Democracy just died a little more in America

In a ruling that rank and file Tea Partiers, like their rich overlords, are likely surely celebrating, the Supreme Court has ruled, in McCutcheon vs. Federal Elections Commission, that aggregate donation limits on donations are unconstitutional.

The Chief, John Roberts, took a very narrow view of what was at stake to justify this ruling:

"The government has a strong interest, no less critical to our democratic system, in combatting corruption and its appearance," Roberts wrote. "We have, however, held that this interest must be limited to a specific kind of corruption — quid pro quo corruption — in order to ensure that the government's efforts do not have the effect of restricting the First Amendment right of citizens to choose who shall govern them."

The story also notes that, per the SCOTUS' post-ruling stance on Citizens United, this could also invalidate state laws that have in-state caps on total campaign donations.

Ahh, Citizens' United. The case that brought the flood of money, and the idea that money = democracy, and that money = speech, to a new low. Citizens United — the case that most cleanly and clearly ripped the mask off Glenn Greenwald in his claim that he's a liberal and not a libertarian.

Speaking of libertarians, and Greenwald's claim that he's never influenced by his current employer, I will head over to The Intercept later, and see what he has written, and if he's interviewed Pierre Omidyar about this or not. I'll also see if anybody else there has written — or not written — anything. (Twenty-four hours and counting, and bupkis. And I have now tweeted two of the better known non-Greenwald writers there, Marcy Wheeler and Dan Froomkin, to ask if anybody at The Intercept is going to write about this, at all. And, yes, in a week or so, I'll do a separate blog post about the silence. I'll also rhetorically ask if this doesn't affect Greenwald's claim to not be subservient to his employers, since by a loophole, he's simply found one that congenial to him.)

That said, so far, Glenn and friends, contrary to what it says in its "about" section:

Our long-term mission is to produce fearless, adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues. The editorial independence of our journalists will be guaranteed. They will be encouraged to pursue their passions, cultivate a unique voice, and publish stories without regard to whom they might anger or alienate. We believe the prime value of journalism is its power to impose transparency, and thus accountability, on the most powerful governmental and corporate bodies, and our journalists will be provided the full resources and support required to do this.

Has written about nothing other than NSA-related issues and snarking on Obama. My emphasis added on the block quote. The Intercept's parent body, First Read, promises:

Coming Soon

We'll cover the world, from sports and entertainment to politics and business.

So far, that hasn't happened yet, either. (And Froomkin and Wheeler are on the clock, too.)

For background, Greenwald embraced Citizens United and the "money = speech" idea behind it. He also showed his usual high level of disingenuousness when he claimed that we should always separate legal rulings from their outcomes, no matter how likely said outcomes will be. More on how that idea is wrong, here. That includes the wrongness of his statements that because this also frees up union and advocacy nonprofits, Citizens United was a level playing field. Bull. Unions don't have as much money as Apple, and Glenn's beloved board-gagging ACLU certainly doesn't. And he knows that.

Contra one Twitter correspondent, this isn't an obsession, at least not on my part. Glenn has, in the opinion of many people beyond me, shown himself to be more libertarian than liberal, as I have blogged, even a second time, and issues like this illustrate it. (Glenn knows this, and if he wants to prove me wrong, next time he's at a youth socialism conference, he can talk about things like a living wage, higher minimum wage, strengthening the NLRB, and similar issues, not just privacy rights.)

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The New York Times, again, tries to find a "bright side" on an issue where there really is none. It notes that this could divert more donations away from the super PACs that Citizens United helped and toward donations to individual candidates. Money in politics is highly fungible; the "no linkage" rules on campaign ad details between super PACs and candidates are already regularly ignored and twisted.

Related? After all the talk about tweaking its rules about Internet neutrality, in response to a plea by Netflix to, well, to actually follow through, the Federal Communications Commission officially said pay-for-access issues aren't part of Net neutrality.

Well, then, what the hell is?

So, rich people can contribute even more to adulterate our election process, and telecommunications companies can then charge extra for anybody wanting to discuss what's bad about that, among other things. As in eXXXon, which has indicated that possible future climate change regulations should be damned to hell. McCutcheon makes it a lot easier to buy Congresscritters who will do their bidding.

As this MSNBC review of Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" makes clear, rising income inequality threatens democracy. And, ever-more-unfettered campaign contributions is likely to only increase income inequality. Especially since, per the NYT, this could be the start of even more, and since, arguably (contra Glenn elsewhere), this kicked stare decisis in the ass on Buckley v Valero:

The next case may arrive soon. At their private conference on Friday, the justices are scheduled to consider whether to hear Iowa Right to Life Committee v. Tooker, No. 13-407, a petition from James Bopp Jr., one of the lawyers on the winning side in the McCutcheon case. It challenges an Iowa law that bans contributions from corporations but allows them from unions.

Mr. Bopp said he had scoured Chief Justice Roberts’s controlling opinion in the McCutcheon case for hints and clues. “I didn’t see any real blatant signals about what they would entertain in the future,” he said. “On the other side, this is the latest in a series of cases from a five-member majority that is very friendly to the First Amendment.”

There you go.

