The New Yorker this week has an in-depth account of the manipulations and blunders that inflated a narrow issue before the US Supreme Court into the now infamous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision. The majority opinion didn’t need to make sense – it had 5 of the 9 votes, enough to win; the [...]
The Charlotte Observer uses research from Democracy North Carolina for an analysis of Duke Energy’s political clout, which would grow even larger after the proposed merger with Progress Energy. “We are not apologetic about what we do in state capitals and Washington,” said Duke spokesperson Tom Williams. “We are a large player and we serve [...]
In this hour-long production, the radio documentary “This American Life” manages to get Washington politicians and lobbyists saying the worst things possible about themselves, political corruption and the all-consuming money chase. Amazing! Who needs more evidence of the need for fundamental change? It begins with the tape of a shakedown fundraising call from a member of [...]
The Center for Responsive Politics follows the “Shadow Money Trail” through the annual reports of foundations and business associations in order to uncover some of the millions spent by the Koch-Pope-Americans for Prosperity network for political advertising – but the source of most of the money remains hidden. What can be done? Even New Bern’s [...]
Here’s a sobering statistic from a Washington Post report: “Four years ago, just 6 percent of campaign advertising in the GOP primaries amounted to attacks on other Republicans; in this election, that figure has shot up to more than 50 percent, according to an analysis of advertising trends.” Most of the money for the negative ads [...]
The New Mexico legislature just passed a resolution calling on Congress to initiate a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. A blog entry from John Nichols of The Nation describes the significance of this action and how it fits into other efforts for an amendment and the larger outcry against corporate [...]
Dozens of news stories are telling the horrific impact of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision on 2012’s election, and we’ve barely begun. Super PACs, billionaires, and front groups for who-knows-what are the oxygen that candidates rely on for their lives. They'll also have a chokehold on them if they are elected. Election attorney Rick Hasen [...]
Here’s a strategy to simultaneously fight nasty political money and the nasty political ads they buy: Go after the broadcasters and make them pull any ad not completely substantiated with hard evidence. As a media expert explains, independent ads don’t enjoy the same protection from a broadcaster’s good-taste test as ads produced by candidates during [...]
A trio of small business federations today released a survey showing that two thirds of small business owners across the nation believe the Citizens United decision gives big corporations an unfair advantage over them. The Supreme Court decision from January 2010 allows businesses to spend unlimited amounts from their treasury to tell people how to [...]
The landmark Citizens United v. FEC decision, which gave corporations the political speech rights of people, will celebrate its second anniversary on January 21; its impact only grows worse each day. Jeff Clements has written a great book titled Corporations Are Not People that traces the shocking history of how business interests gained the rights [...]