Real Citizens United

Citizens United.  In lower case, it refers to the very core of democracy - that is, that citizens can unite around common ideals and goals and evince change.  In capital, it refers to two things: an organization and the Supreme Court decision in a case involving that organization.

The organization speaks of itself in ways that seem to uphold the ideals of democracy:

Citizens United is an organization dedicated to restoring our government to citizens' control. Through a combination of education, advocacy, and grass roots organization, Citizens United seeks to reassert the traditional American values of limited government, freedom of enterprise, strong families, and national sovereignty and security. Citizens United's goal is to restore the founding fathers' vision of a free nation, guided by the honesty, common sense, and good will of its citizens. (source)

It starts off sounding great - citizens should be in control of the government, and an organization promoting education, advocacy, and grass roots organization means well-educated citizens engaging in the democratic process.  Everything after that speaks to exactly what their definition of a more perfect union looks like, and it's clear from all of their catch phrases ("traditional American values," "limited government," and so on) that their vision is for a Conservative (with a capital C) America. 

But they revealed a lot more when they went to the Supreme Court in the case Citizens United v. FEC.  In extremely brief detail: the group wanted to run its own political advertising, but the FEC said that violated electioneering law.  The SCOTUS decided that this was a freedom of speech issue, that Citizens United had the freedom to spend money however it wanted in order to support or oppose a candidate. 

The basic idea is that for messages to reach the larger public, they must have financial backing.  As a result, money is a necessary component of speech.  And, if money is a necessary component of speech, then freedom of speech requires freedom of money, or the freedom to spend money without regulation on such speech.

Taken on an ideal level, this is great.  Imagine if a million people gave $30 each to support an idea - that $30,000,000 could buy major advertising time on nationwide networks, and help their message reach millions more. 

Unfortunately, we've seen this become problematic, precisely because different people have wildly different amounts of money.  When one person has $20,000, and another has $20,000,000, the person with the millions has 1000 times as much money and therefore 1000 times as much influence over speech. 

And there are people with $20,000,000,000 - which would give them a million times as much influence over speech.

The result is unprecedented independent spending on elections.  Campaign spending had already been growing rapidly (which led to many attempts in the 90s at Campaign Finance Reform), but in 2010, after the Citizens United decision, it exploded.  OpenSecrets.org estimates that in 2008, independent spending was at $338 million.  Just 4 years later, it surpassed $1 billion.  (source)

In 2008, Liberals accounted for 63% of spending.  In 2012, Conservatives dominated, with 71%.  The increase for Liberals was 50%.  The increase for Conservatives was 540%.

While certainly not all of that 540% can be attributed to wealthy donors, the majority of it can - $412 million of the $720 million spend on the election by Conservatives was from the Koch brothers.


To a certain and very limited extent, this is actually a good thing.  After all, despite the Kochs dropping so much on the election, Obama still won.  Thus, their money was "wasted" on their ultimate goal, but did serve society by reentering society.  Their spending went into the coffers of major media organizations, which spent that money, etc. on down the line.  It was one of the few times that trickle-down economics actually trickled.

That said, such money only gets spent in "Battleground" states - states where the money might sway public opinion.  Oklahoma is not such a state, and receives little of the resulting money.

Time Magazine offers a state-by-state breakdown.  Their figures show that Oklahoma received a measly 0.435% of the total campaign expenditures in 2012 (despite having 1% of the national population). 

The goal of the Supreme Court in the decision was making speech more free, and, ironically, they ended up further restricting it.

Think about the last time you went to a loud rock concert or nightclub, and how you had to shout to be overheard by the person right next to you, let alone the person across the table.  That's the effect of unlimited campaign spending.  Those with billions to throw at campaigns are the ones on stage, blasting their message as loud and obnoxiously as possible, while the rest of us are left desperately shouting at each other in an attempt to be heard.

Certainly, sometimes our message gets through to one or two people, but no one else in the room can possibly hear it.  That's always been a problem with free speech, especially with a free media as well - the media can choose whose voices to promote and whose to repress - but now the media's choice is between those willing to spend billions on advertising and those who cannot.  And, that's really a false choice, because no one chooses to lose that kind of money.

This might be fine, if the messages promoted by the wealthy were messages that benefited all of us.  Sadly, that's not the case.  As I've pointed out previously, our incomes haven't been rising.  The Koch Brothers, however, have been making bank:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/09/22/325612/denier-koch-brothers-worth-50-billion-richest-americans/

Which is exactly what Donald Trump said about money in politics:

“I will tell you that our system is broken,” Trump said on stage in Thursday's GOP candidates' debate. “I gave to many people before this -- before two months ago I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. That's a broken system.” (source)

If we want a free democracy, we need to remove big money from politics, thus returning power to all the people, not just the richest among us.  Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you should be able to see how the system is rigged against you by this decision.  There are nominally only two politicians running who are fighting back against this system - Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.  Trump is already one of the richest Americans, so he's an insider of the very system he's working against.  Sanders is more an average guy - worth enough to be upper-middle-class, certainly, perhaps even upper class, but not worth much more than that.  He is, in fact, the poorest person in the U.S. Senate. 

That's one of the things that makes him different, and his grassroots organization, which has avoided PAC funding, is proof that he can organize people and raise money without relying on the Citizens United decision.  He's our best bet for getting it overturned.

But he needs your help. 

Go to https://berniesanders.com/ today to volunteer and help spread his message.  Let's put an end to unlimited campaign spending by rich people seeking to get richer by buying the government.  Let's make government work for all of us.  It's good for America.  It's good for Oklahoma.