The Supreme Court ruling is almost certain to fuel the growing debate over increasing economic inequality in the U.S. CC-BY-SA-3.0/Matt H. Wade, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UpstateNYer, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 2 2014 (IPS)

In a decision with major implications for the U.S. political system, a bare majority of the Supreme Wednesday ruled that the government cannot limit total spending by individuals on federal elections.

The highly anticipated judgement, rendered by the Court’s five right-wing justices, declared unconstitutional the legal cap on aggregate contributions individual donors can make to political candidates and party committees during the two-year election campaign cycle.“If the court in Citizens United opened a door, today’s decision may well open a floodgate.” -- Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the minority.

That limit, which was 123,200 dollars for the current cycle, was enacted by Congress and signed into law by former President George W. Bush in 2002 as part of a larger effort to reform campaign finance laws.

The ruling in the case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), was strongly denounced by civic groups that have argued that the rich already exert far too much influence on elected officials.

“The Supreme Court majority overrode the Legislative and Executive branches to empower a miniscule number of millionaires and billionaires to use their wealth to exercise extraordinary distortive influence over federal officeholders, government decisions and elections,” said Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21 and a leading voice for taking money out of politics since the 1970s.

“The Supreme Court majority has refused to learn the lessons of history from our past corruption scandals and from decades of actions taken to protect citizens against government corruption,” he noted.

The ruling, which comes just as the 2014 Congressional campaigns are getting underway, is almost certain to fuel the growing debate over increasing economic inequality – ignited two-and-a-half years ago by the Occupy Movement – and its effects on the political system.

In just the past week, for example, op-eds decrying influence of money on government appeared in several of the nation’s most influential newspapers.

In the Washington Post, for example, Stein Ringen, an emeritus professor at Oxford University, compared the current U.S. system to that of ancient Athens where, he noted, “democracy disintegrated when the rich grew super-rich, refused to play by the rules and undermined the established system of government.”

Similar concerns surfaced when four potential Republican 2016 presidential candidates, including New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush (George W.’s brother), trooped to Las Vegas last weekend for a convention of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), a right-wing, strongly pro-Israel group chaired by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.

Adelson contributed nearly 100 million dollars of his 39-billion-dollar fortune to so-called super-PACS (political action committees) during the last political cycle in an ultimately vain effort to defeat President Barack Obama re-election bid in 2012.

Noting that, along with Adelson, two of the world’s other top-10 billionaires, David and Charles Koch, are already “pouring tens of millions [of dollars] into the 2014 midterm elections in an effort to swing the Senate to Republican control,” Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote Wednesday that “These and other wealthy people …are buying the U.S. political system in much the same way Russian oligarchs have acquired theirs.”

The McCutcheon decision, which drew a strong dissent from four of the justices on the nine-member court, complements the equally controversial “Citizens United” decision which the same majority handed down in 2010.

That decision found that limits to political contributions by corporations and unions violated the free speech rights guaranteed by the Constitution’s First Amendment. So long as those contributions were made to an entity that was not directly co-ordinating its advocacy work with a specific candidate’s political campaign or party, they were permissible, according to the majority.

As a substantial result of that decision, the 2012 election was the most expensive in U.S. history by far – most estimates place the amount at well over six billion dollars. In the 1960 election, by contrast, the comparable total was just over 100 million dollars adjusted for inflation.

While Citizens United applied to corporations and unions and permitted the creation of super-PACs to which anyone, such as Adelson and the Koch brothers, could contribute, it did not address the issue of direct donations by individuals to specific candidates or party organisations.

The McCutcheon case, which was based on a wealthy businessman who wanted to exceed the FEC’s 2012 aggregate limit by donating to dozens of Congressional campaigns, essentially fills that gap.

While the majority upheld FEC limits on individual contributions to specific candidates (2,600 dollars) and party organisations (5,000 dollars), it declared that the FEC’s aggregate limit (currently123,200 dollars) on any one individual’s contributions to political campaigns and parties during an election cycle violated the First Amendment.

“There is no right more basic than the right to participate in electing our political leaders,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority opinion that drew heavily on the four-year-old Citizens United decision to establish precedent for its ruling.

“An aggregate limit on how many candidates and committees an individual may support through contributions is not a modest restraint at all,” Roberts wrote. “The government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse.”

