Wrong.
There are no requirements for public disclosure, but that does not change the fact that these organizations still have to file tax returns and obey other US laws. Or are you going to try to argue that Citizens United also eliminated these corporations from filing taxes? Or that any group that engages in political or election advocacy is not required to file with with the FEC?
What is the problem with groups that are not responsible to either party speaking up? Why should the fact that independent groups spent more in 2010, but less than they did in 2008 scare me?
Independent groups spent $296 million dollars last year, and $302 million in 2008. I would like to point out that that spending in 2008 was before McCain-Feingold was overruled.
The two parties spent a combined $1.4 billion, and the incumbents in Congress spent an additional $1.8 billion. If you check you will see that Democrats outspent Republicans by almost 2 to 1 even after you factor in the independent groups and their spending. If money was all it took to win an election the Democrats would have a huge majority in Congress right now.
May I point out that they do not?
The numbers, after I get a good look at them, do not scare me. I am not the one raising up strawmen here, Modbert is, and you have bought into it.
David N. Bossie and Theodore B. Olson - How the Citizens United ruling freed political speechStill, the amount citizen groups spent in 2010 pales next to these enormous sums: $1.35 billion spent by the two major political parties and an additional $1.8 billion by candidates for Congress. While citizens making independent expenditures increased their election spending to nearly $300 million in 2010, that remains less than one-tenth of the more than $3 billion spent by political parties and their candidates. So why all the hysteria from incumbents? Perhaps because independent spending by citizens has shifted away from Democratic candidates. In 2006, liberal interest groups tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics outspent conservative interest groups by a 2-to-1 margin. By 2010, the trend had reversed, and conservative groups were outspending the liberal groups 2 to 1.
We suspect that what most upsets incumbent politicians about Citizens United is not the fact that conservative groups temporarily have gained the upper hand in independent spending. (Does anyone really think labor unions will not try to even the score in 2012?) Instead, what most bothers the political class is that the speech that surged in 2010 was independent. Politicians could not control the message, so they vilified such speech as "unaccountable." Indeed, the Democratic majority was so unnerved that it cobbled together legislation to make such independent speech as burdensome as possible, complete with a misleading mom-and-apple-pie title: the Disclose Act. But this effort to stifle debate unraveled when it was disclosed that the bill included exceptions favoring powerful interest groups.
As the Supreme Court has ruled, Congress should get out of the business of picking winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas and placing its thumb on the scale of federal elections. In Citizens United, the court reminded us that when our government seeks "to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought." The government argued in Citizens United that it could ban books advocating the election of a candidate if they were published by a corporation or labor union. Today, thanks to Citizens United, we may celebrate that the First Amendment confirms what our forefathers fought for: "the freedom to think for ourselves."
Your only real argument is that there needs to be some sort of accountability. I agree, if they do something wrong, they need to be accountable. What we do not need, however, is a complete list of donors to every political organization out there. The laws already exist that prevent any foreign money from contributing to our elections, either directly or indirectly. Corporations are transparent to both the FEC and the IRS. I know that federal law makes it all but impossible for foreigners to donate to them.
The law exists, and is enforced. If you can prove it is not, talk to me, and I will howl right along with you. Just do not expect me to get up in arms about making people jump through the same hoops again just because you do not like on SCOTUS decision.
The law does not apply to independent organizations advertising under CU. This is a huge argument put forth in the dissent to CU, and one of the biggest things CU's critics have been arguing about for a year now.
Under CU, the right belongs to the organization, as its right of free speech related to its corporate personhood and derivative of the association of its principals. With me so far?
How is the citizenship and residency of a corporation as an entity determined? By the state where it is incorporated, not the nationality of the principals.
Any person, anywhere in the world, with a few hundred dollars can open a PO Box in Delaware and file that piece of paper starting up a sub-S. That sub-S is an American "person" under the law.
Absent any requirements to report the source of funds, that money can come from literally any place, any group, with any agenda anywhere in the world and not only would nobody even know about it, but under the CU decision only the identity and nationality of the organization matters - so it would be perfectly legitimate.
