Today is April Fools day, but it there is no fooling around when it comes to the damage that recent Court decisions that have done by changing the face of how campaigns are financed.
In January, the Supreme Court ruled (Citizens’ United) that corporations were persons who had the right to free political speech. As a result, the Court lifted a longstanding ban on corporate political spending. It allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on ads and other ways of influencing election campaigns. Then last week a Federal Appeals court, following the Supreme Court, ruled that corporations and individuals could make unlimited contributions to independent political groups whose main goal was to influence elections. Thus corporate treasuries, containing billions of dollars, have been unleashed to influence the political process.
Giant corporations can now legally use their wealth to shape the positions candidates take. They can frighten candidates by indicating that that they will spend millions on ads against them if they do not promote the corporation’s political agenda. And they can legally “bride” others by promising to spend unlimited amounts on groups promoting their candidacy. Pity the candidate who tries to disagree with big money.
Many in Congress are outraged by these decisions, at least partly because they fear they will not be able to control the messages of their own campaigns. But most of the proposed Congressional “fixes” are extremely weak. The only way to really fight back is by supporting the Fair Elections Now Act. Fair Elections would allow candidates to fund their campaigns with public financing grants and small donations, allowing them to be independent of big contributors.
Right now Fair Elections has 140 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives and 11 in the Senate where it is sponsored by Dick Durbin of Illinois. We need to both spread the word that our country needs Fair Elections Now tell our representatives in the House and Senate that we want them to support this important reform.
You can learn more at www.fairelectionsnow.org . Stand up again the big corporations taking over our democracy!