The majority opinion provoked a strong retort by the four more-liberal justices. “If the court in Citizens United opened a door, today’s decision may well open a floodgate,” wrote Justice Stephen Breyer for the minority.

“The result… is a decision that substitutes judges’ understandings of how the political process works for the understanding of Congress; that fails to recognize the difference between influence resting upon public opinion and influence bought by money alone; that overturns key precedent; that creates huge loopholes in the law; and that undermines, perhaps devastates, what remains of campaign finance reform,” he argued.

His arguments were echoed by democracy advocates. “The First Amendment was intended to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information among all of us and thereby encourage our informed participation in our government,” said J. Gerald Hebert, director of the Legal Center here.

“This decision turns the First Amendment on its head by enabling those with the biggest chequebooks to gain even more influence and access to our elected officials,” he added.

The head of Public Citizen, another Washington-based civic group, called the ruling a victory for “plutocrat rights.” “There are literally only a few hundred people who can and will take advantage of this horrendous ruling. But those are exactly the people our elected officials will now be answering to,” said Robert Weissman.

“That is not democracy. It is plutocracy,” he said.

With the notable exception of Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate who had co-sponsored the 2002 campaign finance reform law, Republicans expressed satisfaction with the ruling.

“What I think this means is that freedom of speech is being upheld,” House Speaker John Boehner told reporters. “You all have the freedom to write what you want to write. Donors ought to have the freedom to give what they want to give.”

For his part, McCain denounced the ruling. “I predict as a result of recent Court decisions, there will be scandals involving corrupt public officials and unlimited, anonymous campaign contributions that will force the system to be reformed once again,” he said in a statement.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

Advocacy and accountability groups are urging the U.S. Congress to enact new mechanisms that would allow it to hold multinational corporations accountable for rights infringements abroad.

At a congressional briefing on Thursday, legal experts and advocates from Amnesty International, the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) and Earthrights International proposed measures Congress could take to ameliorate corporate abuses abroad.“We understand that corporate lobbying is necessary, but at the same time there should be more transparency in that process in order to ensure justice.” -- Seema Joshi

“International law itself requires a country to provide a remedy to individuals who are harmed by citizens,” ICAR’s Gwynne Skinner, an associate professor of law at Willamette University College of Law, told IPS.

“So we’re failing if we’re not providing any remedies to victims who are hurt by our citizens and of course corporations are citizens now, right?” (Skinner was referring to a 2010 Supreme Court decision that allowed corporations to make unlimited political donations on the grounds that they are eligible for the same constitutional rights as individuals.)

Earthrights International and other legal advocacy groups have partnered to create a report card indexing the track record of each U.S. lawmaker on corporate accountability. Marco Simons, Earthrights International’s legal director, noted Congress’s lacklustre record on the issue.

“Unfortunately, so far the results have not been very pretty,” Simons said. “The average score in the Senate was 26.6 percent and 44.2 percent in the House. Twelve representatives and 45 senators received a score of zero.”

Representatives from Amnesty International called for increased transparency in corporate lobbying efforts.

“We are looking at a proposal to deftly deal with the corporate-government relationship,” said Seema Joshi, Amnesty International’s head of business and human rights. “We understand that corporate lobbying is necessary, but at the same time there should be more transparency in that process in order to ensure justice.”

Post-Kiobel

In particular, advocates are calling for reforms to the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a unique law that allows foreign nationals to sue human rights abusers in U.S. courts. Last year, the Supreme Court significantly limited the scope of the statute against multinational corporations in a case known as Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum.

“Shell [a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Petroleum] and other multinational corporations are free to do business in the United States, and free to commit human rights abuses in other countries around the world, and not have any fear that the victims of those abuses would be able to gain access to a U.S. federal court to obtain justice for those abuses,” Simons said.

“This essentially contravenes the fundamental purpose of the Alien Tort Statute – to not provide protection in the United States for those who violate international law.”

In light of the Kiobel ruling, Earthrights and ICAR are calling on Congress to implement legislation that would explicitly allow victims to sue multinational corporations that operate in the United States for human rights abuses abroad, regardless of where in the world they’re based.

