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| Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission |
Besides a hangover, what follows frenzy?
Editing by Carolyn Bennett
“Progress Waddles
forward: Risks and Opportunities in the Lame Duck Session” [Public Citizen’s Claypool]
“U.S. elections leave House and Senate balance nearly unchanged” [WSWS’s
Martin]
The 112th Congress this coming Tuesday begins its “Lame Duck” Session offering Americans an inkling of whether the 113th Congress
will match its predecessor’s plague of rabid tribalism: “partisan obstructionism.”
Citizen beware
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“
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Lame duck lawmakers,” Rick Claypool writes, “are notoriously
unpredictable. They no longer need to worry about raising money for reelection
so they are freer to stand up to corporate lobbyists and other moneyed
interests; however, because they are not seeking reelection, they are also less
accountable to their constituents. Even worse than that:
They
are vulnerable to offers of cushy jobs at lobbying firms where former lawmakers
all-too-often receive six-figure salaries in exchange for doing Corporate
America’s bidding and perpetuate Washington’s ‘revolving door’ problem.
The 112th Congress’s lame duck session, scheduled to extend
from November 13 through December 14, “is fraught with opportunities and
threats,” Claypool says; and Public Citizen has laid out its positions for and
against critical issues and action.
For
forty years Public Citizen has been standing up to corporate power and holding
government accountable.
Public Citizen
supports
Final passage of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement
Act (H.R. 3289, S. 743)
The Wall Street Trading and Speculators Tax Act (H.R. 3313,
S. 1787), a tiny (0.03 percent) tax on
Wall Street’s risky high-speed speculation, to help stabilize the financial
system and raise more than $350 billion over 10 years
An end to taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuel corporations
Laying groundwork for major reform in the 113th Congress to
fight corporate money flooding and de-legitimizing U.S. elections
Top priorities include restoring
accountability and transparency with the DISCLOSE Act and Shareholder
Protection Act, an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose
political spending; continuing to grow support for a constitutional amendment
to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Public Citizen opposes
Any attempt to cut or
weaken Medicare, the popular and successful program providing universal
healthcare for seniors [the qualifying age for Medicare should actually be
lowered, not raised, so that everyone can benefit from this single-payer system]
The Independent Regulatory Agency Analysis Act (S. 3468),
which would give Wall Street-friendly members of any White House administration
the power to impede independent regulators such as the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Securities and Exchange Commission and
the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Bills that would
deregulate parts of the derivatives market: H.R. 1838 would explicitly
allow bailouts for bad swap deals while H.R. 3283 would remove U.S. regulations
for U.S. swaps conducted abroad
An attempt to give banks legal immunity ─ even when they push predatory loans they know consumers
will not be able to pay back
An attempt to undermine
patients’ rights by letting the medical industry go virtually unpunished when
patients are harmed or killed by the industry’s negligence or recklessness.
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A
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fter the frenzy, what?
What will the 113th accomplish when winning the White House
outstripped resources to win the Congress, a resulting situation that,
according to Patrick Martin’s article today at the World Socialist Web Site, “perfectly
suits the right-wing purposes of the reelected Obama White House to have a
Republican-controlled House serve as its political partner and, in the face of
opposition from below, give the Obama government an excuse to ─
Cut social programs cuts,
Hand out tax breaks to corporate
America,
Continue militarism and attacks on domestic
and international human and democratic rights
Bipartisan hold to status quo, leveraged against “We the
people”|
P
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opular sentiment, Martin writes, played little role in the 2012 U.S.
elections outcome, which were dependent largely on which of two domineering political
parties controlled a U.S. state’s redistricting process ─ the power to draw
district boundaries, and thus rig election results.
U.S. House ─ November 6’s vote did little to change the
picture in the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives. Republicans will hold
a sizeable majority: once all the seats are decided, perhaps 235-200.
U.S. Senate ─ The two-seat gain in the U.S. Senate “shifts
the Democratic caucus further to the right ─ as many of the victorious Democratic
candidates openly rejected liberalism and pledged themselves to fiscal
austerity and bipartisan collaboration with the Republicans: among them
Indiana’s conservative Democrat Joe
Donnelly and Maine’s Independent expected to vote with Democratic Party Augus King
Incumbents Jon Tester (Montana),
Dianne Feinstein (California), Bill Nelson (Florida), Robert Casey (Pennsylvania),
Tom Carper (Delaware), Joe Manchin (West Virginia), Claire McCaskill (Missouri)
Newcomers Heidi Heitkamp (North
Dakota) and Tim Kaine (Virginia)
Sources and notes
“Progress Waddles forward: Risks and Opportunities in the
Lame Duck Session” (Citizen Vox, Rick Claypool), November 9, 2012, http://www.citizenvox.org/2012/11/09/progress-waddles-lame-duck-risks-opportunities/
Citizens United
Citizens United v.
Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), was a landmark United
States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the First Amendment
prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures
by corporations and unions.
The decision reached the Supreme Court on appeal from a July
2008 decision by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
The nonprofit group Citizens United [had] wanted to air a
film critical of Hillary Clinton and to advertise the film during television
broadcasts in apparent violation of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act
(commonly known as the McCain–Feingold Act or ‘BCRA’). In a 5–4 decision, the
Court held that portions of BCRA §203 violated the First Amendment. Wikipedia
Rick Claypool
Rick Claypool is an online organizer in Public Citizen’s
Congress Watch division. Before joining the staff at Public Citizen, he
assisted with outreach and organizing at a grassroots anti-hunger organization
in Pittsburgh, wrote advocacy and investigative stories for an alternative
newsweekly in Toledo, Ohio; and in
northwest Ohio, he taught courses in cultural theory and analysis. http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=2875
Although contributors to PC’s blog are staff members of
Public Citizen, their views are their own, “those of the individual
contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of Public Citizen.”
Public Citizen
Public Citizen is a national nonprofit organization that has
been standing up to corporate power and holding government accountable since
1971. It fights for:
Openness
and democratic accountability in government
Right
of consumers to seek redress in the courts
Clean,
safe and sustainable energy sources
Social
and economic justice in trade policies
Strong
health, safety and environmental protections
Safe,
effective and affordable prescription drugs and health care
Public Citizen, http://www.citizenvox.org/about-2
“U.S. elections leave House and Senate balance nearly
unchanged” (Patrick Martin, November 10, 2012, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/nov2012/cong-n10.shtml
Profile briefs
Joe Donnelly: elected as a Democrat to the One Hundred Tenth
Congress and to the two succeeding Congresses (January 3, 2007-present); was
not a candidate for reelection to the House of Representatives but was elected
as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 2012 for the term ending January
3, 2019, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=D000607
Angus Stanley King Jr.: fills the seat vacated by retiring
Senator Olympia Snowe, elected in 2012 to the U.S. Senate as an independent representing
Maine; widely expected to caucus with the Democratic Party. King served as Maine’s
72nd Governor (1995 to 2003). Wikipedia
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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