Citizens United v FEC - The Results

A few months ago the United States Supreme Court made a terrible decision in a case called United Citizens v FEC.   They basically decided that money was equivalent to speech in a political campaign, and that Congress couldn't limit the amount of money an organization could spend to support their chosen candidate(s).

It doesn't take a lot of intelligence to know that this decision violated any remaining concepts of equality in political campaigns.   The decision meant that the rich have much more free speech than other Americans do.   The result was that enormous amounts of money were poured into the 2010 campaign by numerous groups -- mostly on the right.   Here are the top 10 groups that spent the most in this recent election campaign.   For easier comprehension, I have divided them into liberal and conservative groups:

LIBERAL
Service Employees International Union..........$15,737,456
A.F.S.C.M.E...........$12,362,885
TOTAL..........$28,100,341

CONSERVATIVE
U.S. Chamber of Commerce.........$32,851,997
American Action Network..........$26,088,031
American Crossroads..........$21,553,277
Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies..........$17,122,446
American Future Fund..........$9,599,806
Americans for Job Security..........$8,991,209
Club for Growth..........$8,240,060
National Rifle Association..........$7,416,831
TOTAL..........$131,863,657

Both of the liberal groups are unions.   It is obvious where there money comes from -- union members.   But the conservative groups are different (with the exception of the National Rifle Association).   The other conservative groups are little more than conduits for the rich and corporations to funnel large amounts of cash into campaigns of their friends.

And anyone who thinks they are doing it because of political ideology or for the overall good of all Americans is just not very bright.   They expect those they help to elect to repay them with tax cuts, deregulation and other laws that will help them to fill their bank accounts -- regardless of what those policies do to the rest of America (just look at the growing wealth and income gap between the rich and the rest of America).

Making matters even worse is the fact they are doing this in secret.   The Republicans killed a bill that would have forced these groups to identify their donors, because they knew they could get more money if it was given in secret.   Some of the donors might not even be Americans (a violation of election law).   We know that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was putting foreign donations into the same account they were using to pay for campaign advertising.   But they are refusing to name their donors or explain how they keep foreign donations separate.

There is no longer a fair and even playing field in American politics.   Each American has the right to donate to his/her favorite candidate, but one donation from a rich right-winger (like the Koch brothers) can nullify the speech (money) of hundreds of thousands of regular American citizens.

It is time to seriously consider banning ALL campaign donations and institute a system of public funding of campaigns.