On Thursday, the panellists noted the difficulty in pursuing ATS cases against corporations irrespective of the Kiobel ruling, which often prompts plaintiffs to sue in state courts.

In Doe v. Unocal, another ATS case involving corporate complicity in the abuses of a military regime, Earthrights represented a client from Myanmar in the California court system after the case was thrown out of federal courts.

“Unocal and its partners contracted with the Burmese military regime to provide security and other services for their pipeline project,” Simons told IPS. “In the course of providing these services and, unfortunately very predictably, the Burmese soldiers conducted a series of human rights abuses, including widespread forced labour, torture, and killings.”

Another case, Al Shimari v. CACI, dealt with a private military contractor’s alleged use of torture in the interrogation of an Iraqi prisoner. While the federal courts dismissed that case, an appeal is pending and a court in Virginia will hear oral arguments on Mar. 18.

Limited liability

In addition to ATS reform, ICAR’s Skinner proposed altering limited liability rules so parent corporations could be held liable for human rights abuses of smaller companies that they own.

“A parent company can have a wholly owned subsidiary – as shareholders, they own shares of that corporation – and then, of course, have no liability whatsoever except for the investment that they’ve made in that corporation,” Skinner said.

“Today what we see is this becoming a tool for large, transnational businesses to outsource the risk yet get all of the profit. So many very complex corporate organisations exist so that corporations have minimal risk but get these benefits.”

While some have argued that victims of human rights abuses should simply litigate in their own country, the Kiobel and Unocal cases indicate that many of the countries in question directly perpetrate the documented abuses themselves and have a weaker, more corrupt judicial system.

Skinner points to the relative strength of the U.S. judicial system as a reason why corporations are better off litigating in the United States rather than in developing countries.

She cites the lawsuit brought by Ecuadorians against Chevron, the U.S. oil company, for polluting the Lago Agrio region. This week, the judge ruled in favour of Chevron because of allegedly fraudulent evidence used by the prosecution.

“This kind of proves the point that corporations should actually want to be in front of United States courts,” Skinner told IPS.

“If you’re in front of a court in a country that’s not a developed country, you don’t know what you’re going to get. At least in the United States you’re going to get … a pretty fair trial. So isn’t it in a business’s interest to be in front of a U.S. court?”

The new glut of money in U.S. politics stems from a landmark 2010 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court known as Citizens United, which created new opportunities for almost unlimited anonymous corporate spending on political causes. Credit: DonkeyHotey/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 27 2013 (IPS)

The U.S. government has proposed strengthening an obscure tax-status designation that supporters say could significantly impact upon the massive amounts of anonymous money that have come to define U.S. politics over the past two campaign cycles.

Two federal agencies, the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), on Tuesday issued initial guidance that could tighten regulations on the extent to which certain tax-exempt groups can engage in political activities. While such designations are highly coveted, critics have increasingly complained that the rules governing these groups’ activities are overly vague and often unenforced, lending themselves to abuse.“The notion that spending obviously intended to influence elections somehow advances ‘social welfare’ is absurd." -- Brendan Fischer

Following on Tuesday’s announcement, such critics have almost universally lauded the proposals as a strong first step, but warned that significant work remains. Others worry that the new moves would infringe on a constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.

“This is definitely an encouraging sign from a federal agency that’s been almost completely absent in terms of regulating these groups. But the devil will be in the details,” Paul S. Ryan, a senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Centre, which works on campaign finance issues and has sued the IRS over the issue, told IPS.

“Remember, though, what is at issue here is disclosure for voters. This rulemaking isn’t necessarily about getting involved in elections, but rather about disclosing donors.”

The new glut of money in U.S. politics stems from a landmark 2010 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court known as Citizens United, which created new opportunities for almost unlimited anonymous corporate spending on political causes. The decision remains bitterly disputed by many across the country, with more than a dozen states having formally called for it to be overturned.

According to official estimates, some 300 million dollars was funnelled into the 2012 presidential election from anonymous donors through tax-exempt organisations (others have pointed out that this figure is relatively small compared to the seven billion dollars that was spent cumulatively in the 2012 election).

Activists today refer to such secret funding as “dark money”, some 85 percent of which is estimated to have gone to conservative groups in 2012.

