Cenk Ugyur reports on the new proposal for unfettered circumvention of current law.
“In 2010 alone, GOP congress members received more than $58,797,874 in contribution from the financial industry. They are not your representatives. They are the representatives of the multinational corporations who buy them.”
At 2:30 of the video, Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the relatively few members of Congress with any scruples, discusses the need to “take apart” Citizens United, including the need to pass a constitutional amendment pointing out that a corporation is not a person. At 4:00, see the arrogant quote by Republican James Bopp, who believes that money runs everything and that there is no way for the people to fight back. We need to “educate and organize.” Sanders argues that there is to fight this corruption using a grass roots movement.
How genuine are the philosophical arguments of the politicians who are seeking the free flow of money from big corporations to politicians? See Sanders’ discussion at 7:00.
Ugyur aims his arrows at Republicans but Sanders, the only Independent representative sitting in the Senate, points out the problem extends to Democrats too.
Eric Alterman, writing at The Nation (June 6, 2011):
"How about a political system in which only one side has any money with which to run campaigns? Rosanna Fiske, chair and chief executive of the Public Relations Society of America, wrote to the editors, warning, “We must be careful not to vilify those businesses that legally and ethically take advantage of their newfound freedom of speech.” And you can be sure that groups like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, which, according to the Times, “has set a fund-raising goal of $120 million for 2012,” have no interest in any such principles. Nor does Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who believes all disclosure-ofdonor regulations to be “a cynical effort to muzzle critics of this administration and its allies in Congress.” He is supported in this belief by the Wall Street Journal editors, who insist, “Disclosure sounds good, but liberals have begun to wield it as a weapon to vilify business donors.” In other words, the Times editors are demanding unilateral financial disarmament by the Democrats in the face of what we already know will be a massive and unscrupulous right-wing attack. It’s hard to believe their position could survive even a moment’s scrutiny with regard to its real-world consequences. But ignoring the real world is one of the charms of punditry. The danger lies in the fact that some naïve liberals will follow the Times’s lemminglike advice and imagine they will improve our corrupt campaign finance system by guaranteeing that the only people who exploit it are the same people who have been using it to conduct their successful decades-long conservative class war against the poor and middle classes."