Purple Haze

For those of you who don't know, I fell last week on the ice by my apartment and either cracked or severely, severely bruised my tailbone. I can barely walk, sit, stand, etc. I've had lots of time to just lay on my side and think. I've finally started to put my four years of Political Science education to use in forming opinions, so if you don't mind, I'm going to take the next few paragraphs to write down some of my thoughts. You don't have to read them; I just need to write them and this seemed like as good a place as any.

First of all, I work for government accountability groups (also called watchdogs) that lean pretty far to the left. Now you know me: I've set my self smack-dab in the middle, though I lean to the right occasionally, when I have to. But these organizations do a pretty good job of staying out of the partisan muck on most issues. On things like election reform and government transparency, they are very good at appealing to both sides of the aisle.

But there is one issue where they have let me down: campaign finance reform. I started working for them because I whole-heartedly believe in election reform (more on that later), but I was unlucky enough to start two days after the Supreme Court handed down their Citizens United v. FEC decision. The case concerned a film, Hillary: The Movie, which was a documentary made during the 2008 primary season deriding Hillary Clinton. The FEC decided this counted as money spent by a corporation to directly defeat Clinton, which was illegal at the time under Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce from 1990. the FEC hit Citizens United with a massive fine and barred them from releasing the movie, so CU sued them in a case that made it to SCOTUS. A 5-4 majority ruled in January that Austin was unconstitutional because corporations are entitled to the same free speech rights as people and therefore should be allowed to spend as much money as they want independently running ads for or against specific candidates.

As soon as Justice Kennedy typed the last period on his majority opinion, the entire left side of the political spectrum absolutely blew up. Op-eds in newspapers, statements from Congressmen, even Obama in the State of the Union, came out blasting SCOTUS's decision. Every single one of them said the decision "opened the floodgates for corporate money" into the political game, like the phrase "opened the floodgates" had been declared the greatest phrase in the history of the English language by some committee that oversees those types of things. Liberals (and even moderates) swarmed every outlet they could get their words through declaring this the end of democracy and the worst display of judicial activism in history; Satan and his army of demons could have walked down Pennsylvania Avenue declaring a New World Order and Democrats wouldn't have noticed because the apocalypse had already come in the form of Citizens United.

That's where I come in. I was unlucky enough to start working two days after this decision came out. I thought I was going to get to work on things I was passionate about, like election reform; but I was instead thrown head-first into the Citizens United storm. I was fine with it for the first few days; this was what they were working on, so this was what I was working on. The very nice people at my office were pouring a lot into trying to fix what they saw as wrong with this decision, and I was more than happy to help.

But then I actually started seeing how they wanted to fix it, namely through the Fair Elections Now Act. Now I don't really have a big problem with the act itself; it will force candidates to get several small donations from their constituents for which they will receive matching funds from the government along with other government grants. They plan to pay for all this through taxes on unused television airwaves or something like that; it's supposed to be deficit-neutral. It won't be deficit-neutral, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that it would be.

My problem is not with the bill itself, necessarily; it's with how we go about trying to get Congressmen to co-sponsor the bill. We call our 400,000 members and ask them to call their Congressman or Senator and tell them that they want Congress to pass FENA. But we lie to them. Not me, actually, but the volunteers who read a script to the people over the phone are lying to them. It's not just us, mind you; every liberal or left-leaning pundit who derides Citizens United tell the same lies. This makes me wonder if they are indeed lies or if it's just some mass delusion that liberals have decided as a group to believe. And no, I don't honestly believe that the company I work for is consciously lying to its members. But whatever the case is, we're wrong on several key points.

1. Our callers, along with liberal pundits and Obama's State of the Union, inform people that Citizens United "overturned 100 years of campaign finance laws" and undermines all the steps that the early-20th century Progressives took to stop corruption. Well, no, none of that is even close to true. The only piece of campaign finance legislation that is a century old is the Tillman Act of 1907. This act was Teddy Roosevelt's baby; it banned corporations from giving money directly to political campaigns. This has been the law since 1907, and it's still the law after Citizens United. Remember what I said earlier: Citizens United directly overturned the law set down in Austin that banned corporations from making independent expenditures on political ads. That decision was in effect since 1990. So that "100 years of campaign finance laws" that my company and the President of the United States think has been overturned is really just 20 years. Citizens United also overturned some minor provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act), but that has only been in place since 2002. So that "100 years" was literally pulled out of thin air by somebody. Like I said, I really and honestly hope these people aren't lying, that they're just wrong or have been misled by someone.

