Utter the words “Citizens United” in a room full of liberals at your peril. The Supreme Court case that affirmed First Amendment protections for political expenditures by corporations (or, if you’re of a different mindset, evilly turned corporations into people) is a dog-whistle issue on the Left. The internet is awash in outrage over it, and the Democratic Party, in particular Hillary Clinton, has made overturning the decision a top priority.
Why? What’s the problem with corporate spending on politics? After all, unions were already free to spend, as were advocacy groups. Corporations, like unions and advocacy groups, are merely assemblies of people under a particular structure. The plain language of the First Amendment prohibits ANY restrictions on speech (and if you think you can exercise your free speech without spending money, remember that even a soapbox upon which to stand costs money). Perhaps they feel that corporations are inevitably Big Business, with whom the Left pretends to have an adversarial relationship (mostly to convince their rank-and-file that the Right has been corrupted by the evil and greedy). Perhaps they simply want to control political speech – which is why the Founders debarred government from controlling political speech.
As for Clinton, well, there’s a personal element to Citizens United. The case was centered on a film critical of Herself. So, color me skeptical of her motives, but this is all old news.
Fast forward to today and the election. The argument against corporate spending in politics is about influence-buying, corruption, cronyism, subversion of the will of the people, concentration of power… call it what you will. Money is presumed to have the power to buy politicians, and Citizens United must be overturned, by Constitutional Amendment (yeah, that’ll happen), if necessary, by imposing ideological tests on Supreme Court candidates otherwise.
Next, a couple questions. What do these names have in common?
Buffett, Soros, Sandberg, Bloomberg, Benioff, Cuban, Whitman, Winfrey, Klarman, Walton, Pritzker, Saban.
What do these nations have in common?
Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emiriates, Argentina.
The first is a list of billionaires who have pledged to back Clinton with their money in this election. The second is a list of nations that have donated millions to the Clinton Foundation in recent years.
Clinton famously stated that she and Bill were dead broke when they left the White House. Since that time, they have earned at least $153 million from speaking fees, a fair bit of it from Wall Street. The Clinton Foundation, which received fully 96% of the Clintons’ charitable giving last year, today has hundreds of millions in assets. And, now, she has billionaires lining up to fund her presidential campaign.
Pile this on top of the swirling pay-to-play allegations that our government “watchdogs” are too corrupt or chickenshit to investigate, and an ugly picture emerges. Are we to believe that Clinton is untainted by all these large chunks of money coming in from billionaires, Wall Street and foreign nations?
If you’re a Clinton supporter and say “yes,” this next question is for you. Why, then, should we believe that other political money is corrupting and causes undue influence? Is Clinton some sort of special case? Is she uniquely immune to the influence of Big Money?
Or is she just a power-hungry hypocrite, eager to deny those who aren’t backing her the money with which to oppose her and her agenda? If you support Clinton AND want Citizens United overturned, perhaps you should shake your brainpan a bit and contemplate the incredible cognitive dissonance of that combination.
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Of course Clinton is a hypocrite. And a lying, conniving hypocrite. She will say and do whatever she has to in order to get and keep power and get more money—that seems to be one of her driving desires-money.
I think it also speaks to a “royal” attitude that she and those in her circle have. That is, they are the ruling class, and the rules they set for themselves don’t have to match the assumptions and rules they impose on their lessers. I wrote something about that way back in 2013: http://www.pigsandsheep.org/billionaires-and-taxes/