US Supreme Court creates million-$ loopholes!

Campaign-Contributions: No limits for the ‘One’ Percent.....

April 19, 2014, 4:14 pm 

"It says here that you gave a lot of money to both parties and neither expected nor received anything in return. Very nice, but we’ll have to put you in the "crazy’ section".

by Selvam Canagaratna

"What he [the Chief Justice] is saying here is that a giant barrel of money given to a candidate doesn’t, in and of itself, represent ‘buying’ that 
candidate."

– Chez Pazienza, The Daily Banter (April 2, 2014)

Small wonder Pazienza’s piece, written hot on the heels of the Court’s 5-4 majority ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC, was headlind ‘The Supreme Court Just Screwed Us All’ – which the publication also hailed as the ‘Quote of the Day’.

In writing the majority opinion that struck down existing overall limits on individual campaign contributions, US Chief Justice John Roberts noted: "Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder’s official duties, does not give rise to such quid pro quo corruption. Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner ‘influence over or access to’ elected officials or political parties."

Commented Pazienza: "The naïveté on display – either from Roberts himself or in what he expects from us, the docile masses – truly is staggering." The self-supporting ‘theory’ the Chief Justice propounded, but this time with the force of law, remember, is that unless a campaign donation came with explicitly stated ‘expectations’ from a donor, it was not a form of corruption.

"This of course completely ignores the reality that a plutocrat drowning his favourite candidates in cash to get them elected makes it entirely unnecessary to have to enter into a verbal or written agreement with those candidates in exchange for all that largesse. The quid pro quo is implied – and that’s what makes the whole deal so f***ing insidious."

The Supreme Court’s latest decision further eroded America’s practically non-existent campaign finance laws, making it even easier for the super-wealthy to purchase political and legislative authority the same way they’d purchase a new mansion or another yacht, wrote Pazienza. "The Court has decided that money is a form of speech, that it truly does ‘talk’, and that it should be afforded all the Constitutional protection you or I do in voicing our (increasingly worthless) opinions on who should lead our country and ostensibly represent us. We still have a say, but with McCutcheon and Citizens United before that, those with outrageous amounts of money now have a much larger say, and if you think those people will be funneling funds toward candidates who want to work for us, the tragic assholes in Steerage Class, you’re out of your mind."

If there was any kind of balance between the wealthy and the poor in this country, or even a robust and expansive middle-class to speak of any more, today’s sharply divided partisan decision by the high court would still be a devastating blow to a good 97% of America, wrote Pazienza. "Considering the state we’re already in when it comes to income and wealth inequality, though, the blow is just about fatal. When money can buy elections with legal sanction from the highest court in the land, nobody’s going to be looking out for you and me because our wants and needs simply don’t matter and we don’t have the cash to pay to get them anyway.

"If America wasn’t officially a plutocracy before, it damn sure is now," concluded Pazienza.

The most perceptive reader-response to Pazienza’s piece was: "Reading about the fall of past empires has always entertained me, but watching my nation fall apart is heartbreaking."

Jeffrey Toobin writing in The New Yorker was perturbed by what, in his view, the McCutcheon ruling foreshadowed. "If you think the Supreme Court decision was bad, just wait: worse may be on the way."

Toobin interpreted the Chief Justice’s opinion as being indicative "that the Court remains committed to the project announced most prominently in the Citizens United case, four years ago: the deregulation of American political campaigns."

"The court, and Roberts in particular, has been very clear that regulation of campaign contributions is allowed under a single rationale. As he wrote in McCutcheon, "It is not an acceptable governmental objective to ‘level the playing field’, or to ‘level electoral opportunities’, or to ‘equalize the financial resources of candidates’. Rather, Roberts wrote, "Congress may target only a specific type of corruption – ‘quid pro quo’ corruption."

But what is ‘quid pro quo’ corruption [CJ’s version] and what can Congress do about it? In Toobin’s view, Roberts was clearer about what ‘quid pro quo’ corruption was not than about what it was.

Added Toobin: "In other words, Roberts is defining ‘quid pro quo’ corruption almost as outright bribery, which Congress can outlaw. But the implication of what Roberts is saying is that anything short of outright bribery is protected by the First Amendment!

"Roberts is dismissive of the objections to deregulating campaigns and full of sympathy for the plight of those denied the ability to contribute as much money as they would prefer. He writes that under the current law, ‘A donor must limit the number of candidates he supports, and may have to choose which of several policy concerns he will advance – clear First Amendment harms’, adding that ‘the whole point of the First Amendment is to afford individuals protection against such infringements.’ Adds Toobin: "In an almost Orwellian recasting, Roberts calls giving money ‘participating in an electoral debate’!"

"Every Chief Justice takes on a project," concluded Toobin. "Earl Warren wanted to desegregate the South. Warren Burger wanted to limit the rights of criminal suspects. William Rehnquist wanted to revive the powers of the states. It increasingly appears likely that, for John Roberts, the project will be removing the limits that burden wealthy campaign contributors – the ‘whole point’ of the First Amendment, as he sees it. So far, that project is doing pretty well."

Rob Hager, a public interest litigator writing in CounterPunch magazine, recalled Roberts’ performance in 2006: "Instead of the ‘umpire with no agenda’ that he disingenuously promised the Senate when his nomination was under consideration, CJ Roberts has given us the opposite. Then he said: ‘Umpires don’t make the rules, they apply them’. A former schoolmate of Roberts described him in a way that applies to his pretense of not inventing new rules: ‘He could take an argument that was borderline absurd and argue for it so well that you were almost at the point of having to accept his stance even though it was intuitively obvious that it was absurd’. And he has now committed serial acts of ‘treason to the constitution’ by usurping legislative power in the service of plutocracy." [Worth remembering Roberts was appointed by the very President whose re-election he helped to steal!]

"Roberts misses the irony in his statement that ‘those who govern should be the last people to help decide who should govern’," wrote Hager. "He thinks he is aiming that platitude at Congress under the pretense that Congress governs. But Congress does not govern under the Supreme Court’s judicial supremacy ideology. The Court now governs, and Congress is paid by plutocrats to leave the Court in charge of corrupting its elections. The Court has proven once again that, as the Constitution itself provides, it should have no role whatsoever in inventing new election law contrary to that which the people themselves desire."

Justice Breyer, dissenting, said the ruling created "a loophole measured in the millions."

Gene Nichol, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina, described Roberts’ ‘grotesque hypocrisy’ thus: "Never has there been so wide a chasm between the jurist calculatingly advertised and the one subsequently, knowingly, delivered."