If you're a liberal--or even a living, breathing, thinking American--you might admit to being worried about the toxic effect of the odious 2010 U. S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which unleashed the torrents of money now flowing into our political system, with tens of millions offered by individuals like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers, Charles and David, and more tens of millions donated by giant corporations. You might even be concerned by what an earlier U. S. Supreme Court decision referred to as the "appearance of corruption."
Ha, ha, no way. Don't be ridiculous thinking Americans! Just remember what mom used to say: "Money can't buy happiness--or politicians."
That's the position taken by Paul Sherman, at any rate, in an editorial defense of the U. S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United case. Many observers will tell you this was the Supreme Court's worst decision in the last decade (actually the worst decision of the staunchly conservative, five-vote, John Roberts-led wing). But Sherman, an attorney at the aptly named "Institute of Justice," a conservative group which litigates campaign-finance cases across the nation, disagrees. He begins by noting that the State of Montana is challenging the ruling based on laws passed at the turn of the 20th century and designed to deal with a rash of cases of political corruption. (What! Money can't buy politicians!! You people in Montana, in 1916, you must have been fooled into thinking that it could by the lamestream media!)
Sherman finds Montana's position untenable and in the deepest recesses of his conservative soul prays the U. S. Supreme Court will "double down on Citizens United and reject, once and for all, the flawed justification underlying much of America's failed experiment with campaign-finance law--the so-called appearance of corruption standard."
That standard, set in 1976, in Buckley v. Valeo, held that Congress and the states could pass laws to address "corruption and the appearance of corruption." Sherman finds that decision misguided and dangerous:
The "corruption" half of that ruling is uncontroversial--few seriously dispute the validity of laws proscribing conduct like offering or accepting bribes. But the power to regulate the "appearance of corruption" has proven dangerously open-ended, leading inexorably to greater government control of political speech.
Sherman offers no examples of this chilling government control and given the skill with which both the Tea Party on the right and Occupy Wall Street on the left have stirred political discussion in recent times (and rightfully so), his worries are clearly misplaced. Sherman explains the justification for the appearance-of-corruption standard (that "a deregulated system of campaign finance would lead to public cynicism and distrust of our democratic process") but then makes it clear he's having no part of such lame judicial reasoning.
In fact, the opposite is true.
Sherman is an advocate of untrammeled freedom, a patriot, a hero. This nauseating sense we get when we hear that huge corporations and insanely rich individuals can pour tens of millions into political campaigns, effectively drowning out the opinions of others...why, don't be silly. There's no need to fear any appearance-of-corruption:
That argument ignores that a healthy distrust of government is vital to ensuring that government stays within its constitutionally limited role. Campaign-finance proponents want to grant government the power to restrict political activity for the purposes of managing its own PR. The result of doing so is that government still has the same amount of power to abuse, but fewer people will notice or be concerned. That is a great way to promote big government but a lousy way to promote trustworthy government.
Yeah. Trustworthy government! That's the ticket! And thank god for guardians of our precious freedoms, stalwarts like Paul Sherman. Thank god for the unbiased positions of the Wall Street Journal when it comes to Big Business influence in government. (Government is the problem! Business heroes are the solution!) Thank god, Sherman has reminded us that our campaign-finance laws, under Buckley v. Valeo, have created a mess that another WSJ editorial described as a "half-dead monster."
Sherman notes, one editorialist for the conservative paper agreeing with another, that the awful monster "keeps shambling forward, wreaking havoc on the First Amendment." Save us, save us, Big Business heroes!
Dump huge piles of money on the monster and kill it!
THE EDITORS OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, reduced now to servants of Rupert Murdoch and his vast corporate empire, and writers like Mr. Sherman would have you imagine that this is a clarion call in the name of liberty!
In fact, Sherman's piece is a pile of steaming horse manure, dressed up in conservative logic in a vain attempt to make it look like fresh-baked apple pie.
Really, what do we have to look forward to if the decision in Citizens United stands, or worse ends up extended? Even Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who leads all individual contributors in this election cycle, with $35 million donated (we must stop Mitt Romney, he's unfit! not conservative enough! vote for Newt; no, wait, Newt can't win; we must elect Mitt Romney! he's actually a great American and I have the money to prove it!) has said he doesn't necessarily agree with the Supreme Court decision but as long as it's legal he's going to spend as much as $100 million to defeat President Obama.
So where does it all end?
