Clarence Thomas wants only sterilized criticism.

Clarence Thomas is upset that many people have leveled intense criticism at the U.S. Supreme Court in light of the Citizen's United decision:

Questioning the Supreme Court and other government branches needs to stay within the range of fair criticism or "run the risk in our society of undermining institutions that we need to preserve our liberties," Justice Clarence Thomas said Thursday.
Dear Justice Thomas: If you don't like the criticism, there are several things you can do about it. You can resign. Or you can quit supporting the conservative wing of the Court when it makes decisions that undermine the institutions that we need to preserve our liberties. What did you possibly think would occur when you invited corporations to pour unlimited money into the elections of our politicians (as if it weren't bad enough already). Consider, too that Citizen's United will allow corporations to purchase state judges too (and consider this revealing look at the "judicial philosophy of John Roberts, with whom you've aligned yourself). Didn't it occur to you that you could have invoked stare decisis, and at least not made the problem worse? And answer this: Why should people continue to have respect for the United States Supreme Court when it delivers repeated crippling blows to the ability of the People to run their own government? Do you think that letting corporations buy politicians was the "original intent" of the Founders? Can you think of any liberty that is more fundamental than the ability of the Citizens to elect representatives who will be honestly responsive to them, not corrupted by huge amounts of money? But you really don't want to hear any of this. You'd rather that people simple pretend that you are doing a great job now matter how badly you screw up.

Continue ReadingClarence Thomas wants only sterilized criticism.

Corporations as persons? Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered. Or do they?

Today, five members of the United States Supreme Court had their fun pretending that their hands were tied and that they were forced by objective reasoning to rule that corporations have the same right to participate in the political process as natural persons. I strenuously disagree. Today's ruling of Citizen's United v. Federal Election Commission is extremely dangerous to our democracy. Many commentators are burning up the Internet with their written thoughts. I had previously posted on this case, citing to comments by the lawyers representing the two sides. I'll make some more comments today, based upon the written opinion. I have not read the entire opinion, but I have read enough to understand the basic contours of the ruling. What is the basis for today's ruling in Citizen's United? The majority argues that media corporations already had the practical power to say whatever they wanted, so it wouldn't be fair to deny this same power to other types of corporations. Time to throw upon the doors! The majority argues that corporations would get around campaign laws anyway, so why keep trying? The majority naively argues that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

Continue ReadingCorporations as persons? Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered. Or do they?

U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Corporations have the same First Amendment rights as individuals.

On September 4, 2009, Bill Moyers hosted Trevor Potter, president and general counsel of The Campaign Legal Center (and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission), and Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment attorney. You can view the entire discussion here. The topic is whether longstanding federal election laws should be held unconstitutional so that corporations can freely spend unlimited amounts of money (e.g., in the form of movies, books, and other private initiatives) in order to directly affect the outcome of federal political campaigns. The case is Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission. Many legal commentators are suggesting the Supreme Court has already suggested that it leaning in favor of the corporations on this issue. And we can almost guarantee how Chief Justice John Roberts is going to vote on this issue (and see here). I highly recommend viewing this discussion. I thought that Abrams looked very much like a man who was being paid big money to take position he knew to be reprehensible. On the other hand, Trevor Potter is taking a position that looks out for people like you and me. I realize that powerful corporate interests have already made puppets out of Congress, the SEC, the FDA and many other federal agencies (see these recent examples regarding tobacco legislation and the rejection of the bankruptcy cram-down option). With this as the context, I believe that Citizens United boils down to a simple question: Should our government be at least somewhat run by ordinary people or should corporate money flow even more freely at election time (much more than it flows already), allowing our federal government to be taken over entirely by powerful corporations driven almost entirely by the profit motive? Here are a few excerpts from Moyers’ discussion with Potter and Abrams:

TREVOR POTTER: This is a case about corporate money. If this case is won by the corporation, we will be in the ironic situation where corporations will have no limits on what they can spend in elections and unions still will. So, it's important to remember we're talking about corporations. Corporations exist solely to make money. Amassing economic power. They want, if they could get it out of government, monopolies. They want the ability to defeat their competitors. And if they can use government to do that, they will. Individuals have a whole range of interests. Individuals go to church, they care about religious and social issues, they care about the future of the country. They're voters.

