The Ungodly, Destructive Power of the Citizens United Decision

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

12 October 15

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, as you know, is what Butch Hancock would have come up with, had he composed "Derp Road Song."

hat are the gobshites saying these days?

We have a great deal of fun here with certain elements of the content provided by The New York Times—coughDowdcoughBrookscoughDouthatcough—but there are times in which the NYT reminds us that there is one thing it does better than any other newspaper. It can be The New York Times. Over the weekend, courtesy of a team of three NYT reporters, we had one of those moments.

Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign, a New York Times investigation found. Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision five years ago.

The sentence there that links the grotesque decision in the Citizens United case to Watergate is both apt and destructive. At its most fundamental core, Watergate was not merely an exercise in unaccountable criminal executive power, though it certainly was that. It also was a campaign-finance scandal. An unaccountable slush fund of millions of dollars was used to finance the break-in and all of the rest of what the late John Mitchell called, "the White House horrors." Almost all of the new legislation that emerged from the wreckage of the Nixon administration concerned campaign finance; there already being laws on the books against burglary, perjury, and obstruction of justice. All of those laws were swept away by the current Supreme Court in 2010.

But regardless of industry, the families investing the most in presidential politics overwhelmingly lean right, contributing tens of millions of dollars to support Republican candidates who have pledged to pare regulations; cut taxes on income, capital gains and inheritances; and shrink entitlement programs. While such measures would help protect their own wealth, the donors describe their embrace of them more broadly, as the surest means of promoting economic growth and preserving a system that would allow others to prosper, too.

At the time that the Supreme Court legalized influence-peddling on a mass scale, we were told that all things would even out because labor unions, Hollywood, and SOROS! The Times investigation thoroughly demolishes that alibi. The decision prompted an oligarchical revolution in how we conduct the processes of democracy in this country, and that revolution has been financed almost completely by—and almost completely for the benefit of— the political right. And, no, I don't believe a bunch of hedge-fund guys are shoveling money at their legislative sublets so that we can all have the opportunity to get rich by inventing the electric fork in our garages.  They are doing so for the same reason the oligarchs of the previous Gilded Age did so – to make sure that the messy business of representative democracy doesn't touch their god-given right to buy the country for themselves, as the Times report goes on to explain.

In marshaling their financial resources chiefly behind Republican candidates, the donors are also serving as a kind of financial check on demographic forces that have been nudging the electorate toward support for the Democratic Party and its economic policies. Two-thirds of Americans support higher taxes on those earning $1 million or more a year, according to a June New York Times/CBS News poll, while six in 10 favor more government intervention to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly seven in 10 favor preserving Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are. Republican candidates have struggled to improve their standing with Hispanic voters, women and African-Americans. But as the campaign unfolds, Republicans are far outpacing Democrats in exploiting the world of "super PACs," which, unlike candidates' own campaigns, can raise unlimited sums from any donor, and which have so far amassed the bulk of the money in the election.

Read the whole thing, as the kidz say. This is the only piece written so far on the 2016 elections that actually matters, because it makes clear and plain the fact that almost everything else written or broadcast on the subject resides in some vague narrative shadowland between fairy tales and theater criticism. And it also is a ringing tribute to the profound wisdom of Justice Anthony Kennedy who, as we never should forget, reassured us that:

"Independent expenditures do not lead to, or create the appearance of,quid pro quocorruption."

Now, usually, a major weekend piece in the New York Times would "set the agenda" for all The Sunday Showz. Certainly, that was the case when the previous administration wanted to launch its bullshit through Judith Miller to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Naturally, you would think that what my man Chuck Todd would call a "deep dive" into the plutocratic morass that has been made of our politics would be Topic A for discussion. Let's take a look, shall we?

On CBS, where John Dickerson continues to oil the casters on the chair that once contained former scribe to the court of Louis The Fat, Bob Schieffer, Donald Trump said something silly about guns, and then Ben Carson said something even sillier about guns, and the panel harrumphed a lot about how badly dysfunctional the House of Representatives has become now that it is populated by the people produced by the corrupted system that the Times described. But, somehow, the fact that American politics is sliding towards becoming nothing more than rigged dumbshow never came up.

On ABC, This Week With The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs hosted "Bobby" Jindal, who said something silly about ISIS and got called on it by old pal Martha Raddatz. There was some prattling about the non-candidacy of Joe Biden, and the roundtable featured the inexcusably employed Mark Halperin, who said that, if Hillary Clinton makes "a mistake" in the debate Tuesday night, that will be "the only story." But, somehow, the fact that American democracy has been turned into a high-class silent auction never came up.

And, finally, on NBC, at the Overlook Hotel where my man Chuck Todd always has been the caretaker, Republican congresscritters Charlie Dent and the aptly named Dave Brat got into a catfight over who was the most conservative conservative in the history of conservative conservatism. (Brat is the know-nothing who helped rid us of Eric Cantor.) Dent was the liberal. But, aha, here came Bernie Sanders:

But here is the difference in political outlook between the president and myself. What I understand is that the power of corporate America, Wall Street, the corporate media is so great that real change to transform our country does not take place unless millions of people begin to stand up and say very loudly and clearly that the United States government has got to represent all of us, and not just the top 1%.

My man Chuck Todd quickly moved onto a discussion of drones, Hillary Clinton, Sanders's possible running mates, and the basic impossibility of Sanders's getting anything done against the oligarchy that's entrenched itself in the institutions of our government through legalized influence-peddling described in the Times. But my man Chuck Todd somehow never made that connection. And the Times investigation never was specifically mentioned on the show at all, but the panel included my man Chuck Todd's new BFF, Hugh Hewitt, and he was allowed to cite a story in the wingnut Washington Beacon that accused Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal of violating the Intelligence Identities Act, which Hewitt then compared to the outright outing of Valerie Plame. Hewitt then shilled for Ted Cruz specifically because he was able to raise more money than Marco Rubio was in the third quarter. Somehow, the fact that the American experiment has been converted into a kind of alchemy where gold is turned into power never came up. If I were Nick Confessore, Sarah Cohen, and Karen Yourish, the Timesfolk who spent weeks reporting and writing the only story about the 2016 elections that matters, I might wonder if it was time to think about that career in long-haul trucking again.

Have a good holiday. I'm out.