A History of Liars: The American Politician (Volume One)

This is the last in a three-part series.

Alan J. Yeck

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

This is the mother of all corruption. First, understand that ‘Citizens United’ is not an organization that actually wants citizens to unite, or is looking out for your best interest. The name was chosen as a decoy. It’s intent was corporate ownership of our government and that is what this decision has allowed.

In a 5-4 split decision, the Supreme Court invalidated a provision in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that prohibited unions and corporations from giving money to election campaigns. Justice Kennedy, speaking for the majority, said that the corporations and unions had their First Amendment right of free speech violated. The government argued that the ban, for over 100 years, had helped to fight corruption but Kennedy said that “…the anticorruption interest is not sufficient to displace the speech here in question.” Their faulty assumption was that corporate spending would be transparent and incorruptible – both terrible assumptions that have been proven completely wrong. 

The Justices that dissented called the decision “profoundly misguided…the ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation.” Justice Stevens also wrote that this ruling would greatly increase the influence and power corporations have in determining the winners in elections. Since his retirement, Stevens has advocated for a constitutional amendment to overrule the Court’s decision. The Citizens United ruling opened the flood gates for corporations, extremely wealthy individual donors, and special interest groups to buy politicians, political parties, and remove the people of the United States from the legislative process. 

Super PACs

Remember PACs can contribute directly to a candidate’s campaign but there are restrictions on how much they can raise, and contribute ($5,000 per year, per election) but a new beast was created in 2010. A federal appeals court, citing Citizens United, ruled in the case of Speechnow.org v. FEC, that as long as they don’t give directly to candidate’s campaigns, outside groups had no limit on the money they could raise or spend in influencing election results — promoting a candidate and/or smearing another.

These new Nazi U-Boats used against American democracy are called Super PACs. The icing on the corruption cake is that while Super PACs have to disclose where their money came from, the questionable non-profits that donated that money to the Super PACs do not (this is called dark money). This means that China and/or Wells Fargo can give billions to these shady non-profits to ensure their candidates get elected, and there’s no way to trace the money to them. Once elected, the politician will vote how they’re told to vote by their corporate masters. This is our system. Are you disgusted?

According to OpenSecrets.org, as of January 10, 2021, 2,276 groups organized as super PACs have reported total receipts of $3,164,953,623 and total independent expenditures of $2,141,181,831 in the 2019-2020 cycle. Almost 80% of all that money came from the top 100 donors. The average citizen donates somewhere in the $50 range thinking it’s helping their candidate. 

How do we undo this web of lies and money? 

It is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court will reverse their decision. Egos in black robes grow old with no consideration or reflection to the average citizens on their decisions. We have to take control and it won’t be an easy task. 

1) Publicly funded elections. This allows the average person (non-millionaire) to run against the millionaires because they are given the same amount to spend. 

2) Empower a new, legitimate, Federal Elections Commission with public oversight. Give teeth to the body that is supposed to oversee elections and allow the people to monitor what they are doing with full disclosure throughout. 

3) Strengthen disclosures. Every penny should be accounted for and transparent to the citizens as to where it came from.

4) Amend the Constitution to end corporate, union and dark money systems that have arisen since the Citizens United case.

Call to action

All of these steps will require our attention to who is running for office and active participation in asking their support for the above changes. If they promise to do these things in exchange for our vote, then vote for them. If they do not commit to these (why do you think that would be? Hmmmmm?) don’t vote for them. Stop pulling that party lever, whatever party you may support, in a system that is completely broken and corrupt.  

It’s time to take back our democracy – for all of us. 

This is the final article in a three-part series by Alan J. Yeck reflecting on the state of the American political system, its challenges and the far-reaching effects it can have.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

We have the power to change American politics back to a system that serves the people, not the politicians. Contact your representatives and ask them to listen to these facts and national narratives.

A History of Liars: The American Politician (Volume One)

Alan J. Yeck

This is the second part of a three-part series.

Campaign Finance Corruption

Corruption in government, be it a monarchy (kings and queens), a dictatorship (North Korea) or a democracy, has always been, has always existed. Corruption in the United States government has always been, has always existed. The difference today is that information is more easily available in a much quicker time frame. Don’t confuse this with misinformation or disinformation, which is actively used by politicians and political parties to deflect from their own corruption. While there are scandals, which are corrupt, what we’re going to focus on is specific to campaign financing or who is paying for our elected officials to vote one way or the other. Hint – it’s not you or me.  

Background on campaign finance reform in the U.S.

Before we had our own country to corrupt, in 1757, George Washington ran for a seat in the House of Burgesses for the Virginia Colony – kind of like today’s equivalent of a state legislator. He threw a big party for potential voters with lots of alcohol and great food. Washington was elected to the seat and then almost immediately the House of Burgesses passed an act prohibiting candidates from giving any sort of “reward” like food, drink or cash in exchange for a vote.

Now let’s jump to the 1904 presidential election. Incumbent Republican President Theodore Roosevelt was running against Democratic nominee, Alton B. Parker. To make sure he won the election, he raised over $2 million in campaign contributions from corporations (that would be the equivalent of $59 million today – a record amount at that time). Teddy won but not without a scandal from his corporate fundraising. In response to the scandal Roosevelt called for legislation to ban corporate contributions to future candidates. Ha! Roosevelt signed into law the Tillman Act in 1907 which banned corporate donations but the Act had no teeth, no enforcement provisions were included so politicians just crawled on their bellies around it. 

A few years later in 1910 the House passed the Federal Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) that required candidates to disclose both campaign spending and the sources of all contributions. The Senate passed an amendment in 1911 requiring the same and also placed limitations on spending for all congressional candidates. Sounds great, right? ‘Sound’ as in an empty gong though.

