A few months ago, I posted a proposal to curb campaign spending in anticipation of a Supreme Court case that threatened to strike curbs to campaign fundraising. The results of that case are in, and it ain't pretty. In a 5-4 decision, the justices voted to overturn a 63-year-old law that limited corporate spending on campaigns.
This is a deadly blow to a democratic process that is already near a crisis point. Already, many Americans — myself included — see too much corporate power in Washington. The Supreme Court's decision takes away one of the few hurdles corporations faced in their attempt to control the government, and the precedent it sets puts most of the other hurdles in danger as well.
To make matters worse, since this is a SCOTUS decision, nothing short of a radical shift in the Court or a Constitutional amendment can change it. We're stuck with this new world order.
One of the core issues at question is whether corporations should automatically enjoy all Constitutional rights. It seems almost self-evident to me that they shouldn't; the government should serve people above all else, and the interests of humans and corporations are often at odds (see my first link in this post). There's a fundamental understanding that free speech is not absolute: you can't yell "fire!" in a theater, nor can you order a hit on someone and claim you were just talking. It would not be inconsistent to put even more stringent restrictions on purely (or even mainly) commercial speech, especially given that it's not clear whether corporations should enjoy any first amendment rights at all.
About three years before the first major campaign finance law was enacted, an American author coined the phrase "banana republic" to describe the gripping power that fruit companies has over Honduras' government. That phrase is now synonymous with corrupt and ineffectual governments under which the many suffer for the benefit of a few tycoons. Too bad for me, I don't like bananas.
Showing posts with label Constitution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Constitution. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Hide me the money!
This week is the home-stretch before next Tuesday's special senatorial primary in Massachusetts, so I've got elections on the brain. Today's post is going to be the first — and more harebrained — of my two-part election-week extravaganza.
The way I see it, politics is far too heavily skewed by corporate interests. There are those who disagree with that assertion; Radley Balko rightly points out that libertarians put a higher premium on individual rights than liberals, who like policies that promote equality. Conservatives also put more trust in the free market and corporate interests than liberals do, so they might be okay with corporations pouring money into elections. But I'm a liberal, dammit, and I think it's a harmful practice.
There are two main reasons for my stance. First, corporations are much stronger than individuals: they can't die of old age, and they're able to merge and buy each other, so they're much better at amassing and consolidating money and power. Second, companies' concerns are fundamentally different than people's. People have to worry about money, personal freedoms, fairness, happiness and a host of other "soft" concerns. Many of these concerns are contradictory, making people's objectives very complex; but since companies only worry about money, they skew policies in a way that's unbalanced relative to people. Given the choice between favoring corporations or favoring people, I'd lean toward people.
The question is, how do we move power away from companies without completely trampling their rights? For the past century, our approach has been to curb funding: there are limits to how much an individual or company can contribute to a campaign. One of the problems with this is that it reduces pressure from companies, but not necessarily from industries. Another is that it's less powerful against companies like law firms or banks, where a lot of individuals can contribute to the max, effectively multiplying their company's contributions. Yet another is that it does little to stop another problem in politics, which is that it's very hard to unseat an incumbent in a primary or run as an independent in a general election; you'd be working against someone with a lot of money behind them.
What if we instead curb spending? Let politicians gather money from anyone they please, but limit the amount they can spend on the campaign, preferably to a smaller number than the current average. This would greatly limit the amount of power a company or industry could wield: if there's an uncomfortable quid pro quo, candidates would be able to refuse the money, comfortable that they'll still be able to raise up to the maximum. It would also make it easier for independents to run, since it'll be easier for them to match their opponents' spending.
Of course, as I said at the beginning, this is a hairbrained and somewhat half-baked proposal. In particular, I'm not sure how it'd apply to PACs and other third-party groups. It wouldn't help at all if an industry decides to just deflect its spending on direct advertisement for a candidate, rather than giving it to that candidate's campaign. A few months ago, the Supreme Court held oral arguments in a case that would determine whether it's Constitutional to restrict third-party groups from spending money to effectively campaign for (or against) a candidate; if those restrictions — some of which are a century old — are overturned, the corporate skew in campaigns could easily get much worse than it is now.
The way I see it, politics is far too heavily skewed by corporate interests. There are those who disagree with that assertion; Radley Balko rightly points out that libertarians put a higher premium on individual rights than liberals, who like policies that promote equality. Conservatives also put more trust in the free market and corporate interests than liberals do, so they might be okay with corporations pouring money into elections. But I'm a liberal, dammit, and I think it's a harmful practice.
