Citizens United

Citizens United

In January, we said:

With lobbyists already such an imposing force on Capitol Hill, you might think that the Supreme Court would rule against expanding the powers of corporations to spend money influencing politicians and public policy, but you would be absolutely incorrect. Thursday, the US Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of Citizens United, a conservative corporation non-profit corporation, to reverse years of legislation forbidding companies to spend money on ads for political campaigns, essentially setting back any campaign finance reform indefinitely.
Corporations can now use their overall profit to support any candidate, PAC, or special interest group publicly, giving them more lobbying power for various issues and more pull over candidates and elected officials. It is paramount to our country's future that elected officials answer to people rather than companies, and this new decision will put the opinions of corporations over constituants.

The Supreme Court's decision has real-world ramifications. This ruling is not disconnected from actual campaigns, rather, it has given way to the brand-new 'Super PAC', whose spending- especially on ads- is practically unlimited.
These PACs have already poured money into the midterms in an unprecedented way. Districts that were previously won with maybe a million dollars spent by all groups involved with every candidate, like Rep. Peter Defazio's, are now multi-million dollar affairs- and these are just the Congressional elections. Imagine what this means for the 2012 presidential race. This sort of inflation of campaign value renders individuals irrelevant. All the power now belongs to the PACs, who are in turn funded primarily by large corporations.
The base problem with the court's ruling is a corporations is not a person. Its owners are, its employees are, but it is not. In America, we treat corporations legally as individuals, but this was never intended to render them equivalent to US citizens. Socially, a corporation is not a person- it cannot vote, and it shouldn't be able to throw money at an election. Even if the idea of a corporation being a person was upheld, therefore keeping the rationale of the decision being one of free speech, it would still not be valid. The entire premise of the first amendement rights is that they are inalienable until they infringe upon the rights of someone else, and the new powers of corporations according to the ruling would decrease the validity of the free speech of an individual. Regardless, a corporation is not a person.
The Koch brothers, raw material moguls who fund politically active groups like the 'grassroots' organization Americans for Prosperity, just have one vote each. Their votes are equal to every other citizens, not inflated due to the millions- or even billions- of dollars behind them. Their access to nearly unlimited funds combined with the new ruling gives the Koch brothers much, much more influence over politicians than everyday constituants.
The same is true of every other mogul or corporate group with enough spare funds to fuel a Super PAC. Maybe the new addition of Elena Kagen- whose first official day as a justice last week marks the unprecedented presence of three female justices- will result in the Court reassessing the role of corporations in the increasingly money-based political system, but, in all likelihood, it won't.


[Photo credits: CNN.com and WashintonPost.com]

Read more »

Primaries (Part Two)

Primaries (Part Two)

As campaign season looms before us, we will take a look at the initial primary results as a gauge for the attitude of the nation and as foreshadowing for midterms. 
California
Republican primary: Steve Poizner was defeated by Meg Whitman for the California nomination for Governor. Poizner, who is very state-security oriented, is slightly more conservative than the economically-oriented Whitman, who has supported current Democratic Senator Barbra Boxer in the past.
Iowa
Republican primary: Though the tea-party buzz is far from dying down, in Iowa yet another tea-party candidate lost to their more moderate counterpart. Bob Vander Plaats was defeated by former Iowa Governor Terry Brandstad.
Nevada
Republican primary: Under national focus due to the fallibility of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Republican nomination for the Nevadan Senate seat was won by Sharron Angle, a tea party favorite. Though Reid has often been seen as unlikely to win his seat back, the addition of such a right-wing, tea party candidate could be beneficial. Reid's relative moderate leanings could prove a tremendous advantage when facing Angle. Angle defeated Nevada Republican Chairwoman Sue Lowden.
Arkansas
Runoff: Blanche Lincoln, in a multi-million dollar race, trumped challenger Arkansas Lt. Governor Bill Halter in a runoff election after the initial primary. Lincoln's win not only marks another win by an incumbent (which is only relevant because of the supposed anti-incumbent attitude in America), but also a union loss. Halter, who was backed by unions and various environmental organizations, fell to Lincoln, a notorious blue-dog Democrat.

