Tag: Citizen's United

So it seems the Occu­py move­ment has got­ten around to the courts. Specif­i­cal­ly, the Supreme Court and the Cit­i­zen’s Unit­ed decision.

At least some of the pro­test­ers are look­ing for a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to undo the Cit­i­zen’s Unit­ed deci­sion (I’m not sure why they would protest at the courts for that, but there it is). I doubt such an amend­ment is pos­si­ble, but I am rea­son­ably sure it is a bad idea.

I am no fan of the quan­ti­ties of mon­ey that flow into pol­i­tics. But I have to believe the answer is trans­paren­cy. When an ad is on TV, or in the mail­box or wher­ev­er, the par­ty pay­ing for the ad should be promi­nent­ly dis­played. Com­plete infor­ma­tion on where the mon­ey came from should be eas­i­ly found on line. When an indi­vid­ual is the source of mon­ey, the indi­vid­u­al’s job/​business needs to be identified.

Mon­ey does cor­rupt, but when the whole trans­ac­tion is open to scruti­ny, the vot­ers can choose what cor­rup­tion they want to vote for. Con­sumers can choose what busi­ness­es they do or do not want to patronize.

Maybe that would not work. But I would rather try it first before we start carv­ing out excep­tions to the First Amendment.

Hat tip: Ann Alt­house