Is Sanders Hypocritical about Super PACs and the Citizens United Decision?

[Nous]

That is my point. Exempting media corporations was necessary.

And the fact that you apparently can't define "media corporations"--as the Court couldn't--shows how unworkable the law was. This is in addition to the problem discussed by the Court in which precedent dictates that the identity of a speaker cannot be the basis for restricting political speech.

 

[Nous]

Having corporations who have control of a large percentage of the mass media able to influence those votes is a dangerous precedent.

Corporations are here to stay, including the wealthy "media corporations" that no one can coherently define. If you personally have difficulty resisting the messages that some corporate entity speaks, then you should work on that. But you haven't identified any problem that can be solved by Congress restricting political speech.

 

[Underhill]

And the fact that you apparently can't define "media corporations"--as the Court couldn't--shows how unworkable the law was. This is in addition to the problem discussed by the Court in which precedent dictates that the identity of a speaker cannot be the basis for restricting political speech.

Nobody can define media corporations. This is why restricting them, as an entity, is pointless. This is also why I say we don't go after the corporations, simply make rules that govern what stations can or cannot do. Then it becomes a localized issue rather than something affecting massive multi national companies.

 

[Nous]

Nobody can define media corporations. This is why restricting them, as an entity, is pointless.

Which is but one of the reasons that the Court was right to strike down 2 USC §441b.

This is also why I say we don't go after the corporations, simply make rules that govern what stations can or cannot do.

Are "stations" not corporations?

 

[Underhill]

Corporations are here to stay, including the wealthy "media corporations" that no one can coherently define. If you personally have difficulty resisting the messages that some corporate entity speaks, then you should work on that. But you haven't identified any problem that can be solved by Congress restricting political speech.

Really? So you don't think Fox News, the largest news outlet in the country by a wide market, picking a candidate and backing them is a problem? MSNBC picking a horse in the election and slinging mud, true or not, at the opposition is perfectly okay? This is not individual speech, this is the owners dictating the speech of his employees.

If you cannot see the difference then I think you are wearing blinders.

I am not advocating telling stations they cannot talk about the candidates or even how they talk about the candidates. The rules that have been in place for broadcast media have not put an undue strain on the free speech of those outlets. In fact, most in media see those days, when those broadcast networks were THE news, as lofty bastions of political reporting compared to what we see today.

 

[Underhill]

Are "stations" not corporations?

Stations are owned by corporations. But by simply saying anyone who sends out a signal received by a television has to comply with the broadcast rules, you eliminate having to regulate the corporation and focus on simply the content coming from that source.

 

[Underhill]

Which is but one of the reasons that the Court was right to strike down 2 USC §441b.

No, because they were not regulating the news or the stations, they were simply excluding them from the legislation. Which they had to do as the bill would have made it impossible for media to even cover politics.

So the entire bill, which is desperately needed, is thrown out because it has a loophole for media corporations. Instead of finding another way to attack that problem the courts just threw the whole bill out. It's absurd. If they were to take this tact with every law on the books, entire libraries of regulations would need to be thrown out. Treaties, tax law, military appropriations.... The government would cease to function.

 

[metis]

No, the section of the BCRA struck down by the Court did not regulate “lobbying money”--whatever you mean by that. I didn’t even see where the Wikipedia article suggested that it did.

Anyway, as noted in the first sentence of the Opinion, the Court struck down the provisions of 2 USC §441b that “prohibit[ed] corporations and unions from using their general treasury funds to make independent expenditures for speech defined as an ‘electioneering communication’ or for speech expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate.” http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

Here is that statute: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/2/14/I/441b

The fact that Congress did not--and, according to precedent, could not--ban lobbying by corporations (and unions) was one of factors that weighed against the shareholder protection rationale that was argued for the constitutionality of the law, as noted by both the majority opinion and Stevens’ dissent: “Even if §441b’s expenditure ban were constitutional,wealthy corporations could still lobby elected officials . . .” At 40.

What had happened is that the SCOTUS for the first time labeled corporate/business/union pac money as "freedom of speech" under the 1st Amendment, which had not been done before. By doing so, disclosure became a problem, so money could be directed through all sorts of different channels, with keeping track of what its ultimate source being almost impossible to follow.

Much like we're talking and have "freedom of speech" right now, this pac money would also pretty much have little regulation and only limited disclosure rules. Kennedy himself referred to this a year prior to the Citizens United decision as being dangerous, and sure enough, the floodgates of donations came flooding in and still come in, and with disclosure being a major problem as we've seen. Why he changed his mind I guess we'll never know because he doesn't state why he switched in the majority opinion.

The minority opinion said that this would be a problem, and it is, imo:

A dissenting opinion by Justice Stevens was joined by Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer, and Justice Sotomayor. To emphasize his unhappiness with the majority, Stevens read part of his 90-page dissent from the bench. Stevens concurred in the Court's decision to sustain BCRA's disclosure provisions, but dissented from the principal holding of the Court. The dissent argued that the Court's ruling "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution." He wrote: "A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold."...

Stevens referenced a number of major First Amendment cases to argue that the Court had long recognized that to deny Congress the power to safeguard against "the improper use of money to influence the result [of an election] is to deny to the nation in a vital particular the power of self protection"...

First, Stevens argued that the majority failed to recognize the possibility for corruption outside strict quid pro quo exchanges...

Second, Stevens argued that the majority did not place enough emphasis on the need to prevent the "appearance of corruption" in elections. Earlier cases, including Buckley and Bellotti, recognized the importance of public confidence in democracy. Stevens cited recent data indicating that 80% of the public view corporate independent expenditures as a method used to gain unfair legislative access. Stevens predicted that if the public believes that corporations dominate elections, disaffected voters will stop participating...

Third, Stevens argued that the majority's decision failed to recognize the dangers of the corporate form. Austin held that the prevention of corruption, including the distorting influence of a dominant funding source, was a sufficient reason for regulating corporate independent expenditures...

Legal entities, Stevens wrote, are not "We the People" for whom our Constitution was established. Therefore, he argued, they should not be given speech protections under the First Amendment. The First Amendment, he argued, protects individual self-expression, self-realization and the communication of ideas...

Fourth, Stevens attacked the majority's central argument: that the prohibition of spending guards free speech and allows the general public to receive all available information. Relying on Austin, Stevens argued that corporations "unfairly influence" the electoral process with vast sums of money that few individuals can match, which distorts the public debate... -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC#Dissent


There's a lot more in that opinion, but I think the above well makes the point.