Salon.com > corporations

Court won’t hear campaign contributions appeal

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:50:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal of a decision upholding a century-old ban on corporate campaign contributions in federal elections.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from William P. Danielczyk Jr. and Eugene R. Biagi, who wanted the courts to say the ban violates corporations' free-speech rights.

A federal judge agreed with them, but the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., overturned that decision. The Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision struck down a prohibition against corporate spending on campaign activities by independent groups but left untouched the ban on direct contributions to candidates.

The judge said independent expenditures and direct contributions were both political speech, but the appeals court said they must be regulated differently.

The justices will not review that decision.

Not all Dems are Elizabeth Warren

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 01:00:00 +0000

Despite its success in recent elections, and despite the image of unity it projects, the Democratic Party is in the throes of an epic identity crisis pitting its corporate money against its stated principles. The recent actions of two of the party's rising stars -- Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- tell the deeper tale of that crisis. It is a microcosmic story, suggesting that the 2016 election may be a decisive turning point in the party's history.

The money side of the schism is embodied by Hickenlooper. As the new vice-chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, the former petroleum geologist and beer mogul represents a cabal of Democratic politicians whose brand couples moderate positions on social issues with hard-edged corporatism on economic ones.

Corporatism, of course, is a vague label, but in Democratic politics it typically refers to helping campaign contributors bust unions and dismantle environmental regulations, with the expectation that servile labor and environmental leaders will sit by as their movements are decimated.

Hickenlooper’s actions this month show how the formula works.

Republican dark money group’s corporate sponsors revealed

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:51:00 +0000

Some of the nation’s biggest corporations donated more than a million dollars to launch a Republican nonprofit that went on to play a key role in recent political fights.

Like the nonprofit groups that poured money into last year’s elections, the decade-old State Government Leadership Foundation has been able to keep the identities of its funders secret. Until now.

A records request by ProPublica to the IRS turned up a list of the original funders of the group: Exxon, Pfizer, Time Warner, and other corporations put up at least 85 percent of the $1.3 million the foundation raised in the first year and a half of its existence, starting in 2003.

Gore Vidal told you so

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 21:00:00 +0000

This past summer, we lost Gore Vidal, one of our greatest intellectual treasures at a time when we needed him most: during the 2012 presidential election. In a forthcoming book of interviews — which date from 1988 to 2007 — that Nation contributing editor Jon Wiener conducted with the witty and acerbic writer, activist and fiercely loyal Democrat, Vidal holds forth on oil, the unholy matrimony of corporations and politicians, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and war and Wall Street. Even though he's speaking of the past, Vidal's insights and anecdotes are equally, if not more so, applicable today.

Vidal on gas and oil:

The only optimists are the gas and oil people, and they have every reason to be. It has always been the trick of our republic to get people to vote wholeheartedly against their interests. That’s very exciting when you can do it. [Laughter.] I remember when I was running for Congress in upstate New York, in Dutchess County, and there would be these farmers going around in old, old Model-T Fords and so on, with stickers — Vote for Rockefeller. Sometimes I would stop them, and we’d chat. I’d say, “Why do you like him?” because he was pretty poisonous even then. They said, “He’s so rich, he wouldn’t steal our money.”