After Henry Ford lost a senate race to Truman Newberry in 1918, Ford charged that Newberry violated the spending limit laws of the Federal Corrupt Practices Act by raising over $100,000 for his campaign. Newberry was convicted in 1921 but his conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court (Newberry v. United States) who struck down spending limits. The Court ruled that the Federal Corrupt Practices Act was unconstitutional because the Constitution does not grant Congress the authority to regulate political parties or federal primary elections. This was the fertile soil of corruption that today’s mighty, corrupt political beanstalk grew from. 

Legislation continued through the mid-1900s trying to limit the political influence corporations could wield, as well as the growing unions and trade associations. In the 1940s, Congress passed the Smith-Connally and Taft-Hartley Acts banning labor unions from contributing directly to political campaigns. This is the true birth of our corrupted political system today – not the Act but the response to it.

Labor unions then created Political Action Committees or PACs and the effects have been complete destruction to our democracy. 1) because PACs were not unions, per se, PACs could contribute money to candidates and still be within campaign finance guidelines, and 2) PACs were not required to follow the political advertising and spending laws that the candidates had to follow. They could spend as much as they wanted to advertise and promote their candidates to their members and the public in general without ever giving a dime directly to the candidate’s campaign. 

In an attempt to truly reform campaign finance laws (or at least give the appearance of doing so), in 1971 Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA – not be confused with FECA-L matter which is another mainstay of Congress). This defined how much money candidates could spend on their campaigns. Again, toothless.  They created the Act but did not appoint a body to enforce it. Think of a law that establishes the speed limit at 65mph but law enforcement doesn’t have any authority to pull someone over doing 100mph. Another great job by our elected morons. Later, in 1974, after the Watergate scandal, they refined FECA to create today’s bi-partisan Federal Election Commission (FEC) which is supposed to enforce campaign finance laws but has become non-functioning in recent years.   

The following year, Sen. James Buckley (R-NY) sued the FEC (Buckley v. Valeo) arguing that limits on campaign spending violated free speech rights. In 1976 the Supreme Court agreed and the Act was amended which meant politicians had unlimited campaign spending. The Court also found that the provision restricting the amounts candidates could spend from their personal funds, unconstitutional. This has very much created a system where an honest citizen who wants to serve their community and country must raise tremendous amounts of money, or already be a millionaire. Currently over half of the members of Congress were millionaires. Do you think a millionaire or career politician, who is also a millionaire, represents you? 

This is the second article in a three-part series by Alan J. Yeck reflecting on the state of the American political system, its challenges and the far-reaching effects it can have.

We have the power to change American politics back to a system that serves the people, not the politicians. Contact your representatives and ask them to listen to these facts and national narratives.

Supreme Court Endorsed Corruption – Citizens United v. FEC

From the “If No One is Around When Democracy Dies, Does it Make a Sound?” Part 4

Super PACs empower the wealthiest donors, and the expansion of dark money through shadowy nonprofits that don’t disclose their donors. On the other hand, we know those being elected are well aware of who is making their donations and what they expect in return. They don’t sell their souls – they sell ours.

“Citizens United.” Doesn’t that sound like a great group to be part of? Doesn’t it sound so American? Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Citizens United. Their logo, an eagle head with the red and white flag stripes behind it. Americans united together, working together to the benefit of the people. But it was the exact opposite – the name, intentionally chosen to sound all-American, to keep your defenses down, to let it slide by while it’s intent was nefarious and to the control and destruction of the very people who were fooled by it.

In 2010 there were two landmark decisions that paved the way for the corporate control of our political system; one by the federal appeals court in Washington, SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission, and the other, the U.S. Supreme Court ,Citizen’s United v. Federal Election Commission. Both ruled that the government cannot disallow corporations and unions from making “independent expenditures” for political uses. The Citizens United ruling also struck down FECA’s complete ban on corporate and union independent spending, originally passed as part of the Taft-Hartley law in 1947.

Their insane reasoning? Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that it would violate their First Amendment right of free speech to limit political spending from corporations. Their decision was based on a complete lack of any type of understanding of human nature, and specifically politicians and the dirty systems they work in. The majority of justices assumed (and you know what happens when we ass-u-me) that independent spending would be transparent and could not be corrupted. They said that by corporations and unions raising and using money for to support campaigns, that it “did not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

(Uh, are you shitting me?) This essentially means that Pfizer Pharmaceutical is no different than you for campaign financing (except of course they have $50 billion more cash flow than you). Wait, wait, it gets better – Super PACs have no limit on donations so they can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations and unions to advocate for, or against candidates of their choice. Their goal is to influence the outcome of state and federal elections (to put their person in office, the person that will do what they tell them to do, the person that will vote how they tell them to vote).  Wait a minute…isn’t that the people’s job? It used to be but we’re only for appearance now…like the Queen (have you been practicing your wave?).  The dissenting opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens stated, “At bottom, the Court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations 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.” You don’t have to have a law degree or be a judge to understand that truth, and apparently even when you have those things it doesn’t give you anymore wisdom than the thug on the street.  

This is part 4 of the “Democracy Dies” series, covering the corruption surrounding PACS, SuperPACs, and how candidates pay for votes.

To read part 1, go to https://altraged.com/2020/10/23/if-no-one-is-around-does-democracy-make-a-sound-when-it-dies-part-1/

For part 2, go to https://altraged.com/2020/10/28/if-no-one-is-around-when-democracy-dies-does-it-make-a-sound-part-2/

For part 3, go to https://altraged.com/2020/11/12/what-are-pacs-and-superpacs/