Democracy: June 2008 Archives

Nearly every Supreme Court ruling is 5-4 these days, with the far-right winning over the right. I guess they understand the need to dance with the wealthy corporatists that brung them. And I think they understand that this balance could change next year so they are rushing to establish as many far-right precedents as they can before that happens.

This one today is rich - literally. The Court ruled that allowing candidates to raise extra money if they face a self-financed millionaire violates the self-financed millionaire's freedom to use money to dominate all speech. Do you think I'm joking?

Supreme Court strikes down part of campaign finance law

The Supreme Court struck down on Thursday part of a U.S. campaign finance law that relaxes contribution limits for candidates facing wealthy, self-funded opponents, a ruling that could affect congressional elections in November.

By a 5-4 vote, the high court declared unconstitutional the provision known as the "millionaire's amendment" that Congress adopted out of concern that rich, self-financing candidates would have a competitive advantage.

Alito agreed with the arguments by [the rich candidate] that the law violated the constitutional free-speech rights of self-financed candidates, impermissibly burdening [rich candidate's] rights to spend his own money for campaign speech. [emphasis added]

Enabling the other candidate to raise as much money - from regular people - is "burdening" the rich guy. Wow.

I had the opportunity to talk with Donna Edwards for a while at the SEIU 2008 convention. She says that you should run for office, and a lot more than that.

This year Donna Edwards challenged incumbent "corporate Democrat" Al Wynn for Maryland's 4th Congressional District in the primary election and won, with help from the Netroots, multiple progressive organizations and labor, including a great deal of help from the SEIU. Her win is "reverberating - wide and deep" among members of Congress. It shows that accountability has arrived. It also shows that "Democrats can do this without begging and relying on corporate interests." She goes on to say,

"There is a huge lesson in this. A lot of elected officials start out in the grassroots community - and then the money happens. One step after another they are following the corporate agenda."

She says that help from the netroots will "enable candidates like us to be as independent inside as we were on the pathway getting there."

In 2006 Donna ran against Wynn and lost by 2731 votes. Many progressive organizations and labor groups were reluctant to challenge any Democratic incumbent. After that defeat she went from labor organization to labor organization saying that she was just one union hall away from winning. So in 2008 a coalition of labor and progressives joined up, and she ended up winning the primary by 20 points. Incumbent Wynn resigned from office and immediately joined a lobbying firm for big bucks.