The vehicle of choice for many of these donors has been a type of organisation known by its tax-code designation as a 501(c)(4). Also known as “social welfare” organisations – given that this is supposed to be their primary focus – these groups have the enticing position of having some wiggle room in how politically involved they can be, while also being able to keep their contributors largely private.

On the contrary, the IRS allows other such groups to engage wholly in the political process, but these are required to disclose their donors’ identity.

“The proposed rules are a positive step towards reining in political groups charading as ‘social welfare’ nonprofits while devoting almost all of their resources towards influencing elections,” Brendan Fischer, general counsel for the Centre for Media and Democracy, a watchdog group, told IPS.

“The notion that spending obviously intended to influence elections somehow advances ‘social welfare’ is absurd, so hopefully the proposed rules will provide some clarity to the law and shine light on the dark money. The proposed rules still have to go through the rulemaking process, but hopefully the final rules will resolve some of the ambiguity in the tax code that led to such abuses.”

Bright lines

The new move comes just months after heated, politicised accusations that the IRS had been disproportionately scrutinising the applications of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. While subsequent disclosures suggested that the agency had been targeting both obviously conservative and obviously liberal groups in an effort at efficiency, the broader debate highlighted new public confusion over why any of these clearly political groups were under consideration as “social welfare” organisations in the first place.

In fact, U.S. law largely prohibits such groups from engaging in any political activities, but implementation of this statute has always come down to the IRS’s interpretation.

“This is part of ongoing efforts within the IRS that are improving our work in the tax-exempt area,” IRS Acting Commissioner Danny Werfel said Tuesday. “Once final, this proposed guidance will continue moving us forward and provide clarity for this important segment of exempt organisations.”

In particular, the IRS is proposing to redefine exactly what is meant by a key part of these designations – the term “candidate-related political activity”. Stating that it foresees “significant public interest” in the issue, the Treasury is now eliciting public comment through late February.

“For decades the IRS has used a ‘primary activity’ test to determine how much political activity is too much, but it has never really provided any clarification on this activity,” the Campaign Legal Centre’s Ryan says.

“So the dark money groups have said that up to 49.9 percent of their activities can be political, while we’ve been saying that an appropriate level would be far lower, around 10 or 15 percent. The strength of this new rulemaking will be where the IRS draws that line.”

Others are warning that the issue shouldn’t be up to IRS interpretation, and are pushing the courts to clarify the intent of current law once and for all.

“While we welcome this action, we need a definitive and bright line ruling from the court,” Chris Van Hollen, a member of Congress who sued the IRS on this issue over the summer, said Tuesday.

“The public has a right to know who is spending millions to influence the outcome of our elections and we must put an end to this flow of secret money. That is why I filed my lawsuit against the IRS in August.”

Even if the rule change does result in a significantly strengthened regulation regarding 501(c)(4)s, many are now urging additional official scrutiny on other tax-exempt organisations. Action from the IRS could well push anonymous donors out of the 501(c)(4)s and into, instead, groups such as trade associations, which are bound by different and looser regulations.

The CampaignLegalCenter, for instance, is urging officials to look into these groups as well, and think about tightening restrictions on their political activities.

“Ultimately, this is a necessary but incomplete measure,” the Centre for Media and Democracy’s Fisher says.

“Billionaires and their lawyers will continue looking for new ways to buy elections in secret. What we really need is a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United and get money out of politics.”

Oil giant Chevron's corporate offices in Houston Texas are housed in the old Enron buildings at 1400 Smith St. Credit: Jonathan McIntosh/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, May 29 2013 (IPS)

At an annual shareholder meeting held Wednesday, upper-level management for the oil conglomerate Chevron faced renewed questioning over its record-setting political contributions during last year’s national election.

At the meeting, a shareholder resolution on the issue focused on Chevron’s alleged refusal to explain how the company’s political spending has benefited shareholders, particularly given the excoriating criticism the contribution has garnered, and called for a cessation of the practice.

The resolution failed to pass, however, receiving just four percent of shareholder backing.

Of particular interest has been a lump payment of 2.5 million dollars spent by a Chevron subsidiary. Given that Chevron receives government contracts, the contribution’s timing (in the last weeks of the election) and its beneficiary (a group focused on electing Republicans to the House of Representatives) have raised concerns that the payment could have violated U.S. law.

