Greg Palast: on coming supreme court decision on corporate election finance
Submitted by rick on 15 December 2009 - 2:02pm
By Greg Palast, AlterNet
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
Supreme Court's Ruling Would Allow Bin Laden to Donate to Sarah Palin's Presidential Campaign
By Greg Palast, AlterNet
Posted on December 11, 2009, Printed on December 15, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144502/
I thought that headline would get your attention. And it's true.
I'm biting my nails waiting for the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which could come down as early as Tuesday. At issue: whether corporations, as "unnatural persons," can make contributions to political campaigns.
The outcome is foregone: the five GOP
appointees to the court are expected to use the case to junk federal
laws that now bar corporations from stuffing campaign coffers.
Technically, there's a narrower matter
before the court in this case: whether the McCain-Feingold Act may
prohibit corporations from funding "independent" campaign
advertisements such as the "Swift Boat" ads that smeared John Kerry.
However, campaign finance reformers are steeling themselves for the
court's right wing to go much further, knocking down all longstanding
rules against donations by corporate treasuries.
Allowing company campaign spending will not,
as progressives fear, cause an avalanche of corporate cash into
politics. Sadly, that's already happened: we have been snowed under by
tens of millions of dollars given through corporate PACs and "bundling"
of individual contributions from corporate pay-rollers.
The court's expected decision is far, far more dangerous to U.S. democracy. Think: Manchurian candidates.
I'm losing sleep over the millions -- or
billions -- of dollars that could flood into our elections from ARAMCO,
the Saudi Oil corporation's U.S. unit; or from the maker of "New Order"
fashions, the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Or from Bin Laden
Construction corporation. Or Bin Laden Destruction Corporation.
Right now, corporations can give loads
of loot through PACs. While this money stinks (Barack Obama took none
of it), anyone can go through a PAC's federal disclosure filing and see
the name of every individual who put money into it. And every
contributor must be a citizen of the USA.
But, if the Supreme Court rules that
corporations can support candidates without limit, there is nothing
that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese
junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by
a corporate alias.
Candidate Barack Obama was one sharp
speaker, but he would not have been heard, and certainly would not have
won, without the astonishing outpouring of donations from two million
Americans. It was an unprecedented uprising-by-PayPal, overwhelming the
old fat-cat sources of funding.
Well, kiss that small-donor revolution
goodbye. If the Supreme Court votes as expected, progressive list
serves won't stand a chance against the resources of new "citizens"
such as CNOOC, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation. Maybe UBS
(United Bank of Switzerland), which faces U.S. criminal prosecution and
a billion-dollar fine for fraud, might be tempted to invest in a few
Senate seats. As would XYZ Corporation, whose owners remain hidden by
"street names."
George Bush's former Solicitor General
Ted Olson argued the case to the court on behalf of Citizens United, a
corporate front that funded an attack on Hillary Clinton during the
2008 primary. Olson's wife died on September 11, 2001 on the hijacked
airliner that hit the Pentagon. Maybe it was a bit crude of me, but I
contacted Olson's office to ask how much "Al Qaeda, Inc." should be
allowed to donate to support the election of his local congressman.
Olson has not responded.
The danger of foreign loot loading into U.S. campaigns, not much noted in the media chat about the Citizens case,
was the first concern raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who asked
about opening the door to "mega-corporations" owned by foreign
governments. Olson offered Ginsburg a fudge, that Congress might be
able to prohibit foreign corporations from making donations, though
Olson made clear he thought any such restriction a bad idea.
Tara Malloy, attorney with the Campaign
Legal Center of Washington D.C., is biting her nails awaiting the
decision. If Olson gets his way, she told me, corporations will have more
rights than people. Only United States citizens may donate or influence
campaigns, but a foreign government can, veiled behind a corporate treasury, dump money into ballot battles.
Malloy also noted that under the law
today, human-people, as opposed to corporate-people, may only give
$2,300 to a presidential campaign. But hedge fund billionaires, for
example, who typically operate through dozens of corporate vessels,
could, should Olson prevail, give unlimited sums through each of these
"unnatural" creatures.
And once the Taliban incorporates in Delaware, they could ante up for the best democracy money can buy.
In July, the Chinese government, in
preparation for President Obama's visit, held diplomatic discussions in
which they skirted issues of human rights and Tibet. Notably, the
Chinese, who hold a $2 trillion mortgage on our Treasury, raised concerns about the cost of Obama's health care reform bill.
Would our nervous Chinese landlords have an interest in buying the
White House for an opponent of government spending such as Gov. Palin?
Ya betcha!
The potential for foreign infiltration
of what remains of our democracy is an adjunct of the fact that the
source and control money from corporate treasuries (unlike registered
PACs), is necessarily hidden. Who the heck are the real stockholders?
Or as Butch asked Sundance, "Who are these guys?" We'll never know.
Hidden money funding, whether foreign or
domestic, is the new venom that the court could inject into the system
by an expansive decision in Citizens United.
We've been there. The 1994 election
brought Newt Gingrich to power in a GOP takeover of the Congress funded
by a very strange source. Congressional investigators found that in
crucial swing races, Democrats had fallen victim to a flood of
last-minute attack ads funded by a group called, "Coalition for Our
Children's Future." The $25 million that paid for those ads came, not
from concerned parents, but from a corporation called "Triad Inc."
Evidence suggests Triad Inc. was the
front for the ultra-right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers and their
private petroleum company, Koch Industries. Had the corporate
connection been proven, the Kochs and their corporation could have
faced indictment under federal election law. If the Supreme Court now
decides in favor of unlimited corporate electioneering, then such
money-poisoned politicking would become legit.
So it's not just un-Americans we need to
fear but the Polluter-Americans, Pharma-mericans, Bank-Americans and
Hedge-Americans that could manipulate campaigns while hidden behind
corporate veils.
And if so, our future elections, while
nominally a contest between Republicans and Democrats, may in fact come
down to a three-way battle between China, Saudi Arabia and Goldman
Sachs.
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." Palast investigated Triad Inc. for The Guardian (UK). View Palast's reports for BBC TV and Democracy Now! at gregpalast.com.
