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July 5, 2013

America's Most Dynamic (Yet Under-Covered) Movement: Overturning Citizens United

By John Nichols

Just imagine if the movement to amend big money out of politics got as much attention, say, as the wrangling over IRS "targeting" -- a classic money-in-politics controversy. Imagine if all Americans knew that calls for an amendment are coming not just from traditional progressive reformers but from Republican legislators and honest conservatives at the state and national levels.

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Source: The Nation

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The most under-covered political movement in the United States -- and there are a lot of under-covered political movements in the United States -- is the broad-based national campaign to enact a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court rulings that ushered in a new era of big-money politics.

On the eve of the nation's July 4th celebrations, Oregon became the 16th state to formally call for an amendment. With bipartisan support the state House and Senate requested that Congress take necessary steps to reestablish the basic American premise that "money is property and not speech, and (that) the Congress of the United States, state legislatures and local legislative bodies should have the authority to regulate political contributions and expenditures..."

Oregon is the fifth state to make the call for corporate accountability in three months, making 2013 a banner year for a movement that began with little attention and little in the way of institutional support after the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 ruling, in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that corporations could spend as freely as they like to buy favorable election results.

Support for an amendment now stretches from coast to coast, with backing (in the form of legislative resolutions or statewide referendum results) from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and West Virginia. The District of Columbia is also supportive of the move to amend, as are roughly 500 municipalities, from Liberty, Maine, to Los Angeles, California -- where 77 percent of voters backed a May referendum instructing elected representatives to seek an amendment establishing that "there should be limits on political campaign spending and that corporations should not have the constitutional rights of human beings."

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"Why does it matter how many states call for an amendment? Ultimately, an amendment will have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. That's 38. Four more and we're halfway there," says Rob Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, which is working with a burgeoning Corporate Reform Coalition of more than 70 groups nationwide. "But before that, an amendment must be passed by a two-thirds vote in both chambers of the U.S. Congress. And one of the most effective ways to show a state's representatives and senators in Washington, D.C., that there is popular demand for an amendment is to pass a resolution back home."

The successful work by national groups such as Public Citizen, Common Cause, Free Speech for People and Move to Amend, in conjunction with grassroots coalitions that are now active from northern Alaska to the tip of the Florida Keys is far more dramatic than most of the initiatives you'll see from the Democratic or Republican parties -- which don't do much but fund raise -- and various and sundry groupings on the right and left. Yet, for the most part, news of reform victories are afforded scant attention even from supposedly-sympathetic media.

As such, the fantasy that says reform is impossible persists.

Just imagine if the movement to amend big money out of politics got as much attention, say, as the wrangling over IRS "targeting" -- a classic money-in-politics controversy.

Just imagine if all Americans knew that calls for an amendment are coming not just from traditional progressive reformers but from Republican legislators and honest conservatives at the state and national levels.

Free Speech for People highlights the dozens of Republican legislators who have backed calls for an amendment to overturn not just the Citizens United ruling but other barriers to the regulation of money in politics. With backing from third-party and independent legislators, as well, the passage of the state resolutions highlights what the group refers to as "a growing trans-partisan movement (that) is calling for the U.S. Supreme Court's misguided decision in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) to be overturned, through one or more amendments to the U.S. Constitution."

North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones Jr., who maintains one of the most conservative voting records in the House has signed on as a co-sponsor of one of several proposed amendments. Why? "If we want to change Washington and return power to the citizens of this nation, we have to change the way campaigns are financed," says the congressman. "The status quo is dominated by deep-pocketed special interests, and that's simply unacceptable to the American people."

Congressman Jones is noting something that too many DC insiders, be they members of Congress or pundits commenting on Congress, fail to recognize: Millions of Americans are already engaged on this issue. They are organizing for, marching for, writing letters for, sending emails for, testifying for and voting for the fundamental reform that is an essential building block in any movement to restore faith in the political process and renew American democracy: a constitutional amendment declaring, as the Oregon legislature just did, that: "based on the American value of fair play, leveling the playing field and ensuring that all citizens, regardless of wealth, have an opportunity to have their political views heard, there is a valid rationale for regulating political spending."

Authors Bio:

John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.

Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.

Nichols is a frequent guest on radio and television programs as a commentator on politics and media issues. He was featured in Robert Greenwald's documentary, "Outfoxed," and in the documentaries Joan Sekler's "Unprecedented," Matt Kohn's "Call It Democracy" and Robert Pappas' "Orwell Rolls in his Grave." The keynote speaker at the 2004 Congress of the International Federation of Journalists in Athens, Nichols has been a featured presenter at conventions, conferences and public forums on media issues sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Consumers International, the Future of Music Coalition, the AFL-CIO, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Newspaper Guild [CWA] and dozens of other organizations.

Nichols is the author of the upcoming book The Genius of Impeachment (The New Press), as well as a critically-acclaimed analysis of the Florida recount fight of 2000, Jews for Buchanan (The New Press) and a best-selling biography of Vice President Dick Cheney, Dick: The Man Who is President (The New Press), which has recently been published in French and Arabic. He edited Against the Beast: A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire (Nation Books), of which historian Howard Zinn said: "At exactly the time when we need it most, John Nichols gives us a special gift--a collection of writings, speeches, poems, and songs from throughout American history--that reminds us that our revulsion to war and empire has a long and noble tradition in this country."

With Robert W. McChesney, Nichols has co-authored the books, It's the Media, Stupid! (Seven Stories), Our Media, Not Theirs (Seven Stories) and Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (The New Press). McChesney and Nichols are the co-founders of Free Press, the nation's media-reform network, which organized the 2003 and 2005 National Conferences on Media Reform.

Of Nichols, author Gore Vidal says: "Of all the giant slayers now afoot in the great American desert, John Nichols's sword is the sharpest."

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