The Supremes are at it Again: Diana Ross Would Do Better!

Photo credit: The Onion

Last week, a Supreme Court ruling gave a small number of wealthy donors a way to heavily influence political campaigns. In McCutcheon v FEC, a 5-4 decision, the Court decided that the overall limit that individuals can give candidates and political parties would no longer be limited. The huge inflow of money from so-called Super-PACS will be inflated even more because donors can expand their giving by writing single cheques for as much as they like for each candidate. The previous maximum was set at $123,200 for this year’s mid-terms.

Politicians can now focus on the big dollar givers, whose largess has been off-limits until now. Billionaires like conservative industrialists Charles and David Koch and liberal hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer can expect to be asked to spend tens of millions of dollars, in addition to their donations to Super-PACS. The ruling declared unconstitutional a total limit on how much an individual can give federal candidates. Once again, the Court interpreted the First Amendment by equating speech with money.

John McCain, the Republican US senator who has championed restrictions on campaign funding, predicted “there will be scandal.” Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, an advocacy group for reducing the role of money in politics, stated: “The Supreme Court is turning our representative system of government into a sandbox for millionaires and billionaires.”

However, conservatives have cast the ruling as a victory for freedom of speech. Craig Engle, a Republican election law attorney, said “This isn’t a threat to democracy, it is democracy. One of the things that is anti-democratic is when people aren’t allowed to express themselves freely.”

It is ironic, using the word “free” about speech which is paid for by rich donors, donors who will certainly expect a return on their investment. I want to challenge the five Justices who ruled against FEC. I would ask them first to re-visit the First Amendment which states:

            “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.”

For those Justices who want to rely on a strict construction of the Amendment, was there not “money” in the United States in 1791 and, therefore, had the Founders wanted to allow the free use of money, would they not have said so? For me, the interpretation by the Court is specious.

Assuming for a moment the Justices are right on this issue, then surely it would be permissible for political donors to give in “money’s-worth,” such as a fleet of Cadillacs. But the election statutes of most states regard such a gift as bribery and unlawful. There is a lack of consistency here which the Court doesn’t seem to address.

What does “speech” mean? Speech is defined in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as:

            “The act of speaking; the natural exercise of the vocal organs; the utterance of words and sentences. Talk, speaking or discourse; colloquy, conversation, conference.”

Nowhere in the definition is there a mention of money. Therefore, any Justice who relies on a strict construction of the Amendment is plainly wrong to equate free speech with, say, a donated advertisement. So, presumably the nucleus of the Court’s majority decision rests in the meaning of “democracy.” The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as:

            “Government by the people; that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people, and is exercised either directly by them or by officers elected by them. In modern usage, it often denotes a social state in which all have equal rights.”

I assume the Justices who gave the majority decision believe a person should have equal rights to spend his or her money. In normal circumstances I would agree. But when it comes to elections, the principle of “one man, one vote,” does not imply that one man contributing millions of dollars to a political campaign is equal to millions contributing just one dollar each. The outcome of people’s votes should neither be decided by the amounts that can be spent, nor the unbridled, conspicuous consumption which will follow at election time.

If a billionaire decides to spend millions of dollars on a political campaign, it is natural to ask “what does he want?” Joseph Kennedy spent like crazy to get his son into the White House. When asked why JFK could not achieve a larger majority in the 1960 presidential election, his father replied, “I couldn’t afford it.” Is this the kind of democracy the Supreme Court wants?

There is no solution to the campaign funding problem while the Supreme Court decides that rich people deserve more democracy than their fellow citizens. The political parties don’t mind the lack of control. There are as many billionaires supporting the Democratic Party as the Republicans. Efforts by Congress to legislate – see McCain-Feingold – have been overturned by the Court. The only way to deal with the problem is a constitutional amendment and that is not even a blip on the radar at the moment.

So, American citizens are faced with an unequal democracy. It occurs to me that Diana Ross and her backing singers would do a lot better than at least five of the current Supremes.