Chevron is wrapping up “its most expensive year of political spending to date,” Green Century Capital Management, which filed the resolution, stated Tuesday, just ahead of the shareholder meeting. The advisory firm is now formally urging the company to “refrain entirely from political spending, arguing that doing so would protect against risks to shareholder value”.

Chevron, the second-largest oil company in the United States, reportedly spent a total of 3.9 million dollars during the 2012 campaign. Yet it was the 2.5-million-dollar payment to a group called the Congressional Leadership Fund that has become the focus of much interest, in part because it is the largest single corporate political contribution to date.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a controversial ruling that lifted restrictions on most corporate election-related spending. The decision made the 2012 presidential election the most expensive to date.

It has also sparked a significant public backlash: according to a September poll, more than four-fifths of U.S. respondents would support limiting election spending. Further, at least 14 states have now passed resolutions urging a constitutional amendment to overturn the judicial decision, known as Citizens United.

Against this backdrop, Chevron has been widely pilloried for having racked up the largest-yet corporate political contribution since the Citizens United decision was handed down.

“This issue is important for our members because Chevron has not been willing or able to demonstrate value to shareholders of its political expenditures,” Leslie Samuelrich, a senior vice-president with Green Century, told IPS.

“Given high negative press coverage that Chevron’s contribution garnered for the company, we feel that it’s important that Chevron explain why it made this contribution, as well as a long list of growing political contributions over the years. They weren’t able to do so, so we went forward with the resolution.”

Following Wednesday’s vote, Samuelrich lauded the results, telling the media the process represented “a turning of the tide”.

Risky business

The Citizens United decision appears to have led to an immediate response from Chevron. The company has reported spending a little more than a million dollars on political contributions in 2008 and a little less than that amount in 2010, when the Supreme Court ruled.

Two years later, those figures have almost quadrupled. In addition, watchdog groups have noted that around 90 percent of corporate spending in the 2012 election went to Republicans.

“This appears to be very risky business to us,” Samuelrich says, noting that Green Century has filed similar resolutions this year with the oil company ExxonMobil, Bank of America and 3M, a manufacturing conglomerate.

“We spoke with Chevron earlier this year, but that dialogue resulted in no change whatsoever – they didn’t offer any analysis about why they made the initial contribution, nor any evaluation of the impact of their highly publicised political spending.”

Further, the company continues to be dogged by allegations that the Congressional Leadership Fund contribution could have been illegal in the first place, given Chevron’s contracts with the government.

“Under a legislative prohibition known as ‘pay to play’, government contractors can’t make these types of contributions,” Kelly Ngo, a legislative assistant at Public Citizen, a consumer watch group, told IPS. “The law is pretty clear on this.”

In March, Public Citizen and several environment groups filed a joint complaint on the issue with the Federal Election Commission, though the commission has yet to respond. The company, meanwhile, has pointed out that the payment was made through a subsidiary that doesn’t hold a government contract.

In documentation sent to IPS, Chevron’s board unanimously recommended that shareholders vote against the resolution to halt political spending.

“Chevron exercises its fundamental right and responsibility to participate in the political process … [and] advocates positions on proposed policies that will affect the Company’s ability to realize strong financial returns while meeting the world’s growing demand for energy,” the Chevron board states.

“[The] Board is confident that the Company’s political activities are aligned with its stockholders’ long-term interests.”

Ecuador legacy

Two additional resolutions floated by Chevron shareholders on Wednesday dealt with longstanding litigation against the company’s predecessor, Texaco, for having wilfully dumped oil wastes in a remote part of Ecuador from the 1960s until the 1990s. (Extensive documentation on the case can be found here, while Chevron’s responses can be found here.)

While the Ecuadorian courts have repeatedly assessed the company for 19 billion dollars in liability, Chevron has taken an aggressive line in refusing the penalty, saying a multi-million-dollar remediation has already taken place. In an unusual step, in December the company even subpoenaed some of its own shareholders, alleging that they were colluding with the Ecuadorians.

Shareholders floated a related resolution, impugning the Chevron management for the ongoing Ecuador situation, at last year’s meeting.

Although that move was rejected, it did win the backing of around 40 percent of shareholders – slightly more than was ultimately received during Wednesday’s vote, indicating continued shareholder interest to resolve the issue.

