al.
The exact thing you decry is exactly what we had before. The country ran just fine. Some would say better.
If you for one minute think corporations and special interests haven’t always influenced our politicians, whether the old system, the finance reform system, or what we’re going to have now, you’re sadly naive.
In the late nineteenth century politics was so corrupt in the US because the moneyed interests could purchase votes. This eventually ushered in the so-calledProgressive era in US history when numerous reforms were put inplace to try to damp down big corporations buying the kind of government they wanted and needed to gouge consumers, sell tainted meat and adulterated drugs to unsuspecting comsumers, charge excessive rates to move farm freight over the rails, etc.
The Senate was known as the ‘million dollar Senate’ because that is what it would cost to make certain your political and economic interests were protected and thta unfavorable legislation disappeared. The rail trust, the wool trust, the sugar trust, the meatpacking trust, the steel trust ruled. Different key industries today - but the parallels are evident.
This ruling returns us to the same junk once more. And, so much for the maxim ‘one person, one vote’. How is it ever going to be possible that my single vote matches the corrupting influence of a check with lots of 00000000s?
I am for less special interests and am under no illusions that the Democrats are any better than the Republicans when it comes to taking their money. I know there were holes in McCain-Feingold. But this isn’t the same, this isn’t rich people influencing elections with their own personal fortunes for candidates who support their own personal interests in tune with their corporate occupation. Although the impact of money on the electoral process is always troubling, as a freedom of speech issue, the preceding example is fine. Instead we have nameless faceless entities being given the same rights as human beings.
Let me put it another way. I still consider the union-corporation comparison weak. The only reason unions are in the same catergory is they often have some sort of mandatory membership. Most special interest groups are associations of people volunteering their money and effort towards a cause. Whoever gets to decide where and how corporations use their business-not personal-money for political causes has tremendous amounts of power over money that isn’t theirs and was given to them for the purpose of making money, not furthering political causes.
I am just curious to hear this response. If direct corporate involvement in political campaigning is considered protected freedom of speech than why not public insitutions too? Why can’t the local school principal use some of their funds for electioneering? Or, since Deval Patrick is friends with Barack Obama, he figures that Obama will help Massachusetts get more jobs, money, whatever. So as the “chief executive” of the state, he uses state money to influence election (obviously a somewhat extremely ridiculous example but thats what the Supreme Court is supposed to consider) What if the “Commonwealth of Massachusetts” endorses Obama for president and started using its funds for advertising. Why shouldn’t public institutions granted the same freedom of expression under the Roberts Court? It certainly can be argued that a corporation with low wage laborers who is only looking to maximize profits will lobby for a huge tax cut that could devastate public education and the local school system won’t be able to use its funds for the same causes. There will be considerable opposition. But it will come from individuals working together. Like it has been and like it should be. But the advantage still goes to the ones with the biggest checkbooks. And if they can maximize profits by putting favorable candidates in office, they will do whatever they can to influence people to do so.
I am one of those who thought the Campaign Finance law was treading on Free Speech. Worse, once we decide that there is a limit to Free Speech people will find more and more socially desirable reasons to limit Free Speech. It will slowly grow to where we will begin to look like Canada, with its Human Rights Commission looking into what people say that might offend other people, and then punishing them. Do you think we would have that Canadian refugee Mark Steyn up in New Hampshire if it wasn’t for the way those not toeing the line are treated up there in Canada?
Yes, we now have to worry about members of the US Congress being bought, as this comment by Trey, at the Ann Althouse blog points out:
“Yeah, this decision really worries me. Now, congressmen like John Murtha will be bribed, while before this decisions they were honest.”
Frankly, John Murtha is a blow-in and I resent the way he has brought disrepute to the City of my birth, but the idea that corruption will now come to or even return to DC seems a little “head in the sand” like.
And, as Law Professor Ann Althouse points out, the President’s response seems a little over the top (and she voted for him):
“President Obama’s response was that he needs ‘to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.’”
Is he going to send in the Park Police and clear out the Supreme Court Building? Ms Althouse suggests the proper response would have been:
“I would expect a politician to tend to the voters’ feelings. Obama should have said that he would like to explore ways to write a new statute that will respect the rights the Court has articulated and still serve the good and proper goals that the defective statute was meant to serve. With some sugar about how rights are important.”
It is up to us true liberals, the followers of Adam Smith and Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to make the point about “how rights are important.” I know that Judge Richard A Posner appears to have gone to the other side, but, that sense of the importance of Freedom still exists out there across the fruited plain.
And, finally, each of us is a special interest, and in varying combinations we are more special interests. The number of possible special interests is staggering. The solution is for the voters to say to themselves, “We will vote out everyone if they don’t get the Federal debt under control and stop running up the taxes.” Job One being to get the Federal debt under control so the country doesn’t roll over and sink.
Regards — Cliff
Corporate speech is limited and highly regulated. Think it isn’t?
Can Ford say the F-150 gets 75MPG Highway?
Can Pfizer pitch their skinny pills w/o telling you how they might give you a heart attack?
As a person, I can choose to take Position A or Position Z. It is my choice. What speech that gushes forth from me is dependent on my disposition and attitude at that time in my life. That is to say, it is subject to wimsy and muse. It is persuadable.
How will a corporation speak? Is is presuadable?
The way I understand a corporation is that it is an entity that is locked into a fiduciary to it’s shareholders fiscal well being. It has a singualr consideration. So, is it’s speech truly free? No, imo. The speech of a corporation is predetermined by its fiducisary.
Is then the corporation a proxy voice for its shareholders? Yikes. If that is the case, many shareholders may sell, if they see their “voice” speak against their private positions. Will corporate America become politically polarized with Republicans buying into Elephant Inc., while Dems sell off their shares to re-invest in Donkey Corp.?
I have a bad feeling about this ruling.
Because public institutions owe their entire existence to public/taxpayer money, James. Bad example.
Don’t corporations owe their entire (legal) existence to being legally recognized by the state?
They’re not funded by taxpayer money
Look, I know my hypothetical example is absolutely ridiculous, but its not nearly the same jump that the Supreme Court has made here (and yes in the old California RR case that it has cited as precedent).
The jump between individuals having certain rights and for-profit organizations having the same rights is not nearly the same jump from private organizations to public organizations.
In reality, Corporations only exist on paper. They are not born, they cannot die. They don’t have emotions. They exist for an expressed purpose of making money. Public organizations have aims much more in line with the purpose of government than private corporations.
Human beings are much more complex “individuals” than corporations. To consider them the same when it comes to 1st Amendment rights is a huge jump from what the Founding Fathers wanted. Hell the Boston Tea Party that some conservatives have suddenly taken interest in wasn’t so much a protest against the British government as much as it was a protest against the East India Tea Company corporation. The modern concept of “corporations” did not exist when the constitution was written. They did not live in perpuity. They were granted charters by the government.
In government, you have elected officials excercising control over other people’s money. In private and public corporations, you have the same thing. Sure the ways in which the money is accumulated are completely different. Aside from that though, neither one is the same as an individual human being.
James, there is absolutely no provision in the Constitution limiting donations to campaigns, be it from individuals, corporations or for-profit and non-profit organizations. No amount of verbal gymnastics will make it so.
You can decry this decision all you want, but all it does is return us to where the country always was before the most recent attempts at campaign finance reform. Reform that failed miserabaly, I might add.