Opposing view: 'Pure science fiction'
Don’t worry. Big-spending corporations won’t dominate U.S. politics.
By Bradley A. Smith
Thursday's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will lead to more corporate and union independent political spending. That was, after all, the idea, and those of us who have long argued for less regulation of campaign finance believe that that is a good thing. There are many times when citizens both deserve and ought to hear the voices of unions and corporations, directly and unfiltered.
That said, the various "doomsday" scenarios being floated by critics of the decision, claiming that corporations will dominate American politics with billions of dollars in expenditures, are pure science fiction.
First, the case does not alter the current ban in federal law, and the laws of just under half the states, that prohibit corporations and unions from contributing directly to candidates. All this means is that they can spend money to speak directly to voters.
Second, 28 states, holding 60% of the nation's population, already allow corporate and union independent expenditures in state races. Yet none of these states is swamped with corporate and union spending, or dominated by special interests in some way that other states have escaped. Indeed, these 28 states, which include such relatively strong economies as Utah and Virginia, are over-represented in the rankings by Governing magazine as among the best governed in the country. Others, such as Oregon, hardly have a reputation as hotbeds of corruption.
Today's decision is good not only for what it does, but also for what it didn't do.
Remember, the government's position in the case was that it had the power, under the Constitution, to ban the distribution of political books over Amazon's Kindle, to prohibit political movies from being shown by video-on-demand, to forbid a union from paying a writer to author a political book, and to prohibit a corporation from publishing a 500-page book with even one sentence of political advocacy.
The Supreme Court said, "No, you don't have that authority," and we are all the better for it.
Former Federal Election Commission chairman Bradley A. Smith is the Blackmore/Nault Professor of Law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, and chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics.
blogs.usatoday.com |
