Nary a peep of protest
The Supreme Court gives corporations the biggest megaphone
Nary a peep of protest
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
Remember how conservatives always complain about "unelected judges" who "legislate from the bench" and "make the law?" Remember how they always insist that judges should respect judicial precedents, bow to the wisdom of our elected legislative bodies, and respect the literal wording of the Constitution? Remember how they restated their convictions last summer while trying to tag Sonia Sotomayor as an "activist judge?"
Well, there was an historic development at the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday: Five Republican appointees, constituting a narrow majority, decreed that the political playing field shall henceforth be tilted in favor of the special interests with the deepest pockets - namely, the corporations of America, which, until yesterday's ruling, had been barred by law from pumping their money directly into election campaigns ever since 1907.
These five Republican appointees reached their decision by simply sweeping away a century of congressional laws and decades of high court rulings. In short, they disrespected judicial precedent, thumbed their noses at our elected representatives, and ignored the literal wording of the Constitution - which speaks only of "we the people" and says nothing about the rights of corporations.
And yet there has been nary a peep of protest from conservatives about yesterday's "activist" behavior.
Starting with the '07 law signed by Theodore Roosevelt, congressmen and presidents had deemed it essential that corporations not be permitted to run wild with their money in federal campaigns, lest their inevitably huge megaphones drown out everybody else. A string of Supreme Court rulings have upheld such laws, some as recently as 1990 and 2003. And even way back in 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that corporations don't have the same rights as people; in his words, a corporation is "an artificial being, invisible, intangible. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence."
So there it was: the ban on corporate campaign donations has long been settled law; indeed, as recently as six years ago, the high court specifically ruled that the ban "has been firmly embedded in our law." Yet now we have John Roberts and his four GOP cohorts sweeping it all away, behaving as "activist judges."
(Corporations have long been putting money into elections via various indirect routes, such as trade associations and political action committees. But this ruling takes off the handcuffs, allowing them to dip directly into their general treasuries. The ruling also frees up labor unions to spend directly, but we all know that corporations have a lot more to spend than labor does. To get a rough idea, here's a stat: During the last election cycle, the Fortune 100 companies alone reportedly posted combined revenues of $13 trillion.)
Anyway, care to tally up the number of conservatives and Republicans who, over the past 24 hours, have assailed the Roberts majority for making law from the bench? As far as I can tell, zip.
If they are really true to their professed convictions, if they have any desire to be intellectually consistent, they would point out what Roberts himself said back in 2005, during his confirmation hearings: "I do think that it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent. Precedent plays an important role in prompting stability and evenhandedness...It is not enough that you may think that the prior decision was wrongly decided." Roberts even paraphrased a line from Founding Father Alexander Hamilton: "To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the judges, they need to be bound down by rules and precedents."
Yet now Roberts has deemed himself unbound - functioning more as the judicial arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which naturally applauded the ruling) - and conservatives who routinely inveigh against "activist judges" have conveniently fallen mute. It's obvious why. They're just fine with "judicial activism" as long as it yields the kind of ruling they like. And a ruling that unleashes corporate cash tickles their free-market fancy. All that matters is the end result; how a ruling was reached is irrelevant. Unless a ruling strikes them as liberal. Then it's "judicial activism."
I think the word for all this is hypocrisy.
-------
The Massachusetts Senate election has roiled the political waters. I talked about that story earlier today on Philadelphia National Public Radio. A columnist from The Boston Globe joined in by phone. The hour-long show is archived here.
Mr. Polman when you say 5 gop appointed justices you leave out the fact that Justice Kennedy has been voting with the liberal side of the court for 3 decades now. Imho, McCain-Feingold put too many restrictions on free speech by corporations. It thus swayed the balance of money in federal elections & if you look at how much Pres. Obama raised over what McCain raised it tells the story. It was ironic that McCain was hampered by his own law in 2008 & this decision tries to fix that wrong, imo.— NEPhilly- The highest responsibility for any SCOTUS Justice is to uphold the Constitution, even over precedent. Most conservatives look at this as a free speech issue rooted in the Constitution, not some arbitrary right that truly activist judges try to find there. And note that this is based on principle, not self interest. All evidence of historical giving by "corporate interests" shows that corporate giving to Democrats far exceeds that given to Republicans.— Mirror
- Corporations are not people. I have no problems with them having different rights. What next, isn't it patently unfair that corporations can't hold office?— mo480
- The more I read on this the more I think this is all much to do about nothing. It should also be pointed out that the notion that big business is a dependable backer of the GOP is a myth. The crony capitalism that the bank bailouts have highlighted in the past two years has aptly illustrated the fact that many industries, including the denizens of Wall Street, have a stronger loyalty to corporate welfare that benefits them than they do to the principles of free enterprise. The steady flow of money from firms such as Goldman, Sachs (the principal survivor and beneficiary of the latest shakedowns) to Democratic candidates like Obama is proof of this.
