Link
July 02, 2012
78 notes

Supreme Court's move to the right isn't just about abortion or guns -- it's about corporate interests winning 100% of the time

theyoungturks:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sounds like a nice, friendly civic organization. But it’s actually a super PAC throwing a ton of money at attack ads on Democrats and progressive causes. FireDogLake.com’s David Dayen joins Cenk to talk about the group’s staggering win rate when petitioning the Supreme Court on behalf of a cause. Cenk says, “We have the court finally getting to a point where they say, we’ve got this thing on lockdown. We don’t even have to pretend to be fair.” Dayen says, “A lot of people think of the court in terms of social issues — in terms of abortion or gun control. But really what we’ve seen especially in the Roberts era is that it’s a corporate court. It’s a court that takes the side of corporate interests over the individual time after time.” 

(via seriouslyamerica)

Tags: Supreme Court SCOTUS Chamber of Commerce Business Super PAC News Politics Democrats Republicans queued

Text
June 27, 2012
5 notes

NY State attorney general has begun investigating contributions to tax-exempt groups that are heavily involved in political campaigns, focusing on a case involving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York has begun investigating contributions to tax-exempt groups that are heavily involved in political campaigns, focusing on a case involving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been one of the largest outside groups seeking to influence recent elections but is not required to disclose its donors.

Mr. Schneiderman issued a wide-ranging subpoena on Tuesday to executives at a foundation affiliated with the chamber, seeking e-mails, bank records and other documents to determine whether the foundation illegally funneled $18 million to the chamber for political and lobbying activities, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

The investigation is also looking at connections between the chamber’s foundation, the National Chamber Foundation, and another philanthropy, the Starr Foundation, which made large grants to the chamber foundation in 2003 and 2004. During the same period, the National Chamber Foundation lent the chamber $18 million, most of it for what was described as a capital campaign.

In a complaint filed last year with the attorney general, watchdog groups asserted that the loan had been used to finance lobbying for “tort reform” legislation in Congress and to run issue advertising in the 2004 presidential and Congressional campaigns, most of it against Democrats.

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Tags: politics chamber of commerce non-profits political spending

Text
May 30, 2012
11 notes

End of the Charade - With $50 million worth of ads set to be spent in support of conservative politicians, the Chamber of Commerce has become an arm of the Republican party

The airwaves are already filled with blaring political attacks masquerading as “issue ads,” such as the one in Missouri in the United States Senate race that ends with: “Call Claire McCaskill. Tell her Missouri doesn’t need government-run health care.” This ad, and dozens like it, is sponsored by the United States Chamber of Commerce, which likes to claim that it is merely educating voters about the issues rather than telling them how to vote.

A few weeks ago, though, a federal judge issued a decision that upended this system, requiring that the donors for these kinds of ads be publicly disclosed, as Congress intended in its 2002 campaign finance law, before the Federal Election Commission incorrectly changed the rules.

So will the Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors more political advertising than any other group, follow the clear language of the court order and begin revealing the names of its donors? Of course not.

Secrecy is at the core of its political strategy and its business model. The chamber is worried that the public might learn which companies pay for the biennial barrage of negative ads, allowing voters to decide whether to take their business elsewhere.

“We’re not going to pull back from anything we’re doing,” said R. Bruce Josten, the chamber’s executive vice president for government affairs, speaking at a Washington breakfast last week that was reported by the newspaper The Hill. “It’s full steam ahead.”

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Tags: politics money speech free speech Chamber of Commerce

Link
May 23, 2012
72 notes

Corporate Lobbying Group Asks Supreme Court Not To Use "Empirical Evidence" Of Corruption When Reconsidering Citizens United

At the heart of the issue is whether the Citizens United decision has increased corruption. Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a statement about the Montana decision, said the court must make clear if “Montana’s experience, and experience elsewhere since this Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations ‘do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.’”

Interest groups and politicians are lining up to offer briefs to the Supreme Court. Some, like Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and John McCain (R-AZ), have submitted a brief urging the court to overturn Citizens United.

But on the other side of the issue, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has submitted a brief arguing that unlimited corporate spending in elections should be maintained. The argument? The Chamber says there is “no evidence” that corporate electioneering has given rise to corruption anywhere. Moreover, the Chamber says that if there is “empirical evidence” that states have been corrupted by corporate involvement in campaigns, the court “should not” consider it. Here’s a quote from the Chamber’s brief (which was filed with help from the law firm Wiley Rein):

But even if the Court were inclined to reconsider Citizens United based on empirical data, which it should not, there is no evidence in the record of this case detailing the level of spending on political speech since Citizens United was decided. Pet. 27-28. The Montana Supreme Court only considered evidence of corruption in Montana “during the early twentieth century,” Pet. App. 17a, and, even then, the evidence had nothing to do with independent expenditures, see supra p.11. Moreover, this Montanaspecifi c evidence offers no insight into the effect or scope of corporate speech in the rest of the country. As this Court is aware, a majority of states permitted corporations to speak freely long before Citizens United, yet there was no evidence then (and there is no evidence now) that elections in those states have been corrupted by immense corporate wealth. Citizens United, 130 S. Ct. at 909 (citing Supp. Brief for Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America as Amicus Curiae at 8 -9). In short, this case is not a suitable vehicle for addressing the question that Justice Ginsburg posed in the Stay Order.

(Source: sarahlee310, via generalbriefing)

Tags: Chamber of Commerce Montana Citizens United SCOTUS law politics