There is an online petition drive by liberal activists calling for a challenge to the Supreme Court decision of 2010 called Citizens United. The petition calls for Congress to pass a new law to substitute for the law that was found unconstitutional by the Court. Several states have passed new laws.
In other words Supreme Court decisions don’t matter to Democrats when the decisions go against Democrats. They must be undone. But when Roe v Wade federally guaranteed access to abortion in the 1973 Supreme Court decision, well then that has been considered the “settled law” of the land because it favored the Democrat point of view.
Citizens United was a case that challenged the idea that corporations could be kept out of public discourse, which they were by law. The Democrats were enraged over the Supreme Court decision to overturn the law and Obama even derided the decision in unprecedented fashion.
On January 27, 2010, just a week after the Citizens United decision, Obama criticized the decision during the 2010 State of the Union address saying that, "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities."
The Citizens United decision explains why all these Super PACs have suddenly come into existence. Super PACs are ‘political action committees’ that fund without financial limits campaign ads and activities that are independent of any candidate and that do not collude in any way with any candidate.
Meanwhile campaign contributions to individual candidates are strictly limited.
The overturning of Citizens United is perfectly understandable, that citizens and companies and corporations should be able to finance – or band together to finance – political ads for causes that they believe in. Because this genuinely represents ‘political free speech’.
After all with so much of American business regulated in Washington, American business should be able to have a voice in politics.
And of course it took a conservative Supreme Court to defend ‘political free speech’ while liberals only seem to want to defend ‘free speech’ when a pornographer demands it or when someone wishes to make anti-American or anti-Christian statements or to use public profanity.
And what stopped the ‘free speech’ in the first place?
The so-called McCain-Feingold campaign finance law (technically known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act) passed in 2002. Liberals loved McCain-Feingold because it was co-sponsored by Republican US senator John McCain of Arizona and Democrat US senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.
Because with McCain-Feingold you had a liberal Republican writing legislation with a far-left Democrat. In other words the conservative opinion defending genuine ‘political free speech’ was left out.
McCain-Feingold essentially curbed PACs and limited campaign spending to timeframes dictated by law. Many thought that the Supreme Court would overturn McCain-Feingold, but it did not.
Now liberals are complaining about Citizens United. But they should not. Because their complaining is all a smokescreen. Because the Citizens United decision actually favors Democrats.
Because the upending of the law in the Citizens United case now allows three groups to fund PACs – corporations, individuals and labor unions. Yet consider the factions that are involved:
*Labor unions always have worked in favor of Democrats. And now the law allows them to become more involved financially. This is a huge plus for Democrats.
*Many corporations and wealthy individuals are liberal. What PAC is The New York Times going to fund? A Democrat PAC. Who are the media moguls in Follywood going to fund? A Democrat PAC. Who are the billionaires at Google and in Silicon Valley going to fund? A Democrat PAC. Who is CNN going to fund? A Democrat PAC. Many, many very wealthy businesses, corporations and individuals across America are Democrat. George Soros and Warren Buffett will fund liberals. Many other billionaires too like New York City mayor Bloomberg will fund liberal PACs.
*Meanwhile many other corporations and wealthy individuals will naturally support Republican or conservative causes.
Thus overturning the Citizens United case really benefits Democrats in two out of three cases – allowing labor unions and liberal companies/individuals to finance Democrat PACs – while conservative companies/individuals will back Republicans.
So why are liberals caterwauling about Citizens United when it actually gives them the financial advantage?
It is a complete feint. Because that is how Democrats always act when conservatives or Republicans get one shred of positive political news.
In other words liberals would rather not have the two-to-one funding advantage if that same decision is going to allow conservative corporations/individuals to finance ads. Because that would allow the conservative opinion to be expressed. And liberals rely more on censorship than anything else to keep conservative ideas at bay.
And remember that the more conservative and Republican companies like oil companies, coal companies, utilities, etc. are closer to and more essential to the nation’s industrial economy than others and are the most regulated in America. And thus they need more than any others to have the ability to express their political opinions.
So Democrats really want to use the government to manipulate public opinion and suppress some opinions.
This is like the argument from liberals that “we must increase taxes on rich people”. Yet the fact is that Democrats are easily the majority of rich people and billionaires in America and in some cases the super-majority. In many places there’s hardly a rich Republican in sight, i.e, Follywood, San Francisco, Silicon Valley etc.
So won’t this call to “increase taxes on the rich” hurt the Democrat rich?
You might think so. But no. Because if you give money to Democrat candidates or to Obama or to enviro groups or to other liberal causes the IRS will not audit you. Because the IRS is a Democrat-controlled bureaucracy.
So if the government “raises taxes on the rich” only rich conservatives and Republicans will be audited and will pay more in taxes while Democrat tax returns will fall down an elevator shaft or will be ignored. Or Democrats will be able to write off everything under the sun like their children’s summer camp expenses and will never be audited.
Oh, no! Don’t be silly! say the Democrats.
Uhhhh… Don’t forget that Obama’s own Treasury secretary Tim Geithner tried to write off his children’s summer camp expenses. But since he is a Democrat he was elevated to Treasury secretary. A Republican would have been run out of town.
See how it works? See how liberals use government power for their own ends? And why they want to use McCain-Feingold to restrict free speech and why they oppose the Citizens United decision to allow more free speech?
Why did General Electric pay no taxes on its 2010 income and get away with it?
Because GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt has been campaigning with and for Obama, that’s why.
See how it works?
Meanwhile Warren Buffett, America’s richest man, is a big Obama supporter.
Why? Because his company is in a fight with the IRS over a billion dollars in taxes. And if he does not support Obama, he loses the fight.
This is the way that liberals use government to intimidate citizens. And this is how the McCain-Feingold law was a way for government to limit political free speech.
Good for the Supreme Court for overturning Citizens United. More free speech is better than less free speech.
And less taxes is better than more taxes.