A Response to the Koch Brothers Claim of Entitlement to Anonymous Political Giving

[Disir]

The spokesman for the Koch brothers cites two Supreme Court decisions, NAACP v. Alabama (1958), and McIntyre v. Ohio (1995), to support their claim for anonymous political giving.

The only problem is that the cases don't support the Koch brothers claim.

In reality, the Koch brothers have no constitutional basis and no policy basis to justify secretly injecting untold millions of dollars into federal elections. The Supreme Court and Congress have long recognized that voters have a basic right to know information about political money being given and spent to influence their votes.

Both of the Supreme Court cases cited by the Koch brothers' spokesman are irrelevant to the constitutional issue involved here -- whether it is constitutionally permissible to require disclosure of money given and spent to influence candidate elections. And the Koch brothers' spokesman ignores the directly relevant, and recent, Supreme Court cases which have upheld such disclosure laws.

The Edsall column says that disclosure "remains the losing position" in the courts.

In fact, this is backwards. Just the opposite is true.

For nearly 40 years, campaign finance disclosure requirements have been consistently upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court -- starting with the Court's landmark Buckley decision in 1976 and continuing as recently as the Court's Citizens United decision in 2010.

In Buckley, the Supreme Court held that the federal campaign finance disclosure laws were constitutional because they provide "the electorate with information 'as to where political campaign money comes from and how it is spent by the candidate' in order to aid the voters in evaluating those who seek federal office."

The Court in Buckley also upheld the disclosure laws on the grounds that "disclosure requirements deter actual corruption and avoid the appearance of corruption by exposing large contributions and expenditures to the light of publicity."

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court, in an eight to 1one decision, upheld political giving and spending disclosure requirements for corporations, including nonprofit corporations, making independent expenditures. The Court said:

With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters.

The Supreme Court noted in Citizens United that it had upheld disclosure laws in earlier cases to address the problem that "independent groups were running election-related advertisements while hiding behind dubious and misleading names."

Even though the Court upheld the disclosure law in Citizens United, however, citizens have not ended up with effective disclosure. Instead they have ended up with hundreds of millions of dollars in secret contributions being laundered into federal elections.

The disclosure problems we now have do not stem from constitutional issues but rather from flawed FEC and IRS regulations that were used by outside groups to spend more than $300 million in secret contributions in the 2012 federal elections.

The two Supreme Court cases cited by the Koch brothers' spokesman to justify anonymous political giving do not support his claim.

The first case, NAACP v. Alabama, involved an attempt by Alabama to subpoena the NAACP's membership lists at a time when the organization was fighting for civil rights and when its members were the targets of murders, violence and serious physical harassment.

The Supreme Court reviewed the circumstances facing the NAACP and held that the organization was entitled to anonymity for its members.

It is beyond ironic for the Koch brothers, who are among the richest people in the world, to try to claim moral equivalence for their anonymous giving of political money with the life and death threats faced by members of the NAACP during the civil rights battles of the 1950s.

A Response to the Koch Brothers Claim of Entitlement to Anonymous Political Giving*|*Fred Wertheimer

This was a nice rebuttal that came out on the 28th.

 

[HenryBHough]

And yet those liberals still love watching PBS which gets so much funding from those "evil" brothers! And even abuse their children by allowing them to watch.

Go figure.

 

[Disir]

And yet those liberals still love watching PBS which gets so much funding from those "evil" brothers! And even abuse their children by allowing them to watch.

Go figure.

Actually, that is one big fight. They were done here: What PBS's Treatment of Two Movies About The Kochs Says About Which Money Counts In Public Television | ThinkProgress

 

[DGS49]

Like most articles about the Koch brothers, this one is so lacking in context that it is meaningless.

The political donations of the Koch's and their companies are so closely scrutinized that I doubt they could flip a quarter into a poor box without someone taking note of it.

Are they making or trying to make anonymous contributions to any political candidate? If so, that should be elaborated. Also, explain how these candidates avoid identifying the anonymous donors on their required filings.

Without this basic information the whole article is inflammatory bullshit.

 

[Stephanie]

lol,

the rebuttal should of been, don't do as us Democrat/progressives/commie do

DO AS WE SAY and spreading lies about you is ok too

the left always need some boogeyman, last year it was Norquist, Palin, Nugent, the Tea Party BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH
what a frikken fascist freedom of speech squelching losers...and you people buy into it

 

[Disir]

There was nothing lacking. They attempt to use two cases that really don't fit and there is a need for disclosure. Pretty simple.