When I was contemplating what to write about I considered writing about happiness. The latest news reports and studies say happy people live longer and have lower rates of heart disease. When combined with the studies that say married men live longer, does it mean marriage yields happiness?
Unfortunately, I feel compelled to write about something that makes me unhappy – news coverage and polling regarding the recent Citizens United Supreme Court case. The Citizens United case pertains to campaign finance laws, specifically what and when corporations can give during an election cycle in federal races. All the news reports and polling say that the American people disagree with this ruling because it reverses the previous prohibition on corporate contributions.
The first thing that comes to mind is “so what, the Supreme Court doesn’t make decisions based on popular opinion.” The second thing that comes to mind is, “I really wish that in our 24 hour news cycle the media would report something in context.” They are leaving out critical information that most certainly skews public opinion. They want you to believe that corporations were prohibited from contributing to groups that influence elections and because of Citizens United that corporate cash will now be used to buy elections. Guess what? It already was.
The main change brought about by the Citizens United decision was to lift the ban on spending corporate contributions received by 527’s and c(4) organizations in the 30 days before a primary and the 60 days prior to the general election. Citizens United did not strike down the prohibition on corporations giving directly to candidate campaigns, that remains intact.
In the world of politics before Citizens United, 527’s and c(4)’s like Move On.Org or Swift Boat Veterans, could accept and spend corporate contributions so long as they did not spend those contributions influencing elections in the 30 and 60 day windows. There is nothing sacred about the 30 and 60 days windows. These were arbitrary timeframes created to limit political speech and when speech is limited, incumbents have a distinct advantage. Regardless of political persuasion that is bad for our country.
I for one am glad that the Supreme Court struck them down in the name of free speech. I will save the discussion of whether or not it is a wise business decision for corporations to give to political causes for a future posting.
~Mike Ciletti
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I agree with Mike, the law did little to change the influence of the goups or speach it was trying to control and ended up creating new sets of problems and issues with regard to free speach. I believe the law as un consititutional as the founders did not want any type of speach limited, I don't think they fore saw what we have now when it comes to media, but believed that more our freedoms would be eroded more by limiting speach & contoling content vs. concerning themselves with what type of media may evolve in the future.
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