Meanwhile, the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, who allege health problems and ruined lands, are now suing Chevron in other countries in which the company operates. Following on an order earlier this month, Chevron CEO John Watson will now have to testify in a fraud-related counter-suit filed by the company against the Ecuadorians.

This year, activists have increasingly targeted Watson himself, singling him out for having originally overseen the acquisition of Texaco.

“My parents both died from cancer due to Chevron’s contamination,” Servio Curipoma, from San Carlos in Ecuador’s northeast, told Chevron shareholders and management Wednesday.

“I am still fighting for justice so that no one else will have to suffer the pain they did, and the loss I have. Chevron has lied to its shareholders, to the world, to me. I’m here on behalf of all of us to say that CEO Watson should be fired.”

Jack Abramoff. Credit: Madeleine Ball/cc by 2.0

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
ATLANTA, Georgia, Feb 28 2013 (IPS)

Notorious former Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who spent more than three years in federal prison for tax evasion, conspiracy to bribe public officials and fraud, is now touring the U.S. urging ethics reform at the federal level.

During a visit Wednesday to the Georgia State Capitol, Abramoff spoke with lawmakers and citizens about his many years of experience corrupting lawmakers as a lobbyist.

Asked by IPS why, after spending three years in prison, he did not just go home, he replied “I wanted to. [But] I got upset with fake reform.”

The “fake reform” Abramoff is referring to includes various measures passed in the wake of the 2005 scandal.

“Congress believes it took its medicine when it passed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act in 2007,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Reform and Ethics in Government.

“[But] a lot of the kinds of events that were banned were just moved,” she told IPS. “You couldn’t take a member of congress or staff off to lunch, but you can have a campaign event. [And] It’s a much more expensive event.

“There’s not a lot of incentive for them [Congress] to change the rules – they want lobbying campaign cash, and they want to become lobbyists when they leave,” Sloan said.

In 2006, Abramoff pled guilty in connection with his lobbying on behalf of Native American tribes and his dealings with SunCruz Casinos.

Abramoff, along with a partner, Michael Scanlon, was found to have defrauded six Native American tribes out of 66 million dollars by overcharging them for lobbying fees, then keeping nearly half of it himself in kickbacks.

“I did violate the trust of my clients. I brought Scanlon to them. I had a deal with Scanlon, if there was a profit we would split it. I didn’t inform them,” Abramoff said.

As a result of the various federal investigations into Abramoff’s lobbying activities, 21 people either pled guilty or were found guilty of numerous crimes, including senior George W. Bush administration officials, Congressional staffers, and one U.S. congressman, Bob Ney, a once high-ranking Republican from Ohio.

In 2006, former U.S. House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, a Republican from Texas, resigned as a result of investigations into his close ties to Abramoff.

Abramoff was an expert at showering members of Congress and their staffs with gifts, donations, and sometimes promises of job opportunities, in exchange for their support of legislation favourable to his clients.

After his release from federal prison, Abramoff told CBS’s 60 Minutes programme that he at one time had wielded significant influence in over 100 Congressional offices.

Gifts included private jet rides; free meals at his restaurant, Signatures, in Washington, DC; and junkets including stops at St. Andrews golf resort in Scotland.

He spent more than one million dollars per year on ticket sales for sporting events for members of Congress and their staff, including two skyboxes at Washington Redskins Games.

In 2011, he wrote a book called “Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Corruption from America’s Most Notorious Lobbyist.”

He told IPS he is now working on a series of legislative proposals regarding ethics reform, acknowledging that, in a sense, he is becoming a lobbyist again, this time on the other side.

He joked that perhaps it would not be the best idea for members of congress to hear, “Mr. Abramoff the lobbyist is here to see you.”

Abramoff said there are four key aspects to ethics laws that he believes should be in place in any democratic society.

First, “If you’re lobbying Congress and you get paid, you’re a lobbyist and you have to register,” he said.

Sloan agrees with that proposal. “I think it’s reasonable to require a lot more registration. The current standards are not strong enough. There should be more people who should have to register… [such as] the people like [former Congressmen] Newt Gingrich and Tom Daschle who often call themselves consultants but seem to be involved in strategies that involve lobbying,” she said.

