President aims to take the money and run

Here’s what President Obama wants you to believe about his relationship to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and the toxic torrent of corporate cash polluting our politics: “it’s complicated.”

In their ruling, the justices determined that corporations had a free speech right to anonymously contribute as much as they wanted to third-party political action groups that worked in support of candidates, as long as those PACs had no formal connection to the candidate.

On the one hand, the president blasted the court’s ruling less than a week after it was issued, with the justices seated right in front of him, in his January 2010 State of the Union speech, for opening “the floodgates for special interests – including foreign companies – to spend without limit in our elections.”

On the other hand, his campaign decided two years later to “level the playing field” with Republicans and encourage Super PAC support for the president, by allowing cabinet members and senior White House officials to cooperate with a Super PAC that supports their boss.

On yet another hand, the president insisted he would support a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United.

And on yet still another hand, when the president had the opportunity to actually do something to shed some sunlight on the secretive stash of corporate donations unleashed by Citizens United, by issuing an executive order requiring government contractors to reveal all their political spending, he balked.

When you follow the president’s actions, rather than listen to his words, it’s not complicated at all.

The president and his Democratic Party colleagues are determined to “take the money and run.”

For nearly a year, President Obama had floated the idea of issuing an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose all their political contributions – including contributions to PACs and organizations like the US Chamber of Commerce – when they submit a bid.

The biggest contractors, for the most part, are defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, which smother the politicians in contributions to keep the weapons contracts flowing. In the 2012 cycle, Lockheed’s PAC has spent more than $2 million in contributions that we know of, 59 percent to Republicans and 41 percent to Democrats.

Its contributions go beyond an attempt to win a single weapons contract. What they and the other contractors have been able to do is to purchase the country’s entire debate over defense spending, so that few of our representatives ever raise a peep about whether the expensive defense systems are necessary.

Republicans howled at the President Obama’s proposal, accusing him of attempting to politicize the bidding process. President Obama wanted to know who had made the contributions, the Republicans charged, so he could award bids to the highest-contributing bidders.

While President Obama stewed, the Republicans passed measures in May 2011 to block[m1]  an executive order if it was issued.

The venerable Public Citizen organization made a suggestion that would sidestep the Republicans’ stated objection.

Why not, Public Citizen said, limit the disclosure requirement to the winning bidder?

But the president backed off – either because he didn’t want a fight with Republicans or because his fundraisers reminded him he had a tough campaign ahead and the little people they dote on with their solicitation emails weren’t going to be able to foot the bill.

On the most critical issue facing our political system, the president of the United States is incapable of leveling with the American people.

President Obama may want to do the right thing, but he is trapped in a system controlled by big money that is bigger than he is.

The first step to fight back against that system won’t come from Washington. It will come from building a grassroots movement to undo Citizens United. Read more about it, and our proposed constitutional amendment, which is easy to understand and will withstand any legal challenge, here.

 

 

Tweet Charlie: Pop the Corporate Personhood Question

Now that Mitt Romney has taken a stand on corporate personhood, shouldn’t the rest of the Republican field?

Luckily, they have the perfect opportunity to all go on the record this Tuesday at their debate in New Hampshire.

They may need a little help. That’s why we’re tweeting the debate moderator, Charlie Rose, to remind him about this key issue and suggest he should pin the candidates down on their stance.

In case you missed it, Romney made his position clear at the Iowa State Fair in August, when he said, in response to an angry heckler, “Corporations are people, my friend.”

The only other Republican candidate who I found has taken a stand is Ron Paul, who came out strongly against the notion that corporations are people.

Rose also might want to follow up with Romney: if corporations are people for purposes of political contributions, why aren’t they people for the purposes of paying taxes, where they have an entirely separate set of laws that enable corporations to take advantage of all kinds of arcane loopholes, so that many of the largest companies, like General Electric, pay absolutely no taxes?

If Charlie wants to get beyond the rhetoric to the heart of the uneasy feeling most people are having about our political system, he should follow up with these questions:

Is it good for our country for corporate lobbyists to have unlimited access to our politicians to engineer trillions in no strings attached bailouts and other special treatment for their clients, while Americans without that access get screwed?

Is it OK for corporations to buy our politicians with lavish anonymous contributions, making a mockery of our democracy? 

Nothing shows the disconnect between Washington and the rest of the country better than the U.S. Supreme Court’s terrible Citizen United decision last year, which defined corporations as people under the First Amendment for purposes of influencing elections and unleashed a tsunami of anonymous corporate donations to politicians and their PACs.

Isn’t the best way to fix the corporate dominance over our politics to pass a constitutional amendment, like the one we have proposed here, to undo Citizens United?

I’m sure I’m not the only American who’d like to hear the Republican candidates’ answers to these questions. I’m sure plenty of other Americans would like to hear the answers as well.

Tweet Charlie @charlieroseshow. Ask him in your own words or feel free to send him this post.

Go ahead, Charlie, pop the questions.