- tom: (partially from the last blog) - unions were covered under the same laws as corporations. They were not free to donate as late as they liked. What bothers me most about this ruling is that the court seemed to be searching for a case to make this ruling. The case focused on a narrow technical area, and the suit as filed was NOT challenging those provisions that the court overturned.— still_independent
Comment removed.- Comment removed.
- swedesboromike : the large corporations (with certain exceptions, like energy companies) have no loyalty to either party. They tend to give more to the party in charge. Yes, Goldman Sachs money has gone more to Ds than Rs - the past couple of years. When the Rs held both houses, the majority of the money went to the Rs. Also, there is an important distinction here. When you are referring the the money coming from "Goldman Sachs", that's actually money coming from the employees of that company as individuals - this is completely legal, and unchanged. What this ruling addressed is spending by Goldman Sachs, the corporate entity. For now, corporations can not give money directly to candidates. However, it will probably only be a matter of time until this is overturned. If the underpinnings of this ruling are that corporations as an entity have first ammendment rights (which seems sort of ridiculous, imho - corporations are an entity created under federal law, not the constitution), then how can they be banned from giving directly to candidates?— still_independent
- The decision also left standing the federal ban on direct corporate contributions to candidates, enacted in 1907. The narrative that is going on right now from the left appears to fraud. Once again counting on the dimwitedness of the electorate to not be informed. This only means that corporation are free to advertise in support of politicians just as George Soros of Moveon.org has been free to spend his billions in support of Democrats. And believe me, the democrats get plenty of corporate donations as well. In fact Big Business loves Big Democrats because they enact regulations that stifle free market competition.
- Still Independent- I agree with you. But why the feigned outrage from the left as they are as guilty as anyone of accepting money from corporatons?
- bog o cheese: you're being a bit misleading when you wrote "in 2004 the agency investigated whether a book written by George Soros critical of George W. Bush violated campaign laws" . It's technically true, but they investigated because he did not make required reports of money spent on his promotion of the book. It had nothing to do with whether the contents of the book violated any election law, as you were implying.— still_independent
- Of course the left has no problem with movies that Michael Moore makes. Yesterday I was not liking this ruling until I read more about it. This is all a bunch of phony outrage on the part of the left. It sure has not been a good week for you.
- swedesboromike : for the same reason Fox was crying last night about the unions now being able to spend. It's their way to spin the story. I'm fine with lifting ALL the bans - so long as there is full and immediate disclosure (say 72 hours, instead of the 30 days it is now). Well, maybe a ban in the last 72 hours (doesn't mean you couldn't run ads the last three days, you just would have to have booked, bought and reported them prior) so you couldn't flood a campaign with money and no one would no about it until after the election.— still_independent
- Still Independent- But this is all about political advertisements. I have always questioned the effectiveness of the television campaign ads. By line one I've already switched to another channel.
- swedesboromike : Moore's movies may be (and usually are) complete garbage, but you'd have a hard time arguing that any of them were created solely to advocate for the election of a candidate. Nor were they created and sceduled to release within 60 days of an election. The standard (and I admit it's subjective) is that it banned, within 60 days of an election, communications "susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate" paid for by a corporation. "Hillary, the movie" fell into this category, according to the FEC. So even if you want to argue that "Farenheight 911" met this criteria (a stretch), it would only apply in the 60 days leading up to an election... Where the outrage comes from is that a) this ruling ignored a LOT of precedent, and b) wasn't even the point being argued before the court. Again, the US Sc took a narrow case and used it to issue a ruling on a much larger (and somewhat different) issue.— still_independent
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
ARCHIVES
All commentaries posted before April 18, 2008, can be accessed at www.dickpolman.blogspot.com.
- American Spectator
- David Limbaugh
- Free Republic
- Glenn Reynolds
- Hugh Hewitt
- Human Events
- John Hawkins
- Matt Lewis
- Michelle Malkin
- National Review
- Opinion Journal
- Power Line
- Red State
- The Brody File
- The Daily Caller
- Town Hall
- Weekly Standard
- Center for American Progress
- Crooks and Liars
- Daily Kos
- David Corn
- Huffington Post
- Media Matters
- Mojoblog (Mother Jones)
- Open Left
- Political Animal
- Salon's War Room
- Talking Points Memo
- Tapped
- The Democratic Strategist
- The Grey Matter
- Unclaimed Territory
- Andrew Sullivan
- Attytood
- Chi Tribune's The Swamp
- CJR's Campaign Desk
- CNN's Political Ticker
- CQ Politics
- FactCheck.org
- Gail Collins
- Howard Kurtz
- Mickey Kaus
- NBC's First Read
- Obit
- Political Wire
- Politico
- Politics Daily
- Pollster.com
- Real Clear Politics
- The Atlantic Wire
- The Fix
- The Moderate Voice
- The Plank
- USA Today On Politics
- Wonkette
