Nexus: Chapman's Journal of Law and Public Policy

Knowing the aforementioned, it flows that the First Amendment is vital to our political process. It gives everyone a voice, even if no one wants to listen to that voice. That may not sound pleasant, but it really is at the heart of what we as Americans believe. After all, today’s dissenters often end up as leaders of tomorrow.

Now that my point of view on the First Amendment has been sufficiently laid out, we can move on to the subject at hand, the recently decided case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 130 S.Ct. 876 (2010). In deciding Citizens United, the Supreme Court couldn’t have butchered what the First Amendment stands for any better. The court basically gave cart-blanche to special interest groups, giving them the opportunity to try to buy elections. The First Amendment is intended to protect the voice of every individual, not promote the voice of the elite so that no one else can be heard.

Let me paint a picture of what America looks like today to give you a better perspective of where I am coming from. No longer is this the America that has the mom and pop diner down the street. It now has a McDonalds and a KFC. The individual rancher/farmer is a thing of the past; we now have a few conglomerates controlling everything we eat. The local corner stores have been replaced with one huge Wal-Mart. Today’s America.

One thing all of these businesses have in common is that they are HUGE. In fact, America has become a society overrun with enormous corporations. These corporations are immensely wealthy and have the ability to sell their product by putting ads everywhere. There are ads on TV, the internet, billboards, race-cars, movies, and pretty much everywhere else. They are geniuses at marketing and have been for quite some time.

These corporations own the networks we watch and the newspapers we read. Now, the Supreme Court has decided that they deserve First Amendment protection and should be able to give as much money as they wish to any campaign. To put a cherry on top of the ice cream, they can do this anonymously. So, instead of watching TV and seeing whoppers this fall, we can all be assured we will see lots and lots of campaign commercials. These campaign commercials will feature candidates that have been sponsored by large, rich corporations. If a corporation needs a bill passed through Congress, they can go ahead and buy a few candidates. All they have to do is donate a ton of money to their campaign and tell them they better help them out, or no more money for them. Members of the House of Representatives are elected every two years. That means they need that money every t-w-o years. (This is a great piece on how small state judicial elections could really be effected by this change in law).

I know many people out there argue that the American people are smart and will look at the issues and vote accordingly. I simply don’t buy it. If you allow one candidate to speak their mind at every commercial break while the other candidate doesn’t have the money to refute those allegations, it is going to create an unequal share of information. It is like holding a debate while one candidate has duck-tape on his/her mouth.

As a person living in California, I have already seen this firsthand. Meg Whitman is running for governor and has already spent around $120 million of her personal money. This is more personal money than anyone has ever spent on a campaign in American history. Trust me, it is quite obvious. Her ads are everywhere. I am not going to get into whether it corrupts the democratic process for a rich person to be able to throw as much money as she wants into a campaign, but watching how her campaign has been run highlights the future of campaigning after the Citizens United decision.

To allow a corporation to pick a candidate and then throw all their mass wealth, wealth built on the back of the average American, at that candidate is absurd. It benefits no one. Money changes the whole debate. The fact of the matter is that the average American doesn’t spend a huge amount of time researching candidates. This is especially true in the hard economic times we live in today. Therefore, allowing one candidate’s campaign to be funded by a corporation, without any limits, seems counter-intuitive to the political process.

I am not trying to say that the average American is going to watch TV and take it for what it is. But, what I am saying, is that if a candidate quotes another candidate out of context and creates a commercial around it, it will affect how the viewer of that commercial perceives both candidates. If someone is only able to hear one side of a debate, that isn’t free speech. That is the antithesis of free speech. What really perturbs me is that the one side they get to hear is the side that some rich CEO wants to deliver, a side that probably doesn’t benefit the average Joe at all.

In addition, what the viewer of that program is never going to find out is: how that commercial got on TV, which corporation thinks that the aforementioned candidate is good, what does that corporation gain from spending money on that campaign, or why that corporation didn’t spend money on their workers instead of on some political campaign.

This isn’t a First Amendment issue. This is opening the floodgates to corporate donations. This is corrupting the political process. This isn’t what the founders envisioned when they made ‘numero uno.’

Congress is already overrun with special interest groups. If we are going to allow corporations ‘unlimited donation power,’ than I propose we have each Senator/Congressman wear a jumpsuit like those worn in NASCAR. The jumpsuit can be adorned with all the logos of the corporate donors who helped them buy their seat in America’s foremost legislative body.

I just don’t see the ‘upside’ in this decision, and neither does Justice Stevens in his closing statement in his dissent of Citizens United:

“the Court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporation from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

Citizens United, 130 S.Ct at 979.