What Good Is Money If It Can't Buy Love? Or Elections?

Instead of spending obscene amounts of  money trying, but failing, to buy elections, these three poor little rich girls could have done a heap more for society by taking the Giving Pledge. The one set up by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates to attract philanthropic donations from the top 40 wealthiest Americans.

Instead, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina and Linda McMahon chose to go on a combined 217 million dollar ego trip. "These women belong to a new breed of self-promoting opportunists, paving the way for women to escape their image as selfless givers, nurturers by nature. Not for them the Judeo-Christian philosophy, which holds that only by bequeathing much of what one has earned to those less fortunate can one earn it anew and possess it."

Of course, they can spend their own money anyway they please, even on their own campaigns. But maybe this blatant flaunting of their wealth seemed a little crass to poor and middle-class voters, especially to those who had lost their jobs, homes and health care coverage. Perhaps even members of the "old money" sect were turned off by the classlessness and tastelessness of these relative newcomers to wealth.

Their campaign to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans like themselves had to send a far stronger message to the electorate than all their empty pledges to "save the citizens of their states from an unemployment sinkhole and their children from educational dead ends."

MEG WHITMAN, former eBay CEO, spent $143.6 million of her own "billions" in her unsuccessful campaign for California governor. California Watch tallies her expenditures at more than $160 million, which could rise by the time expenses are totaled for the last month of the campaign.

Cost of each of her 3,748,669 votes: $38.32.

"Whitman’s spending could have bought full tuition for 23,553 California residents at the University of California-Berkeley, which would almost double current undergraduate enrollment. She could have made 95,764 connections for at-risk youth through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles. Or, if she wanted to be known as the Savior of San Jose, she could have wiped out the megalopolis’ budget deficit twice over.

Yet this Silicon Valley mogul didn’t choose to fill the coffers of a state with a $20 billion budget deficit and a once-model public university education system teetering on the brink of collapse. Maybe she should be excused for knowing little about her adopted state’s political history, as she never voted in 40 years of elections, or even registered in California." (emphasis mine)

CARLY FIORINA, former HP CEO, spent $16.7 million in her failed attempt to become a California senator, including $5.5 million of her own money.

Cost of each of her 3,827,046 votes: $4.35.

". . . . her total campaign spending could have doubled the total assets of Goodwill of Southern California. It could have fully funded Pajaro Valley Unified School District for a year, saving the schools’ sports programs. Or, if Fiorina wanted to befriend folks closer to her mansion in Northern California, she could have increased the budget eight-fold of Raphael House, which provides low-income family services and shelter in San Francisco. Maybe she would have earned more headlines if she’d used her campaign budget to go global and purchase one million bed nets to combat malaria in Africa or provide micro-loans to more than 350,000 small businesses in South Africa, most of them to poor women."

During her six years as HP chairwoman and CEO, Fiorina laid off 30,000 workers. With Sarah Palin's endorsement, she may have committed political suicide in a state with unemployment at 12.4 percent in August, the third highest in the nation, by campaigning for repeal of health care legislation, overturning Roe vs. Wade, and returning California's unspent stimulus funds to the Treasury.

LINDA MCMAHON, wrestling impresario, spent $41.9 million in her unsuccessful bid for senator of Connecticut. Only about $97,000 came from outside contributions.

Cost of each of her 498,306 votes: $84.08.

"That would have covered a full year’s worth of salary and benefits for 802 state employees facing furloughs because of the state’s budget shortfall. It could have provided heating assistance to Connecticut families in need for seven years. It could have paid for 15 million school lunches across the whole country, or paid for two years of enhanced security for our troops in Iraq."

Now, I don't know about you, but I would happily take Fiorina's $14.7, the smallest expenditure of the three, fund no-kill shelters for large and small animals, build a nurturing network for abused children, feed the hungry, improve city, state and national parks, donate to library and school programs, donate to medical research, support Doctors Without Borders, rebuild and replant Appalachian mountain tops, hire Whitman's former housekeeper, and still have money left to buy that motor home and travel all over the country with my dog Lucky.

CEOs give Congress a heads-up

Corporate and former corporate CEOs have sent a message to Congress to quit hitting them up for campaign cash.

Roughly 40 executives from companies including Playboy Enterprises, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's, the Seagram's liquor company, toymaker Hasbro, Delta Airlines and Men's Wearhouse sent a letter to congressional leaders Friday urging them to approve public financing for House and Senate campaigns. They say they are tired of getting fundraising calls from lawmakers – and fear it will only get worse after Thursday's Supreme Court ruling.

In the letter they claim that "members of Congress already spend too much time raising money from large contributors."

"And often, many of us individually are on the receiving end of solicitation phone calls from members of Congress. With additional money flowing into the system due to the court's decision, the fundraising pressure on members of Congress will only increase."

Among the others signing the letter are current or former executives of Quaker Chemical Corp., Brita Products Co., San Diego National Bank, MetLife and Crate & Barrel.