2. Back to that "opened the floodgates" thing. Every liberal and their mother is convinced that all these giant corporations are going to spend $83 gazillion in this upcoming mid-term election and in every election until this problem is fixed. They're convinced that corporations are going to buy candidates; Sen. Chris Dodd even went so far as to say we may soon see Congressmen with corporate logos affixed to their suits like NASCAR drivers. How do they even think this is possible? What for-profit corporation in its right mind is going to risk losing customers and pissing off shareholders by spending millions of corporate funds to run ads attacking a candidate? Corporations have lobbyists. They spend a lot of money to make sure they have good lobbyists. Corporations are best served maintaining their current status quo: give money to everyone and let their high-paid lobbyists convince Congressmen to see things their way. But liberals, my company included, can't see past their end-of-democracy rhetoric and imagine that any of what I just said is possible. Corporations can spend all of their profits attacking the junior Senator from Wyoming, so they obviously will do just that, and the whole of American government will collapse. Again, I hope they're just blind to the truth and not blatantly lying to people to incite some sort of anger at SCOTUS and the Constitution.

3. Accusing SCOTUS of practicing blatant judicial activism like it's a bad thing. The liberals are again coming out of the woodwork to say just how terrible the majority was in their opinion and how they were practicing judicial activism. Some are even calling for the justices to be impeached because of this decision. But liberals have no place to talk about judicial activism. Brown v. the Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Engel v. Vitale. All of these are instances of liberal justices from the 1950s and 60s far overstepping the bounds of the federal government to do whatever they wanted; when my textbooks discussed judicial activism, these were the very definition. Liberals championed judicial activism when these cases were decided, but now that the Roberts Court has practiced the same activism on something that the federal government actually does have jurisdiction over, they should all be impeached? Where is the logic in that?

In fact, that's my question for all of this: where is the logic? Liberals have always prided themselves on being so much smarter than the redneck Southern conservatives. But in this case, it seems like they didn't even bother to read the decision before they jumped to myriad conclusions that have no basis in reality. "Overturned 100 years of campaign finance legislation?" On what planet? The left seems to have completely abandoned logic and reason in favor of doomsday rhetoric with no foundation in this universe. The only way to know how Citizens United will affect elections is to wait until November and just watch. If there is a flood of corporate ads that leads to a sweeping defeat of Congressmen, then OK, I was wrong, pass a bill. But until this all plays out, Congress should not pass FENA or any other sweeping reform legislation that is based on stopping a situation that may never occur. Laws should not be passed on hypotheticals.

It's the End of the World as We Know It

This city is finally beginning to thaw out after the wonderful Snowpocalypse that we were subjugated to earlier this week. In my journeys I have actually found piles of snow over my head. Over my head. Think about that for a second.

Washington seriously freaked out with all this snow. Leading up to it, I wasn't able to buy groceries because of the droves of people flooding Target. I then couldn't leave my apartment for about 5 days, mostly because everything was closed and there was nowhere to go. But, like I said, it's starting to get better; I was actually able to go to work yesterday for a change.

Speaking of which, my internships are going well. I've gotten to spend most of the past two weeks delivering petitions to Congressmen; I carried a stack of over 36,000 sheets of paper to Diane Feinstein's office alone. We got over 200,000 signatures in less than a week on a petition urging Congress to pass the Fair Election Now Act (Common Cause's baby) in response to the Supreme Court's Citizens United case.

Aside from petition deliveries, I've made folders, stuffed envelopes, and done other stereotypical intern stuff. I'm enjoying it, however. Even though they're a liberal group, I don't completely disagree with everything they do, plus everyone is really nice.

I do, however, find myself desperately missing Mississippi. Getting away has proven to me how much I love it. I miss the people, the towns, the not having to walk everywhere. I can't wait until April when finally get to go back.

So there you have the last few weeks in a nutshell. Nothing terribly exciting, besides being held hostage by snow. But as soon as something exciting does happen, I'll let you know.