{"id":9068,"date":"2012-10-08T11:30:17","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T18:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=9068"},"modified":"2012-10-08T11:30:18","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T18:30:18","slug":"stop-the-money-flood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/08\/stop-the-money-flood\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop the Money Flood!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been paying attention to Politics since Kennedy beat Nixon, and never before have I seen so much money from the 1% filling the airwaves with ads, even here in a solidly blue state.  Citizens United<\/em>, as improperly decided by the Fascist Five, has unleashed a floodgate, and unless we close it, before the powers of Corporate Plutocracy and their party learn to take full advantage, elections will become nothing but auctions.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"08elections\"Two-thirds of the $50 million spent on Mitt Romney\u2019s behalf in Ohio has come from outside \u201csuper PACs<\/strong>\u201d and other so-called independent groups, and yet Mr. Romney has lagged behind in all of the major Ohio polls. Hundreds of millions in third-party spending from unlimited checks, much of it from undisclosed donors, has also failed to give Mr. Romney a clear lead in any of the other swing states.<\/p>\n

If Mr. Romney loses the presidential race \u2014 which is far from a sure thing \u2014 does that mean the big check writers will declare the process a waste of money and stay out of politics the next time around? Don\u2019t count on it. <\/p>\n

This is only the first presidential election in the Citizens United era of unlimited spending, and the first since 1976 in which both presidential candidates spurned the public finance system<\/a>. All the big players are learning lessons about how the process works in an ugly new world, and will be fine-tuning their strategies once they determine what was effective and what was not<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

There may be some changes in how unlimited money is spent, but now that it has been unleashed, only a constitutional amendment or a careful system of regulation can bottle it back up<\/strong>. The need to do so will remain one of the most urgent challenges facing every lawmaker\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

The author missed one key point.  Lawmakers who are the beneficiaries of the money flood, mostly Republicans, will have a vested interest in keeping that bottle uncorked.  While I fully support either an amendment or regulation to stop the flood, here is an additional strategy.  We need to change the makeup of the Supreme Court, because Citizens United<\/em> would never have been decided in direct opposition to the US Constitution, were the Court not packed with Republican extremist ideologues.  If we can keep a Democrat in the White House for the next twelve years, enough of them will probably have retired to restore SCOTUS to sanity and Constitutionality.<\/font><\/p>\n

Corporations are NOT people!!<\/font><\/h1>\n

Money is NOT speech!!<\/font><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been paying attention to Politics since Kennedy beat Nixon, and never before have I seen so much money from the 1% filling the airwaves with ads, even here in a solidly blue state.  Citizens United, as improperly decided by the Fascist Five, has unleashed a floodgate, and unless we close it, before the powers […]<\/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-9068","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\/9068","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=9068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}