Read more »

British Election

British Election

In the UK, the debate between the three frontrunners for the upcoming election for Prime Minister- current Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the Labour Party, David Cameron of the Conservative Party, and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats party- has rearranged the conventional expectations of who will become a frontrunner come election day. Brown, who was originally expected to sweep the race, has been surpassed both by current leader Cameron and, shockingly, by Clegg, who was never expected to be relevant in the general election. Suffering through a mild controversy this week, Brown was unable to bounce back and retake the debate in a way that would have asserted his power as a candidate, rather, he allowed Clegg to engage Cameron in a volatile and image-assisting conversation, effectively shutting Brown out of the argument.

Currently, though election-day projections may argue otherwise, Clegg is the new runner-up to Cameron, leading to a possibility of a Liberal Democrat victory, which has not happened in the UK in years. The Conservative Party has gone through a lot of controversy in the last few years for various comments and positions that have been seen by some as overly mean or intolerant, and this along with Brown’s recent verbal blunder when he called an older woman “bigoted,” the Liberal Democrats may have finally been given their chance.
A Liberal Democratic win may be the best thing for Britain, who was hit hard by the economic crisis and who has started to investigate into the Goldman Sachs fraud along with the United States. The Liberal Democrats would bring a new wave of regulation to the British banks and would possibly be able to prevent such wide-scale banking fraud to occur again in the UK. Still, it is likely that Cameron will win the office, ensuring that any efforts to regulate will be eschewed and quite possibly reversed.

Read more »

Last Summer's Protests: Tehran, Iran

Last Summer's Protests: Tehran, Iran

On June 11th, 2009, President Ahmadinejad of Iran was reelected with a sweeping victory- in fact, he, as a Reactionary Party candidate, won almost forty-four percent of the Reformist Party’s votes. This result surprised both the people of Iran and the world. It was expected that the slightly more moderate Reformist candidate Musavid would defeat Ahmadinejad due to changing popular opinion in Iran. Iran has a history of vote rigging, and many foreign affairs or Iran experts such as Richard Engle (F.A. Correspondent- NBC) and Bobby Ghosh (Time Magazine) believe it likely that votes were illegally rigged by the President’s administration, a skepticism held also by some parts of the Iranian government. On June 19th, the riots were temporarily stopped while Iran’s Supreme Leader spoke out against the protests. As of June 24th, the protests have led to a death toll between ten and twenty-five Iranians, notably including several high-profile deaths on the streets. In addition, many protest leaders and advocates have been arrested and detained, according to the MSNBC Tehran correspondent.
As all of this has been going on in Iran, Congressmen and the White House have been clashing on how to react and respond to the situation on the streets on Tehran. The Republicans, as a rule, have been pushing for the very pro-Reformist position by the US and US assistance for the rebels. The White House, Democratic Congressmen, and a few key Republican senators such as Senator Lugar of the Foreign Relations committee, however, have taken a more moderate route, enforcing that the US is against violence but not interfering. “We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal right to assembly and free speech must be respected. And the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.” Richard Wolffe, a MSNBC Political Analyst, notes of the Republican, most notably Lindsey Gramm, position, “…if you’re going to talk tough, you really do have to back it up with something. Otherwise, you actually look weaker.” Bobby Ghosh notes that talking tough is a bad idea either way. “To speak out now would be to weaken whatever resistance [to Ahmadinijad] there is, and, in fact, it would put people in harm’s way,” he states. Already, the Iranian regime is accusing the US of interfering in the voting process.
As of December, the protests have silenced- at least in the American media- and any resistance to Ahmadinejad have been on an international scale (UN, etc).

Read more »