The Supreme Court Made A Catastrophic Mistake— The Failure Of Citizens United

Friday, Nick Confessore wrote in the NY Times how secret, dark money from undisclosed sources is dominating the elections and that it will be even worse in 2016. Although several corporate whores were elevated to the Supreme Court to specifically accomplish these kinds of virulently anti-democracy stratagems— think Bush I and II nominees Clarence Thomas, Sammy Alito and John Roberts plus Reagan holdover Antonin Scalia— the Court framed their Citizens United decision in a very different way.

The dominance of secretly funded advertising defies one of the underlying assumptions of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed outside groups to raise and spend more money, so long as they did not coordinate with candidates and parties. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy envisioned campaigns in which unlimited independent spending by unions and corporations would be paired with robust real-time disclosure.

“Shareholders can determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits,” Mr. Kennedy wrote, “and citizens can see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.”

The reality is far different. Voters are confronted by advertising from an array of groups with generic names and unclear agendas. The groups’ finances are disclosed only on federal tax returns, on a form on which the names of donors are allowed to be redacted.

“There are assumptions in Citizens United that have never happened,” said Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, which supports more disclosure. “The assumption that we would have real-time disclosure never happened. When we get to the 2016 election, the dark money is going to greatly explode.”

…The greater transparency of liberal groups has helped drive a perception that liberal billionaires, not conservative ones, have been the biggest political donors this cycle. But close to 80 percent of general election advertising by outside groups aiding Republicans has been paid for with secret money, donated to groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Freedom Partners— a trade association of donors with ties to Charles G. and David H. Koch— and Crossroads GPS, founded by Karl Rove. Heavily regulated businesses like insurance companies have long relied on such groups to allow them to quietly intervene in campaigns.

What Confessore hasn’t discussed is the influence of foreign money pouring into American elections to influence policies that benefit their own interests— particularly money from Russia, China and the Middle East. Much of this money has been laundered through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, today more a criminal enterprise for the Republican Party than the benign trade group our grandparents remember it as.

The Chamber, flush with money from foreign sources, has two entities shoveling money into elections across the country, one registered as #C00082040, which, as of August 31, had handed out $180,425 too candidates (every cent of which went to Republicans). Thousands went to the NRSC and NRCC and to PACs set up by 4 favored Chamber candidates: Susan Collins (R-ME), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Tom Cole (R-OK). Most of the money from this pot, though, went to dozens and dozens of GOP candidates backed by the Chamber and by the corporations and foreign governments that fund the Chamber. A dozen examples:

• Barbara Comstock (R-VA)
• Chris Gibson (R-NY)
• coke freak David Joyce (R-OH)
• Stewart Mills (R-MN)
• Richard Tisei (R-MA)
• Joni Ernst (R-IA)
• Cory Gardner (R-CO)
• Terri Lynn Land (R-MI)
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• Mike McFadden (R-MN)
• Dan Sullivan (R-AK)
• Thom Tillis (R-NC)

But the big money from the Chamber comes from a second entity, #C90013145, which has already spent $28,244,969 in independent expendtures. Although the Chamber has spent millions smearing Democrats like Mark Udall ($1,5001,942), Kay Hagan ($1,207,799), Mark Begich ($662,500), Jeanne Shaheen ($500,000), Ami Bera ($300,807), Andrew Romanoff ($300,766) and Sean Eldridge ($300,000), the biggest amounts went to boost the campaigns of the Republican candidates dedicated to an anti-family agenda that benefits Arab and Chinese designs on American policies. The dozen worst so far into the election:

• Thom Tillis (R-NC)- $2,637,992
• Cory Gardner (R-CO)- $1,901,333
• Joni Ernst (R-IA)- $1,813,816
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)- $1,012,650
• Scott Brown (R-NH)- $1,002,870
• Bob Dold (R-IL)- $725,000
• Dan Sullivan (R-AK)- $663,334
• Stewart Mills (R-MN)- $650,150
• David Valadao (R-CA)- $550,150
• Terry Lynn Land (R-MI)- $500,000
• Mike Coffman (R-CO)- $450,150
• Martha McSally (R-AZ)- $425,150

What does this kind of money buy? China’s top servant inside the U.S. government is, easily, Mitch McConnell. He serves his financiers and masters in Beijing, not the folks back in Lexington, Owensboro, Bowling Green, let alone Louisville. As Confessore wrote in his Times piece, “While most nonprofit groups operate in multiple races, in part to demonstrate to the I.R.S. that they are not overly attached to individual candidates, several have emerged this cycle with what appears to be the sole purpose of supporting a single candidate. A group called the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, which is overseen by a former aide to the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has been one of the biggest spenders in 2014, airing 10,000 ads through the end of September to benefit Mr. McConnell.” Kentucky Opportunity Coalition does not disclose which companies— let alone foreign countries— are trying to reelect McConnell, but the groups has already spent $6,915,903 savaging Alison Lundergan Grimes with a nonstop smear campaign on the Kentucky airwaves. And last week alone, Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS— which also launders illegal foreign money seeking to buy influence in Washington— spent $1,373,156 in Kentucky on McConnell’s behalf— $36,340 on Friday alone.

UPDATE: The Russians Had A Spy In Congress Even Before China Bought The U.S. Chamber And McConnell

In 1999, 45 years after the death of former Lower East Side Congressman Samuel Dickstein (D-NY), Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev published The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era, which used previously previously unavailable KGB records to prove that Alger Hiss and Julius Rosenberg had indeed been Russian spies— and that so was Congressman Dickstein. Codename: Crook. Peter Duffy wrote Dickstein, to this day, “is the only known U.S. representative to have served as a covert agent for a foreign power.” I guess that depends on how you define “covert agent”— or maybe it just doesn’t count a U.S. Senator.

For a monthly stipend ($1,250) from the Soviet Embassy Dickstein gave the Soviet Union materials on fascists, steered House investigators away from looking into Communists and and gave speeches in Congress on Moscow-dictated themes. At the time, the NKVD (forerunner of the KGB) wrote back to Moscow on Dickstein: “We are fully aware whom we are dealing with. ‘Crook’ is completely justifying his code name. This is an unscrupulous type, greedy for money, consented to work because of money, a very cunning swindler… Therefore it is difficult to guarantee the fulfillment of the planned program even in the part which he proposed to us himself.”

But the money disputes continued. Dickstein admitted to the Soviets that he had formerly worked for Polish and British intelligence—another stunning revelation— both of which, he said, “paid money without any questions.” Finally, in February 1940, the NKVD decided to cut him loose because he “can’t be a useful organizer who could gather around him a group of liberal congressman to exercise our influence and, alone, he doesn’t represent any interest.” According to Weinstein and Vassiliev, Dickstein had earned a total of $12,000 during his time on the Soviet payroll, about $200,000 when adjusted for inflation.