The Supreme Court issued two important decisions today - one on Arizona's anti-immigrant law S. B. 1070 and the other on Montana's state law banning political contributions from corporations, the Corrupt Practices Act.
First the really bad news. SCOTUS summarily reversed the Montana Supreme Court's ruling that held Montana's century old ban on corporate political donations to be constitutional and not in violation of Citizens United. The vote was the same 5-4 as Citizens United with the conservative majority putting to the lie the argument that conservatives support states' rights. I guess that only applies to those rights that conservatives agree with - such as the unlimited, anonymous corporate donations to political candidates and parties which they astoundingly classified as "free speech". As summarized in a HuffingtonPost blog today by correspondent Mike Sacks: "By summarily reversing the case, American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, the justices refused to reconcile their sweeping statement of free speech principles in Citizens United with the real-world facts -- from Montana's history to today's super PACs -- put forward by Montana and its supporters to demonstrate that independent expenditures do, indeed, corrupt or create the appearance of corruption."
The only real answer to Citizens United is a constitutional amendment. Sen. Bernie Sanders of VT has proposed a constitutional amendment to do just that. You can find a petition supporting this amendment at his website. Another option would be to legislate disclosure requirements but the odds of getting this through the Republican-held House and the Republican-throttled Senate are negligible. These steps will take time and will do nothing to stop the massive flow of anonymous money into the 2012 elections. We'll have to put up with the negative, often erroneous attacks against Democratic candidates across the country. We saw what this massive amount of Super Pac and corporate money could do in Wisconsin's failed recall election. And it is not stopping any time soon. Sen Sherrod Brown of Ohio, for example, has been the target of more than 10 million dollars trying to unseat him. With 75-80% of elections decided by the money spent, things do not look good for November.
Now for the kinda bad news. In a 5-4 vote, with Kennedy joining the moderate and liberal justices, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality, at least temporarily and on a technicality, of the "papers please" provision of Arizona's anti-immigrant law S.B. 1070. SCOTUS did strike down other parts of the law that "made it a crime for undocumented immigrants to be present and to seek employment in Arizona...[and]..authorized police officers to make warrantless arrests of anyone they had probable cause to believe had committed a deportable offense." These provisions were found to violate the Federal government's authority to regulate immigration.
What is amazing is that four justices (Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Roberts) were content with allowing some or all of the provisions of this profoundly offensive and discriminatory legislation to stand. It is clear that civil rights will have some tough sledding in the coming years as these radical activist justices rewrite what it means to be an American and what it means to live in a democracy.
At least Kennedy had the sense to see how bad the Arizona law was. He will be the deciding vote on the Health Care Reform Act (probably this Thursday) but I hold little hope for him to act as the moderate swing vote in this crucial decision. I'm afraid that his Republican/corporate leanings (Florida 2000 recount, Citizens United) will kick in and Obama's signature legislative victory will be sundered.
The most likely provision to destroy the health care legislation is the individual mandate. Quick: who first proposed the individual mandate? If you said Republicans, you would join the 2% of Americans who know this. It was first proposed by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation and supported by numerous Republicans over the years - including Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts. In an insightful article today, "young Turk" Cenk Uygur calls the mandate the "perfect symbol of the central mistake of the Obama administration." But that's for a discussion on another day.
No comments:
Post a Comment