By: Kate Guenther,
on 4/4/2015
The American political system is a mess, but don’t expect that introducing reform and changing how the government is structured will cure all the diseases of American democracy. There is no magic bullet. No simple panacea. It would be difficult to argue that things are going well in Washington today.
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By: Lauren,
on 4/18/2011
Little more than a year after the January 21, 2010 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission, it is already apparent that the effects of the ruling are widespread, contaminate the democratic processes, and could be long-lasting. Because the effects of the ruling on the 2010 election campaign were significant, the potential effects on public health could be pervasive. Finding new ways to undo its pernicious consequences is an important public health goal.
The Ruling
The Citizens United ruling overthrew previous laws and court rulings ranging from the early 1900’s to parts of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, sometimes known as the McCain-Feingold law. The Court ruled that previous laws and regulations were so restrictive as to prohibit free speech. The ruling gave corporations the right to use unlimited amounts of money directly from the corporation’s treasury for independent election campaign advocacy. The results of the decision were immediately revealed in the November 2010 mid-term U.S. Congressional election campaign and its aftermath.
The Relevance of the Court’s Ruling to Public Health
Corporate wealth gives companies the special ability to develop and test communications that frame issues, appeal to emotions, provide inaccurate and incomplete information, and increase the cognitive availability of ideas. This allows them to take advantage of voters’ decision-making vulnerabilities. Thus, corporate campaign election funds could be directed into tailored messages for or against candidates who take positions on a variety of public health issues ranging from abortion, coal-fired power plants, menu labeling, and worker health, to budget appropriations and other aspects of health that are vulnerable to market forces. Corporate lobbyists could pressure elected officials based on their contributions to the official’s campaign as a means of gaining legislative favors. Donations from insurance and pharmaceutical corporations in the 2008 election cycle seem to have gained them access and influence during health care financing reform. After the 2010 election Representative Issa (R-Calif.), chair of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, reportedly asked 150 trade associations, corporations and think tanks to provide a wish list of public health, environmental and other public protections they wanted eliminated. The Court’s ruling in Citizens United has raised concerns about the government’s ability to regulate the commercial speech of tobacco and other corporations in advertising their products.
Follow the money
More money ($4 billion) was spent on the 2010 congressional elections by political parties and outside groups than in any previous midterm election cycle. According to reports by Public Citizen, in the 2010 election independent organizations that were the direct beneficiaries of corporate largess after the Citizens United ruling increased spending more than 400% over the 2006 mid-term election. About 54% of them disclosed anything about their sources. The groups that did not disclose information about sources spent 46% of the total $294 million spent by outside organizations on the election. In 60 of the 75 Congressional elections in which the seat was won by a candidate from a party different than the incumbent, the spending by outside organizations favored the winner. In the Senate election, winners had a 7-to-1 advantage in spending by outside organizations. The corporate funding ties and the political expenditures of some of the most influential of the independent organizations are known.
Campaign finance and disclosure laws in mo
By: Lauren,
on 3/22/2011
The criminal investigation of former Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards for secretly funneling money to his ex-lover Rielle Hunter is moving toward a conclusion, and there is a good chance he will be indicted if federal prosecutors can link the payments to his campaign committee or find that contributors were deceived about the purpose of the donations.
Voicemails released by North Carolina television station WTVD show Edwards’ connection to keeping his affair with Ms. Hunter secret. An NBC New report in February disclosed that federal prosecutors were planning to take the deposition of one of the sources of nearly $1 million used to keep Ms. Hunter out of sight while she was pregnant with their child.
The investigation into payments made to Ms. Hunter while Mr. Edwards was running for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President has been going on for almost two years. According to campaign records, she was purportedly paid for producing campaign videos. A former top aide to Mr. Edwards, Andrew Young, originally claimed to be the father of the child, but has now turned on his former boss and described in detail how large sums were provided to support Ms. Hunter, who is not a target of the investigation.
Sex scandals involving politicians normally just end the person’s political career, at least in this country. And paying off a secret lover to buy silence is not normally a crime, at least when the politician uses his own money. According to Mr. Young, however, the money came from wealthy donors, including $700,000 from Rachel “Bunny” Melloon, an aged wealthy patron of Mr. Edwards, who gave personal checks hidden in candy boxes.
The funds provided for Ms. Hunter pose a problem for Mr. Edwards if the money was collected for his presidential campaign committee and instead was tapped to make payments on her behalf, or even given directly to her. Politicians once viewed their campaign accounts as something akin to a personal piggy bank, and the money can still be used for a number of things that have little to do with actually running for office, like paying for an attorney to defend against an ethics investigation or even a criminal investigation.
Mr. Edwards would not be the target of a grand jury investigation were it not for a provision added to the federal campaign finance laws in 2002 as part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. That law, codified at 2 U.S.C. § 439a, states that a campaign contribution or donation “shall not be converted by any person to personal use.” The statute contains a list of uses that would be considered “personal,” such as buying clothes or paying for a vacation. While it does not specifically list payments to an ex-lover to keep the person quiet while running for President, that would certainly seem to come within the term “personal use.”
The issue for prosecutors is whether the money passed through Mr. Edwards’ campaign committee, or whether it was simply presented to donors as a way to “support” the candidate but never intended to be a campaign contribution. Federal law imposes strict reporting requirements on campaign contributions, and limits donations to an individual candidate to $2,500. The amount of money collected on behalf of Ms. Hunter clearly exceeded statutory limitations, which may show that the payments were never meant to be related directly to Mr. Edwards’ short-lived campaign for the presidency. Apart from the campaign finance issue is the question of whether financial support provided to Ms. Hunter was properly reported a