The letter was sent through Fair Elections Now. A coalition of good-government groups that hope the Supreme Court ruling will "lead Congress to pass public campaign financing legislation they have long been seeking."

A Senate proposal would fund campaigns with a fee on businesses that get $10 million or more in government contracts. The House would finance it with revenue from auctioning off the television broadcast spectrum, which was opened when the country switched to digital broadcasting. Spectrums are the airwaves used by the government, television and radio broadcasters and cell phone companies, among others.

The U.S. Supreme Court Ruling: Attorneys Speak Out

The New York Times blog Room for Debate has an ongoing discussion amongst the legal community on today's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The court's ruling "swept aside a century-old doctrine in election law, "ruling that the campaign finance restriction violated the First Amendment’s free speech principles. The dissenters said opening the floodgates to corporate money will corrupt democracy.

Following is a brief summary of comments contributed by attorneys. For more detail and followup you'll need to link to Room for Debate above. I have found their comments to be most interesting and even a little surprising in a few cases. All comments are taken directly from the blog.

Heather K. Gerken is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She is a former law clerk for Justice Souter.

Reformers are outraged by the Supreme Court’s decision, which overruled its own precedent on independent corporate expenditures. As Nate Persily points out, as a practical matter the decision was just the last nail in the coffin; the Supreme Court had already substantially undermined the federal ban on independent corporate expenditures in earlier decisions.

Eugene Volokh is a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the founder and co-author of The Volokh Conspiracy blog.

Corporate money has already long been in politics; the most influential actors in most political campaigns are corporations. I speak here of media corporations, such as the one that owns the New York Times.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision simply means that other corporations, and unions, will enjoy much the same First Amendment rights that media corporations have. My guess is that most business corporations will not exercise those rights to nearly the same extent that media corporations have.

Richard L. Hasen is the William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles and the co-editor of the Election Law Journal.

I have many thoughts about what is wrong with today’s Supreme Court opinion: it is activist, it increases the dangers of corruption in our political system and it ignores the strong tradition of American political equality. The way the opinion is written will make it very hard for Congress or state legislatures to put effective controls on money in campaigns, or even adopt effective public financing laws.
But I want to focus on the special problem that now arises for judicial elections. Just last term, Justice Kennedy (who also wrote today’s majority opinion in Citizens United), recognized the inherent risk of corruption that comes when someone spends independently to try to influence the outcome of judicial elections.

(Note: This is well worth reading in full.)

Joel M. Gora, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, has been a long-time lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and argued before the Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo (1976). He is the co-author of “Better Parties, Better Government: A Realistic Program for Campaign Finance Reform.” The views expressed here are solely his own.

This is a great day for the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has invalidated a ban which prohibited all corporations and all labor unions from speaking out about government and politics in any way that even mentioned a politician or an incumbent officeholder running for election.

In ruling this ban unconstitutional, the Court emphasized what no one seriously disputes: the primary purpose of the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech, press, assembly and petition is to enhance democracy by insuring an informed electorate capable of self-government.

Michael Waldman is executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U. School of Law, and author, most recently, of “A Return to Common Sense: Seven Bold Ways to Save our Democracy.”

This decision by the Supreme Court may well dwarf in impact the results of Tuesday’s election in Massachusetts. It is breathtaking in its scope: it overturns doctrine dating back a century and laws upheld in 1990, that banned corporate managers from directly spending shareholder money in elections.

There was no trial record; no reason to reach the decision; a rushed re-argument (followed by a delay that put this neutron bomb square into the middle of the political season). This matches or exceeds Bush v. Gore in ideological or partisan overreaching by the court. In that case, the court reached into the political process to hand the election to one candidate. Today it reached into the political process to hand unprecedented power to corporations.

Fred Wertheimer is the founder and president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works to promote campaign finance reform and other political reforms. He is a lawyer on the amicus brief filed in the case by the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21.

Today’s Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case is a disaster for the American people. It will unleash unprecedented amounts of corporate “influence-seeking” money on our elections and create unprecedented opportunities for corporate “influence-buying” corruption.

In a stark choice between the right of American citizens to a government free from influence-buying corruption and the economic and political interests of American corporations, five justices came down in favor of corporations. Chief Justice Roberts has abandoned the illusory public commitments he made to “judicial modesty” and “respect for precedent” to cast the deciding vote for a radical decision that profoundly undermines our democracy.

U.S. Supreme Court screws small voters

By a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

The ruling is a blow to activists who have tried to limit the role of special interests in American politics.

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Dissenting were Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayer. Stevens said, "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation."

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

Advocates of strong campaign finance regulations have predicted that a court ruling against the limits would lead to a flood of corporate and union money in federal campaigns as early as November's congressional elections.

The decision removes limits on independent expenditures that are not coordinated with candidates' campaigns.

The case does not affect political action committees, which mushroomed after post-Watergate laws set the first limits on contributions by individuals to candidates.

From MSNBC.