There are two main reasons for my stance. First, corporations are much stronger than individuals: they can't die of old age, and they're able to merge and buy each other, so they're much better at amassing and consolidating money and power. Second, companies' concerns are fundamentally different than people's. People have to worry about money, personal freedoms, fairness, happiness and a host of other "soft" concerns. Many of these concerns are contradictory, making people's objectives very complex; but since companies only worry about money, they skew policies in a way that's unbalanced relative to people. Given the choice between favoring corporations or favoring people, I'd lean toward people.
The question is, how do we move power away from companies without completely trampling their rights? For the past century, our approach has been to curb funding: there are limits to how much an individual or company can contribute to a campaign. One of the problems with this is that it reduces pressure from companies, but not necessarily from industries. Another is that it's less powerful against companies like law firms or banks, where a lot of individuals can contribute to the max, effectively multiplying their company's contributions. Yet another is that it does little to stop another problem in politics, which is that it's very hard to unseat an incumbent in a primary or run as an independent in a general election; you'd be working against someone with a lot of money behind them.
What if we instead curb spending? Let politicians gather money from anyone they please, but limit the amount they can spend on the campaign, preferably to a smaller number than the current average. This would greatly limit the amount of power a company or industry could wield: if there's an uncomfortable quid pro quo, candidates would be able to refuse the money, comfortable that they'll still be able to raise up to the maximum. It would also make it easier for independents to run, since it'll be easier for them to match their opponents' spending.
Of course, as I said at the beginning, this is a hairbrained and somewhat half-baked proposal. In particular, I'm not sure how it'd apply to PACs and other third-party groups. It wouldn't help at all if an industry decides to just deflect its spending on direct advertisement for a candidate, rather than giving it to that candidate's campaign. A few months ago, the Supreme Court held oral arguments in a case that would determine whether it's Constitutional to restrict third-party groups from spending money to effectively campaign for (or against) a candidate; if those restrictions — some of which are a century old — are overturned, the corporate skew in campaigns could easily get much worse than it is now.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
The Con Constitution
Hello, readers! Welcome to the inaugural post of poliglut. We'll perhaps post a manifesto in a bit; for now, suffice to say that we plan to use this blog to foster a discussion among people who don't always agree, but do always think carefully.
I'm going to dive right in and start the posting with a bold claim: America does not have a written Constitution; at least, not a binding one. (A disclaimer: this post is a part re-post, part clarification of a claim I made on The Economist's Democracy in America blog.)
The US Constitution has been so broadly interpreted, and carries with it so much precedent and case law, that its actual words are nearly meaningless. We have a relatively firm understanding of what's constitutional and what isn't, but that understanding is informed more by unwritten social values and written case law than by the Constitution itself. I think I'll jokingly refer to this as the Dead Constitution theory.
Some examples are in order. There are some cases that could be argued both ways (does confessional privilege run counter to or in agreement with the First Amendment?), but other cases seem clearer.
When the written and unwritten constitutions are in agreement, we refer to the written document by way of convenience (i.e., "that's protected by the First Amendment"). Where they differ, the unwritten one trumps.
I especially welcome our resident legal expert's input.
I'm going to dive right in and start the posting with a bold claim: America does not have a written Constitution; at least, not a binding one. (A disclaimer: this post is a part re-post, part clarification of a claim I made on The Economist's Democracy in America blog.)
The US Constitution has been so broadly interpreted, and carries with it so much precedent and case law, that its actual words are nearly meaningless. We have a relatively firm understanding of what's constitutional and what isn't, but that understanding is informed more by unwritten social values and written case law than by the Constitution itself. I think I'll jokingly refer to this as the Dead Constitution theory.
Some examples are in order. There are some cases that could be argued both ways (does confessional privilege run counter to or in agreement with the First Amendment?), but other cases seem clearer.
- The federal government is involved in education; I haven't heard any grumblings that it shouldn't be (and I wouldn't put forth those grumblings, myself). But I don't know of any text in the Constitution that allows this, and the Tenth Amendment would therefore seem to disallow it.
- Roe v Wade famously hinges on a Constitutional right to privacy. That right isn't in the written Constitution, though I'd argue it's firmly in our unwritten one.
- The secret trials and "indefinite detention" of Guantanamo prisoners seem to go against the Sixth Amendment, given the Supreme Court's ruling that Guantanamo prisoners fall under the Constitution's jurisdiction.
- The text "In God We Trust" on coins — to say nothing of the many benedictions I had to endure as part of my public high school's marching band on public holidays — are an establishment of religion, even if they're not an establishment of a specific religion.
When the written and unwritten constitutions are in agreement, we refer to the written document by way of convenience (i.e., "that's protected by the First Amendment"). Where they differ, the unwritten one trumps.
I especially welcome our resident legal expert's input.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)