United States Supreme Court |
Two excellent articles showcase Citizens United and its apparent impact on the 2012 election. The first is an exposé on the behind the scenes maneuvering engaged in primarily by Chief Justice John Roberts in getting the Citizens United result he sought in 2010:
Money Unlimited: How Chief Justice Roberts Orchestrated the Citizens United Decision, by Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker.
The second is an examination of Citizens United impact on the current election:
How Much Has Citizens United Changed the Political Game? by Matt Bai in The New York Times Magazine.
From Matt Bai's How Much Has Citizens United Changed the Political Game?: "Conservative groups alone, including a super PAC led by Karl Rove and another group backed by the brothers Charles and
David Koch, will likely spend more than a billion dollars trying to take
down Barack Obama by the time November rolls around. The reason for this exponential leap in political spending, if you talk
to most Democrats or read most news reports, comes down to two words:
Citizens United. The term is shorthand for a Supreme Court decision that
gave corporations much of the same right to political speech as
individuals have, thus removing virtually any restriction on corporate
money in politics. The oft-repeated narrative of 2012 goes like this:
Citizens United unleashed a torrent of money from businesses and the
multimillionaires who run them, and as a result we are now seeing the
corporate takeover of American politics."
But, according to Bai: "Legally speaking, zillionaires were no less able to write fat checks
four years ago than they are today. And while it is true that
corporations can now give money for specific purposes that were
prohibited before, it seems they aren’t, or at least not at a level that
accounts for anything like the sudden influx of money into the system.
According to a brief filed by Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority
leader, and Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer, in a Montana case
on which the Supreme Court ruled last month, not a single Fortune 100
company contributed to a candidate’s super PAC during this year’s
Republican primaries. Of the $96 million or more raised by these super
PACs, only about 13 percent came from privately held corporations, and
less than 1 percent came from publicly traded corporations."
In what appears to be an unprecedented era of election spending, these two articles are interesting reads.
(photo is in the public domain)
From the article in "The Hill" that you link to:
ReplyDelete"... the fundraising gains were a sign Romney's economic message was resonating with voters and highlighted the number of smaller donations they received. The campaign said that more than 94 percent of all donations received last month were for $250 or less."
Obama 98%, Romney 94%
Not much difference.
that point in total states "The campaign said that more than 94 percent of all donations received last month were for $250 or less. Those 600,627 contributions totaled $25.7 million of the haul."
ReplyDelete$25.7 million came from the 94% that donated $250 or less. which means that $75.3 million came from just 6% of the contributors.
have looked for obama's breakdown of what total amount the 98% contributed and the concomitant amount that the remaining 2% contributed . . . my guess is that there is a lot of difference in that number.
this following site helps, but still does not break down obama's july contribution details: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/sourceall.php