Consider a story in today's New York Times, about Swiss bank UBS and its efforts to curtail activities by Robert Wolf, one its own top New York executives, a leading fund-raiser for Mr. Obama? Why does a Swiss banking institution care about a U. S. presidential election? It might have to do with the fact the federal government forced UBS in 2009 to pay a $780 million fine and divulge the names of 4,450 super-rich Americans who were hiding tens of billions in secret accounts to avoid paying income taxes. You know. The kind of Big Business heroes you can trust to donate unlimited sums of money to politicians. Probably loyal readers of the Wall Street Journal and staunch conservatives who love America more than liberals do, who just don't want to give America any money to meet its needs--stupid stuff, like national defense, health care for seniors and disabled children, roads, bridges, you know, stuff like that.
In fact, conservatives seem to believe they're the only ones with a healthy distrust of government. But every liberal who can remember back to Watergate, to cite but one example, has his or her own healthy distrust of government.
It's just that liberals have an even healthier distrust of government when they think it's going to be taken over, lock, stock and barrel, and run entirely by Big Business interests.
Sherman doesn't dare touch that topic with an editorial ten-foot pole. But most Americans see the obvious danger. If one individual or one corporation can donate unlimited sums, how do we stop them from buying up politicians wholesale? Washington, D. C. is already swarming with lobbyists, like teenage girls at a Justin Bieber concert. It's not like Big Business can't already make its voice heard.
What happens next, if the wishes of the editors of the Wall Street Journal come true? Do big drug companies start pouring tens of millions into campaigns for the U. S. House of Representatives? Does Pfizer adopt a dozen Republican lawmakers, maybe a Democrat or two, and avoid unpleasant situations like the one the company faced in 2009: coughing up $2.3 billion to settle civil and criminal complaints for the illegal marketing of Bextra, a pain-killing drug? Do these bought-and-paid-for legislators push for more of a "pro-business" stance at the Food and Drug Administration? Maybe they vote to curtail federal protections for whistle-blowers, too, since whistle-blowers at Pfizer exposed the company to begin.
Or maybe a few bought-and-paid-for members of the U. S. Senate lean on the FDA to go easy in its investigations of the harmful side effects of all-metal hip joint replacements, now failing at alarming rates, often shedding steel flakes into surrounding tissue. You know: a lot of conservative politicians already believe tort reform, making it harder to sue for medical malpractice, is the real key to "health care reform."
And, aw, shucks, so what if grandma's hip replacement is causing her excruciating pain!
If the Supreme Court stands by or expands its Citizens United decision the possibilities are endless. (Mr. Sherman might even turn to a few news items in the Wall Street Journal if he'd like to see examples!) What! You say ING Bank has been fined $619 million for laundering money for Cuba and Iran, in violation of U. S. sanctions? Time for ING to buy, no, donate to the campaigns, of two or four or six U. S. senators and put them to work fighting Dodd-Frank regulations. Huh? You say Big Sugar, as the Journal itself labels corporate agri-business interests, want to protect billions in farm subsidies? Let them donate $5 million to the reelection campaign of three members of the House of Representatives for Louisiana and get the right kind of men and women into office, you know, fans of sugar. Watch Wal-Mart spread around $50 million to politicians in all kinds of local races in ten different states; because what do we know first and foremost about Wal-Mart? That all Wal-Mart executives care about in the end is expanding freedom! And all Wal-Mart asks is that the politicians they purchase help pass laws to make it harder to organize unions. The politicians get elected and if Wal-Mart likes their work, refinanced, and re-elected. Wal-Mart clerks still earn $11 per hour and still sometimes qualify for food stamps.
And see what happens now when UBS forks over $10 million during the 2012 presidential race. Watch Mitt Romney take a stand against increased federal regulatory power! Watch Mitt opine that President Obama doesn't understand how to run a business! Watch Wall Street bankers, in their enthusiasm for the First Amendment, dump hundreds of millions into Republican coffers! Watch the banking industry prove, as it did in 2008, that only businessmen and businesswomen know how to run a business! Watch the politicians sit idly by; squint a little, and if you look at it just right, it makes a UBS donation seem like a wise investment.
Especially if they can avoid a few hefty fines next time around.
You might say, "This has the appearance of corruption to me." But you would be stupid and probably a socialist and the editors at the Wall Street Journal would insist you were secretly a foe of all human freedom, anti-American at heart, as well, and say that you hated god and your mom and that apple pie, too.
TRUST PAUL SHERMAN on this one. After all, he's a lawyer. Money can't buy happiness or politicians.
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