{"id":4419,"date":"2011-03-27T04:10:52","date_gmt":"2011-03-27T11:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4419"},"modified":"2011-03-27T04:39:19","modified_gmt":"2011-03-27T11:39:19","slug":"will-scotus-nix-public-campaign-financing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/27\/will-scotus-nix-public-campaign-financing\/","title":{"rendered":"Will SCOTUS Nix Public Campaign Financing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several states have provisions to subsidize candidates that voluntarily restrict themselves to small private donations, when opponents with heavy corporate financing run against them.\u00a0 Criminal corporations claim that violates the Constitution.\u00a0 SCOTUS hears oral arguments tomorrow.\u00a0 Will SCOTUS become a kangaroo convention, as they did in Citizens United<\/em>?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"SCOTUS3\"Citizens United opened the door for campaign contributions. To counteract that law, the State of Arizona implemented a policy where if a candidates is running against major corporate donations it would make up the difference to the opponent. That policy is subject of oral arguments <\/span>before the U.S. Supreme Court Monday\u2026<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

As conservative Ninth Circuit judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote in his concurring opinion rejecting constitutional arguments against the Arizona system, \u201cthere is no First Amendment right to make one\u2019s opponent speak less, nor is there a First Amendment right to prohibit the government from subsidizing one\u2019s opponent, especially when the same subsidy is available to the challenger if the challenger accepts the same terms as his opponent.\u201d Similarly, Charles Fried, a solicitor general in the Reagan administration, argued in an amicus brief that it is the wealthy candidates and interest groups who \u201cin reality are seeking to restrict speech<\/strong>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So you\u2019d think that the challengers to the Arizona law would have a hard time in front of a court that declared, in Citizens United, that \u201cit is our law and tradition that more speech, not less, is the governing rule.\u201d But it doesn\u2019t seem likely the court will see it that way<\/span><\/strong>. The court showed its hand back in June, when it took the unusual step of suspending the matching-funds portion of the Arizona law in the middle of the election, before it even agreed to hear the case, during a time when candidates (such as Gov. Jan Brewer) had already made the decision to opt in to the public financing system. A key factor that the court considers in deciding whether to grant such extraordinary relief is the likelihood that it is going to strike down the law at issue<\/strong>\u2026 <\/span><\/p>\n

…\u00a0 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Capitol Fax<\/a>><\/p>\n

The question is a matter of consistency.\u00a0 Will we see consistency in interpreting the law?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That would uphold public financing, so I doubt that we will.\u00a0 Instead I expect that we will see consistency in siding with the rich and criminal corporations, law and Constitution be damned.<\/span><\/p>\n

This should make it imperative that we cannot allow a Republican in the presidency until after the main extreme activist ideologues, Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas are gone.\u00a0 If you are looking for a reason to vote, there it is.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several states have provisions to subsidize candidates that voluntarily restrict themselves to small private donations, when opponents with heavy corporate financing run against them.\u00a0 Criminal corporations claim that violates the Constitution.\u00a0 SCOTUS hears oral arguments tomorrow.\u00a0 Will SCOTUS become a kangaroo convention, as they did in Citizens United? Citizens United opened the door for campaign […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}