December 4, 2010
Because of the widely unpopular
Citizens United decision by the Roberts' Supreme Court,
which held that corporate funding of campaign ads cannot be limited
under the First Amendment, this 2010 midterm election cycle is seeing
five times more outside spending than occurred in the last midterm. As noted in
Bill Mann's Huffington Post piece,
the real beneficiaries of all that spending are broadcasters
(broadcasters who have a legal obligation to serve the public
interest.)
"The people who are making most -- over 90%, by most estimates -- of the
money from all the obnoxious and ubiquitous ads this fall have names
unfamiliar to most people: Belo, Young Broadcasting, Cox, Fisher
Broadcasting, Media General. And big names, of course, like ABC,
Tribune, Gannett, NBC Universal."
But there are a lot of other names which are unfamiliar to most people,
names like "American Crossroads." "America's Families First Action
Fund." "American Action Network." "Commonsense Ten." (These, according
to the Washington Post, are among the biggest special interest group
midterm spenders.)
That leads me to question the value of the current idea in Washington
that by merely "disclosing" who is funding campaign ads, voters will
somehow be able to separate fact from fiction. As Meredith McGeeHee
notes on the
Campaign Legal Center blog,
"Congress should take heed of the Supreme Court’s 8-to-1 ruling in
Citizens United in favor of disclosure, stating that such disclosure is
not only constitutional, but is the expected and indeed necessary
counter-balance to the new corporate right to expend unlimited funds in
US elections.
"Justice Kennedy’s 8-1 majority Opinion stated on this point: 'The First
Amendment protects political speech; and disclosure permits citizens
and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a
proper way.
"This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and
give proper weight to different speakers and messages.'”
The problem is that outside the Beltway, a majority of people who are
watching local TV news peppered with campaign ads don’t even know who
George Soros is. Lindsay Lohan, yes, Dick Armey? Doubtful. Really,
just disclosing who paid for ads is no match for the magic of Madison
Avenue Mad Men.