Add in that the Federal Election Commission is already deliberately gridlocked by its GOP members, who will now only dig in further, and the story is complete.

And, hence, Greenwald's idea that we should segregate likely, even highly likely, legal outcomes from actual legal rulings is a crock of shit. Apply that logic to, oh, say Plessy v Ferguson. Or keep living in Brazil while continuing to ignore the favelas.

At the least, have the balls to try to defend McCutcheon.

Democrats wade into "dark money" cesspool, too

A new story, done by ProPublica in conjunction with High Country News, details how "off books" liberal groups WAY outspent conservative ones in the Montana Senate race between Democratic incumbent John Tester and challenger Denny Rehberg.

A few takeaways.

First, liberals (and a guy in the White House) will play hardball, as the story shows. (Which makes me wonder where that "hardball" is when dealing with the House GOP?)

Liberal groups set up field offices, knocked on doors, featured "Montana" in their names or put horses in their TV ads. Many of them, including Montana Hunters and Anglers, were tied to a consultancy firm where a good friend of Jim Messina, President Barack Obama's campaign manager, is a partner.

The end result? Tester beat Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg by a narrow margin. And the libertarian Cox, who had so little money he didn't even have to report to federal election authorities, picked up more votes than any other libertarian in a competitive race on the Montana ballot.

Related to that ... people who claim Greens are hypocritical for allegedly taking GOP money? Even if true, Democrats-only types obviously don't have much ground to stand on. 

Second, after a few years of grumbling about Citizens United, many national-level Democrats, like Tester, will "move on" if Round 2 of a deliberate test case from Montana, or something else, doesn't get SCOTUS to modify its ruling. That's because Congress, even if Democrats have congrol of both houses with a filibuster-proof Senate, aren't revisiting campaign finance issues any time soon.

In fact, they're probably hoping you will "move on," too, accept today's Democratic Party as it is and that's that.

That's not to say that Republicans aren't worse. It is to say, per ZZ Top, that Dems are about as pure as the driven slush.

Fourth, per the story, expect the blizzard of names to be even more obfuscating in the future. I normally associate "patriotic" in a name as signifying wingnuts. Well, one liberal-leaning "dark group" put "patriotic" in its name for that reason.

Fifth, something I"ve mentioned to friends before. Expect more paid commenters to hit the webpages of stories like this and try to spin, spin, spin, the moment they come out.  In fact, I suspect that happened already in the 2012 elections. Journalism analysis sites like Columbia Journalism Review, in the last weeks before the election, were routinely having political stories hit by wingnut spam commenters.

Sixth, if this does continue to happen, there's a couple of more specific takeaways. The first is "know your audience." Ads misspelling Tester's name, not being Montana-specific, etc., were likely to carry less water. The second is timing. An early blitz runs the risk of losing attention later, or having to be repeated more and more, which then risks numbing out watchers/listeners. 

Will #wingnut #SuperPAC dineros ‘buy’ a #NateSilver type?

Wingnut Daddy Warbucks Sheldon Adelson and his wife,
Miriam, in February. And, what is it with rich conservatives
and horrible hair?/New York Times photo.

The New York Times, and others, are reporting that the Koch Bros. and other gazillionaires with their SuperPACs largely failed to influence the elections.

Columbia Journalism Review, which before the election was having wingnut troll commenters hit every post, saysmore of the same.

But, that said, just because Romney didn’t win, was the money so illy spent? Not necessarily.

In fact, looking beyond the presidential race, from wingnuts’ perspective, some money may already have been well spent.

The Citizens’ United ruling by the Supreme Court came down the pike early enough to have some influence on 2010 elections, not just for Congress, but state governments. That, in turn, being a decadal election, influenced state redistricting efforts.

And, if one looks beyond the presidential and U.S. Senate chess boards, House races Tuesday night have made Congressional Republicans even more wingnut and tea partier than the current Congress.

SuperPACs can fund other things. That includes lobbyists for redistricting at the state level.

And, if you pay more money for better software, and better analysis to feed the software, on gerrymandering, you get districts that favor incumbents even more. Democrats aren't excused, but the GOP seems to practice this more.

And, back to CJR and troll spam. I speculated that, just maybe, SuperPACs were paying people to comment there. If true, and if presidentially disappointed wingnuts double down in 2014, watch out.

And, there’s other ways Koch Bros. and others could redouble their efforts.

They already tried to do “spinning” pushback against polling analyst Nate Silver of 528 blog fame. And, speaking of spin, Silver noted, just before election day, than on online outcomes-betting websites, Romney had much better odds at Intrade than at other sites like Betfair, and wondered what was up with that.

But, speaking of Silver, here’s something else that could play out.

Remember a few years ago, the “scandal” about bloggers like Armstrong Williams getting paid by wingnuts? Why aren't the wingnuts’ moneybags “finding” Nate Silver-types who will take a few dinero, do a wingnut-pomo blend of snazzy language to hide "lying with stats" and going from there?

Yes, Real Clear Politics already exists, but it’s just a bit slanted, not “in the tank.” I’m talking the SuperPACs applying Big Tobacco/Climate Denial tactics and funding to polling analysis.