Abramoff also argues that lobbyists should be banned from giving more than a small total amount of campaign contributions to members of congress each year.

This means, “No lobbyist involved in any aspect of federal fundraising, no bundling, no events; this includes campaigns, political parties, any SuperPACs.”

Third, he believes that for any business or nonprofit entity that wants a grant or loan from the federal government, the directors and key officials of those entities should be prohibited from making campaign contributions to congress.

“These [the second and third] proposals may run into constitutional problems, since money is speech,” Sloan said, referring to recent rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Making limitations on the amounts of contributions you can make, there are constitutional issues. It’s possible you can write [legislation] around it, but it’s not 100 percent clear you could write a bill and it would work,” she said.

Lastly, he argues that federal employees should be barred from becoming lobbyists for 10 years after leaving their government jobs. In his book, he describes recruiting congressional staffers:

“After a number of meetings with them, possibly including meals or rounds of golf, I would say a few magic words: ‘When you are done working for the Congressman, you should come work for me at my firm.’

“With that, assuming the staffer had any interest in leaving Capitol Hill for K Street – and almost 90 percent of them do – I would own him and, consequently, that entire office. No rules had been broken, at least not yet. No one even knew what was happening, but suddenly, every move that staffer made, he made with his future at my firm in mind.”

“Jack’s stories really sum it up,” William Perry, executive director of Common Cause Georgia (CCGA), told IPS.

CCGA is one of the organisations sponsoring Abramoff’s events in Atlanta.

“This is somebody who was able to manipulate the system so well, he was the best at it. The core of his message is, money from special interests is corrupting the process. That’s what we’re trying to articulate,” Perry said.

“There’s not bad people in these halls,” Perry said, referring to the Georgia State Legislature. “[But] what they do is they trade money for outcomes. That’s bribery.”

A rally by Move to Amend Ohio, the state chapter of the national coalition seeking to amend the U.S. Constitution to abolish corporate constitutional rights. Credit: Progress Ohio/cc by 2.0

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
ATLANTA, Georgia, Jan 28 2013 (IPS)

There is a growing national movement to establish a 28th amendment to the constitution of the United States to address the issue of unlimited corporate spending in elections, although the groups working on the issue diverge on what exactly the amendment should say.

One national coalition called Move to Amend (MTA) is led by David Cobb. A Green Party candidate for president in 2006, Cobb has been touring the country calling for a constitutional amendment to “clearly establish that money is not speech, a corporation is not a person, all corporations are subject to regulation, all campaign contributions will be disclosed, and (that) allows for no loopholes,” according to the MTA website.

But passing a constitutional amendment is a daunting task, requiring the support of two-thirds of the U.S. House and Senate, followed by ratification by three-fourths of the 50 state legislatures.

Cobb believes that it will take about 10 years to build a grassroots movement to successfully lobby for the enactment of the amendment, but that it can be accomplished eventually.

“It’s a lot of work, but so was the Civil Rights Movement, so was women’s suffrage,” Cobb told IPS.

“A small group of ruling elites has hijacked every one of the institutions in this country – the media and both political parties. There’s a corporatised culture and we have to change the power structure. The only way we see is to build a mass, multiracial movement,” he said.

“Move to Amend is a coalition coming together specifically to work together for (abolishing) corporate personhood. We’ve got 258,000 people who are participating with us specifically on this project. There’s lots of work going on now, and it’s coalescing.”

The effort to amend the U.S. constitution has in part been a reaction to the controversial ruling of the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, which found that the first amendment to the U.S. constitution, on freedom of speech, prohibits the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions.

In the ruling, corporations were essentially viewed as having the same rights as people, thus coining the term corporate personhood.

Activists held rallies across the U.S. earlier this month to protest the third anniversary of the Citizens United ruling. 

Data from the 2012 national elections have begun to reveal an unprecedented amount of spending in the elections, about six billion dollars, much of which is untraceable due to a new phenomenon called SuperPACs, political action committees that have literally no limit to how much they can spend, as well as shadow corporations, which are created for the sole purpose of funneling money into elections.

One of the main organising strategies by MTA and other groups to support an eventual constitutional amendment is to get local councils and commissions at the city and county levels to adopt resolutions in support of such an amendment.