Don't take my word for it.
The majority opinion argues against both the ability of corporations to form PACS to do on their behalf what they can now do individually and FEC reporting requirements for PACS as a restriction on speech because both setting up the structure and reporting the sources of income were too onerous.
READ AGAIN: Standard FEC reporting requirements as they apply to PACs were considered a restriction on the speech of corporations by the majority in CU:
Section 441b is a ban on corporate speech notwithstanding the fact that a PAC created by a corporation can still speak. See McConnell , 540 U. S., at 330–333 (opinion of Kennedy , J.). A PAC is a separate association from the corporation. So the PAC exemption from §441b’s expenditure ban, §441b(b)(2), does not allow corporations to speak. Even if a PAC could somehow allow a corporation to speak—and it does not—the option to form PACs does not alleviate the First Amendment problems with §441b. PACs are burdensome alternatives; they are expensive to administer and subject to extensive regulations.
*snip*
...And that is just the beginning. PACs must file detailed monthly reports with the FEC, which are due at different times depending on the type of election that is about to occur:
“ ‘These reports must contain information regarding the amount of cash on hand; the total amount of receipts, detailed by 10 different categories; the identification of each political committee and candidate’s authorized or affiliated committee making contributions, and any persons making loans, providing rebates, refunds, dividends, or interest or any other offset to operating expenditures in an aggregate amount over $200; the total amount of all disbursements, detailed by 12 different categories; the names of all authorized or affiliated committees to whom expenditures aggregating over $200 have been made; persons to whom loan repayments or refunds have been made; the total sum of all contributions, operating expenses, outstanding debts and obligations, and the settlement terms of the retirement of any debt or obligation.’ ” 540 U. S., at 331–332 (quoting MCFL , supra , at 253–254).
PACs have to comply with these regulations just to speak. This might explain why fewer than 2,000 of the millions of corporations in this country have PACs. See Brief for Seven Former Chairmen of FEC et al. as Amici Curiae 11 (citing FEC, Summary of PAC Activity 1990–2006, online at http://www.fec.gov/press/press2007/ 20071009pac/sumhistory.pdf); IRS, Statistics of Income: 2006, Corporation Income Tax Returns 2 (2009) (hereinafter Statistics of Income) (5.8 million for-profit corporations filed 2006 tax returns). PACs, furthermore, must exist before they can speak. Given the onerous restrictions, a corporation may not be able to establish a PAC in time to make its views known regarding candidates and issues in a current campaign.
Section 441b’s prohibition on corporate independent expenditures is thus a ban on speech.
CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N
The decision specifically and categorically rejects typical FEC reporting requirements for corporations as they apply to PACs because the burden of reporting is "chilling" on speech. It puts no alternate requirements nor sets acceptable guidelines for reporting in any other, less onerous fashion in place. It merely rejects the burden of reporting per se.
The Court also never addressed the question of foreign nationals participating in the election process through foreign-controlled corporations, it simply ducked it. From the link above:
We need not reach the question whether the Government has a compelling interest in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our Nation’s political process. Cf. 2 U. S. C. §441e (contribution and expenditure ban applied to “foreign national”. Section 441b is not limited to corporations or associations that were created in foreign countries or funded predominately by foreign shareholders.
However, because the right belongs to the corporate entity and not to the individuals making up the "association", only the nationality of the organization is at issue. The Court in the majority makes no distinction between corporations controlled by foreigners and those controlled by US citizens:
More pertinently, it would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans: To do otherwise, after all, could “ ‘enhance the relative voice’ ” of some ( i.e. , humans) over others ( i.e. , nonhumans). Ante , at 33 (quoting Buckley , 424 U. S., at 49). 51 Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech. 52
In short, the Court dramatically overstates its critique of identity-based distinctions, without ever explaining why corporate identity demands the same treatment as individual identity. Only the most wooden approach to the First Amendment could justify the unprecedented line it seeks to draw.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZX.
Howling yet?
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