So, they have a range of issues at stake that corporations don't have. Corporations just want to make money. So, if you let the corporation with a privileged economic legal position loose in the political sphere, when we're deciding who to elect, I think you are giving them an enormous advantage over individuals and not a healthy one for our democracy. . . . [C]orporations have a different status. And they ought to be focused on the economic marketplace and not the political marketplace.

FLOYD ABRAMS: You're opening the faucet, so to speak, so that more speech can occur. I don't think it's a can of worms to say that corporations, and it is unions as well, ought to be able to participate in the give and take of the democratic processes in the country. From my perspective, at least, the notion of saying that corporations and unions should be out of the picture either because they're too powerful, or because of the way their money has been created, is so inconsistent with the sort of First Amendment approach that we take in everything else, where we say over and over again, we don't care who the speaker is, we don't care where the speaker's coming from. And speech, we think, is, as a generality, a good thing . . .

BILL MOYERS: But we're not talking about free press issues here. We're talking about the power of an organized economic interest to spend vast sums of money that individuals can't spend . . . Would you disagree with the claim that big business dominates the political discussion today? Whether it's the drug industry or the health insurance industry? Big business is the dominant force in Washington. I mean, I see that as a journalist . . . we're not talking about free press issues here. We're talking about the power of an organized economic interest to spend vast sums of money that individuals can't spend.

It is important to deny powerful profit-seeking organizations the right to skew federal election results even more than they do currently. If the Supreme Court goes the wrong way on this issue, it would even make a mockery out of clean-money initiatives, such as this plan being promoted by Common Cause and this plan by Public Citizen.

Continue ReadingU.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Corporations have the same First Amendment rights as individuals.

Senator Al Franken charges SCOTUS with “judicial activism”

There's no doubt that Senator Al Franken has arrived. Consider his direct accusations aimed at the current version of the United States Supreme Court. In a thumbnail, Franken charges that the Court has worked hard to crank out pro-business rulings that curtail critically important and long-standing individual rights.

Continue ReadingSenator Al Franken charges SCOTUS with “judicial activism”

U.S. Supreme Court decision salvages pre-clearance provisions of Voting Rights Act

The US Supreme Court carved out a narrow and near unanimous decision today which retains the pre-clearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All justices concurred in the opinion which remanded the case back to the District Court for further proceedings but, there was a partial dissent filed by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. The NW Austin Municipal Utility District filed an action to be removed from the pre-clearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act or to declare the statute unconstitutional insofar as it mandated the District be subject to the 2006 enactment of such requirement. The Supreme Court declined to declare Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, and instead carved out a more limited remedy for political entities such as the utility district to have a private right to file suit to be removed from the pre-clearance requirement (presumably if the DOJ does not allow a “bail out”). In his concurrence Associate Justice Thomas also dissented in part, arguing in favor of striking down the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act, making the claim that;

Covered jurisdictions are not now engaged in a systematic campaign to deny black citizens access to the ballot through intimidation and violence. And the days of…’property qualifications’ …are gone. There is thus currently no concerted effort in these jurisdictions to engage in the ‘unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution’ that served as the constitutional basis for upholding the ‘uncommon exercise of congressional power embodied in [Section] 5’ (citations omitted).

Nothing could be further from the truth. It is in fact the case that since 1986, there have been “some 200 cases in which the voter change was withdrawn after DOJ objection” according to Associate Justice Souter in the oral arguments of the case. Associate Justice Breyer in the same oral argument noted that “[s]ince 1982 there were at least 105 successful Section 5 suits and 653 Section 2 suits.” Justice Thomas went on:

Continue ReadingU.S. Supreme Court decision salvages pre-clearance provisions of Voting Rights Act