Posted on 04/30/2014 8:09:37 AM PDT by maggief
Senate Democrats will schedule a vote this year on a constitutional amendment to reform campaign finance as they face tens of millions of dollars worth of attack ads from conservative groups.
The Senate will vote on an amendment sponsored by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) that would overturn two recent court cases that have given corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals free rein to spend freely on federal races. “The Supreme Court is trying to take this country back to the days of the robber barons, allowing dark money to flood our elections. That needs to stop, and it needs to stop now,” said Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who announced the plan.
“The only way to undo the damage the court has done is to pass Senator Udall’s amendment to the Constitution, and Senate Democrats are going to try to do that,” he said.
Schumer said the vote would take place by year’s end and called on Republican colleagues to join Democrats to ensure “the wealthy can’t drown out middle-class voices in our Democracy.”
The amendment has little chance of becoming a part of the Constitution anytime soon because Republicans generally support the high court’s decisions in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. FEC.
The 2010 Citizens United ruling struck down restrictions on corporations and unions from spending money to support or oppose candidates. In McCutcheon, five justices struck down the aggregate limits on individual contributions to candidates and parties.
Udall’s amendment would specifically authorize Congress and the states to regulate and limit fundraising and spending for federal candidates.
It would grant authority to regulate and limit independent expenditures from outside groups such as super PACs.
It also would protect future campaign finance legislation passed by Congress from reversal by the Supreme Court.
The amendment needs to be passed by two-thirds of the Senate and the House and be ratified by three quarters of the states.
Remind me again where much of Bill Clinton and Obama’s campaign contributions came from?
Guess I'm wondering how that's Constitutional.
The ‘do nothing’ Dem Senate?
Vote on DOA bills?
The RATs are the party of the uber-rich, this is merely election year posturing.
When sen Udall (D-N.M.) and Schumer (D-N.Y.), conspire on a law, you know the statement for you is “BOHICA!”
Will it stop liberals and their hundreds of shadow groups funded by sugar daddy soros from spending hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign ads too?
RATS never surrender. You have to respect that. Pelosi never cried and Reid always attacks. They are true to their beliefs.
But it's OK for the "Supreme Court" to allow Obamacare. Right Chucky?
You filthy communist bastard son-of-a-bitch! ESAD!
F U B O!
impeach obama
But don’t even THINK about asking voters to show ID.
lets see if the GOP calls the rats bluff and demands language be added to deny union $$$ in campaigns...
Seems the Democrats are feeling the effect of a level playing field and do not like it...
can we overturn Roe and Kelo and gay marriage?
it’s nice to see they’ve outed themselves as the enemies of he First Amendment they have always been. Indeed, it’s so good that the pubbies shouldn’t filibuster to stop a vote; instead, they should allow it, get as many DemonCraps on record as possible as bring to gut the First Amendment, and vote the proposed change down.
I'd rather go for the big kahuna: Overturn Wickard v. Filburn!
A clean federal marriage amendment would do just that.
The last time it came up, john McCain sabotaged it with a bs flag burning amendment ad on. (later during his campaign McCain said he does not care about any marriage issues in a vanity fair interview)
Schumer said the vote would take place by year’s end and called on Republican colleagues to join Democrats to ensure “the wealthy can’t drown out middle-class voices in our Democracy.”
All “campaign finance reform” legislation is based on the premise that journalism is objective. That is a low-information-voter assumption lacking any basis in either law or religion.That assumption positions the journalist as a priest whose word is not to be questioned. But if such be the case, why do we need trials and juries when there are reporters to tell us that suspects are or are not guilty? And why do we need elections when we have reporters to tell us that Democrats are the good guys?
Seeing that that is ridiculous, it is necessary to recognize that journalists are not a priesthood which can by right exclude others from their exalted company, but merely particular members of the public who happen to have access to certain tools. Among those tools are printing presses and broadcasting facilities/licenses, but also membership in the Associated Press and/or other wire services. But if journalists cannot exclude other members of the public, the only difference between the reporter and the member of the general public is that the latter does not own a printing press yet, notwithstanding that he has the right in principle to buy and operate one. Or to rent one.
Therefore it is illegitimate for the government to constrain private citizens from doing anything that the owner of a newspaper may do, or to constrain ordinary corporations from doing anything that The New York Times Corporation may do.
To the extent that the right of the Associated Press to exclude members may be considered an issue, all wire services generally and the Associated Press in particular homogenize journalism and obscure responsibility of their members to the laws of libel. They do so on the principle that if everyone is guilty, then no one is guilty. But in fact, the AP was found to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1945, but was “too big to fail” because of the value of its mission of conserving expensive bandwidth in the transmission of news nationwide. Given the technologies which undergird the broadband Internet and www, tho, bandwidth is not expensive but dirt cheap. And the AP, and indeed all wire services, are not “too big to fail,” but rather they are simply too big.
Journalists are not priests of objectivity; indeed they are no more objective than anyone else. Although is is certainly legitimate to claim to be trying to be objective - if indeed one is making a conscientious effort to do so - claiming actually to be objective marks the claimant as not remotely being objective about himself. Exactly as the person who claims to seek wisdom is to be lauded (if indeed he does) while the man who claims actually to be wise is guilty of sophistry.
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