An election drowning in money

By Will Parry

Hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions from billionaires and corporations, much of it anonymous, corrupted the 2010 elections and swept a clutch of corporate-friendly politicians into office.

The unlimited spending was the ugly fruit of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case, overturning a century of law by ruling that corporations have the same free speech rights as human beings.

“The activist reactionary majority on the Supreme Court…has opened the floodgates for oligarchs and plutocrats to secretly buy our elections and consolidate their hold on the corporate state,” Bill Moyers warned.

One example among many: Right wing funding sources poured a staggering $65 million into no fewer than 161,203 attack ads aimed at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to research by the Campaign Media Analysis Group. Amazingly, Pelosi survived the assault.

“We face a Wild West campaign finance system that has degraded our democracy and shaken its foundations,” said Public Citizen President Robert Weissman. “Political insiders agree that the corporate and billionaire money spent in 2010 is just a warm-up for a much larger effort in 2012.”

Shadowy front groups with “patriotic” titles but no mass membership base were the funnels through which many of the millions poured: American Crossroads, American Solutions, American Future Fund, Americans for Job Security, Americans for Prosperity, American Action Network.

Many of these sham groups were organized under a section of the tax code that gives corporations and the wealthy a legal way to contribute anonymously. And anonymous contributions translate into zero accountability.

The hand of Karl Rove was prominent in the campaign through his links to two third-party groups, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS. The latter group is favored by wealthy contributors because it is set up as a 501(c)(4) corporation to keep its donor list secret.

Crossroads GPS funneled $14 million into ads attacking Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Barbara Boxer as part of a concerted campaign to shift control of the Senate to the Republicans. The donors were not identified. Despite the attacks, the two senators won re-election.

The U. S. Chamber of Commerce “raised nearly $33 million in secret donations for political ads…almost all of which was used to elect Republicans who have vowed to repeal the health care law,” The New York Times reported. “Certainly the chamber, which lobbies Congress hard on behalf of big business, will make its demands known – health care repeal, no tax increases, reduced regulation and oversight.”

(In 2009, the health insurance lobby had given $86.2 million to the chamber to try to prevent enactment of the health care law.)

Apparently foreign money was also used in election spending. The Nation reports that contributions from U.S. based multinationals and from India and Bahrain were commingled and deposited “in the same 501(c) (6) account used to run an unprecedented $75 million attack campaign, mostly against Democrats.”

Operating from the shadows over the years have been David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, a conglomerate with annual earnings estimated at $100 billion.

“The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry – especially environmental regulation,” Jane Mayer wrote in The New Yorker.

Mayer quotes Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity: “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money….They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”

Senior voters were not neglected. The so-called “60 Plus Association” spent $5,516,241 in pharmaceutical industry contributions for ads directed at older voters, spreading lies about the health reform law and supporting Republican candidates committed to its repeal.

The barrage of negative attack ads was effective. They began early in the campaign, battering Democratic candidates, helping to set the tone in key districts, forcing the Democrats into defensive spending. Even where the Democrats eventually won, the barrage was hardly wasted, since it diverted resources from other races.

In the first election after Citizens United, it has become clear that the big corporations, the Wall Street thieves and the bloated billionaires have been freed by the U.S. Supreme Court to spend whatever it takes to buy themselves a government.

Counter measures are in the works. The DISCLOSE Act would at least require that donors be identified, enabling the public to follow the money.

The House has passed this legislation (whose awkward title is “Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections”). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is being urged to bring the DISCLOSE Act up for a vote in the lame duck session.

There will also be a renewed effort to enact legislation providing for the public financing of elections.

Vital as these immediate steps are, in the words of Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman, “We absolutely must overturn the Citizens United decision.” To this end, Public Citizen and other advocates have launched a long-haul drive for a constitutional amendment.

Public Citizen has already gathered more than 500,000 signatures of persons endorsing such an amendment, which would make it clear that our cherished free speech rights do not extend to corporations. Roughly 50 House members and ten senators have already indicated their support for such an amendment, Public Citizen reports, “and we’re going to get much more powerful, among the people and in Congress.” Public Citizen’s concluding statement is a clarion call to all of us:

“We refuse to sit back and watch our democracy be eviscerated.”