If you haven’t been watching Stephen Colbert’s brilliant skewering of SuperPAC rules, you need to go here. You will laugh. You will become ill. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Still reading? OK, then, here’s the gist of his lampooning. The recent “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision allows corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns, as long as that money goes through a “SuperPAC” which does not “coordinate” with the candidate.
Colbert’s skewering hinges on this word “coordinate”. You can hire your best friend to run your SuperPAC (Colbert chose The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart). The SuperPAC can hire all your old staff from your PAC before it became Super. You can even talk to each other in an informative way (on cable TV, even) as long as you don’t speak in a coordinating way.
So SuperPACs are basically a sham that allows an endless flood of money into political campaigns.
While I doubt you need more to believe that’s bad, here’s a perspective: the Obama campaign in 2008 raised over a half billion dollars in campaign donations from 3 million individuals. That’s less than $200 per individual, and each individual was limited in how much they can donate.
Newt Gingrich’s 2012 campaign raised $5 million from one person (well, technically it went to his SuperPAC, but whatever). Gingrich could equal Obama’s 2008 campaign haul with just 100 rich folk or corporations. 100 people can buy a President. You should believe that those 100 people will have more influence on candidate Gingrich than the 3,000,000 people needed under the old rules. And more than anyone that merely, quaintly, “voted”.
In this brave new world, you’ll at least know who’s pulling the puppet strings: SuperPACs disclose who donates. (Just kidding. Due to the details of the rules, you won’t know who’s been donating this last 7 months of campaigning until January 31st of this year.)
Why struggle to get even 100 donors? Just one is more than enough: Apple computer had $76 billion in cash at the end of 2011. Less than 1% of that could buy a President (in Obama campaign equivalents). Or, they can blow it all and buy 150 Presidents.
Perhaps your iPhone has made you believe that Apple is benevolent. No problem. ExxonMobile has $27 billion in cash. That’s more than 50 Obama campaigns. Even Bill Gates could get elected president (Microsoft has $57 billion in cash – more than 100 Obama campaigns).
$50 billion is a lot of attack ads. It’s nearly 100% of annual US television advertisements. Anyone’s approval ratings would suffer: Mother Theresa. Cute puppies. Breathing.
The legal argument for “Citizens United” came from the rational, established legal framework that for some things “corporations are people”. That allows us to tax corporations like people and restrict corporations like people. Of course, unlike people, corporations are not allowed to vote, cannot be drafted for military service, and cannot be executed for murder. So, “corporations are sometimes people”.
But if this goes on, there is one place where corporations will be perfect replacements for people. Instead of Abraham Lincoln’s “government . . . by the people, for the people . . . ” we will get “government by ExxonMobile, for ExxonMobile . . . “