Citizens v. FEC Invites All

04 Feb 2010 @ 5:53 AM

The grand political process is now open to everyone, thanks to the recent Citizens v. FEC case that was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The implications of the decision are broad and are anchored in a respect for the Constitution and especially the First Amendment.

Some on the left have bemoaned the decision because corporations can now participate in the advertising and funding of political campaigns without the restrictions that existed before the decision.

I’d like to direct your attention to a post at American Thinker which details why democrats oppose Citizens v. FEC. You see before the decision, media companies were exempted from prohibitions which applied to other companies. Here’s a quick peek:

As is pointed out in the Citizens opinion, media corporations are currently exempted from the ban on political speech. So the corporate giant GE is free to influence the political leanings of the media businesses it owns. These include NBC and MS-NBC, as well as the political content within the shows airing on GE’s SyFy, USA, Bravo, and Sleuth channels.

The Authors continue with regard to PACS:

Like the media corporations, Political Action Committees (PACs) enjoyed uncensored speech; PACs were exempt from the §441b ban on political activities and could air ads, hand out pamphlets, etc. In 2009-2010 alone, fifty-nine Labor PACs donated over $20.6 million to federal Democrat candidates, and over 82% of the nonprofit PACs’ expenditures were for federal Democrat candidates.

Their post makes excellent sense and is worthy of your consideration.

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