According to the MTA website, there are at least 183 municipal government resolutions, 19 local ordinances, and three state-level resolutions in Hawaii, Montana, and Vermont that have passed to ban corporate personhood.

In addition, there are 79 local resolutions and 10 state resolutions that have also passed, but that MTA considers partial resolutions because they do not completely address the issue of corporate constitutional rights.

Most recently, on Jan. 22, the city council in Conway, Arkansas, passed a resolution with unanimous support.

MTA is itself a coalition of hundreds of organisations, and MTA has dozens of affiliates in cities throughout the U.S.

Other organisations that are working on this issue nationally include United for the People, which is also a coalition and which also has affiliates; in addition to Free Speech for the People, People for the American Way, and Public Citizen.

There has been some disagreement, though, among members of congress and various advocacy groups as to what the exact language of the constitutional amendment should be.

At least six different members of congress introduced legislation in 2011 to amend the constitution to in one way or another address the issue of unlimited corporate spending in U.S. elections.

Meanwhile, different organisations are supporting different versions of the bill. For example, Free Speech for the People is supporting the Edwards proposal and the McGovern proposal. People for the American Way is supporting the Udall proposal. And Public Citizen is supporting the Deutch proposal, which is the counterpart in the House to the Sanders proposal in the Senate.

Move to Amend presents on its website what it believes to be the strongest version of the proposed amendment, adding, “It is our belief that we need to operate on the assumption that once an Amendment comes out of Congress we won’t get another shot. So we MUST get it right!”

“I work on many issues. When you get to the bottom of just about every issue, you come up against the wall of the unholy alliance of money, corporate interest, and politicians,” Stacey Hopkins, lead organiser for United for the People Georgia and council organiser for MoveOn Atlanta, told IPS.

“I was active in doing voter registration, and we saw where dark money groups were backing voter suppression efforts around the country,” Hopkins said.

“We’ve also seen groups backing efforts to repeal Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, and as an African American, this is something that I take very personally,” Hopkins said.

Activists and watchdog groups across the United States unveiled a new national push on Thursday to urge policymakers to roll back a controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision that led to the unprecedented spending of about 6 billion dollars, much of it untraceable, during recent national elections.

Campaigns for those elections also saw the highest levels of spending by outside entities ever recorded, with 90 percent of campaign-related funding in more than 20 states reportedly coming from out-of-state. In an attempt to sway city polls in Richmond, California, the oil giant Chevron alone spent more than a million dollars, in addition to 2.5 million more across the country.

On Saturday, around one thousand protestors are expected to gather outside of the Chevron headquarters in Richmond to express their frustration with the massive new levels of corporate money in politics. They will be a part of coordinated demonstrations scheduled for more than 100 events in 33 states, organisers said Thursday.

“This level of spending by Chevron, for instance, changes what candidates are ‘allowed’ to talk about in elections – they’re no long necessarily covering the issues that voters want to hear about, but rather they’re bumping up against limits set by implied threats from big donors,” Aquene Freechild, a democracy organiser with Public Citizen, a consumer watchdog, told IPS.

“This type of money has allowed candidates that wouldn’t have been able to maintain any electoral position to stay in the race, while ensuring that issues important to big donors get airtime – or don’t get any,” Freechild said.

“There was almost no conversation on climate change in this election cycle, for example, and that may have had to do with fear that certain companies would come in and spend big money on negative attack ads.”

Two years ago, a contentious U.S. Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United opened the possibility for nearly unlimited anonymous corporate spending on political causes. The justices ruled that corporations’ right to engage in political spending as an extension of constitutionally guaranteed free speech cannot be limited.

Yet the justices also strongly supported transparency in that spending, as did a majority of people, election-time polling found.

During this weekend’s demonstrations, protestors will try to maintain momentum to roll back Citizens United at the state and federal levels, including through the long-term goal of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which three-quarters of states would need to support.

About 300 cities and 11 states have passed resolutions to support such an amendment. Several attempts were made in Congress last year to introduce amendment-related legislation, while a similar bill was re-introduced on Wednesday in the House of Representatives.

In what many transparency proponents saw as a major move, in late December the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also indicated that it would take up discussion to require all publicly traded companies in the United States to disclose any political spending.

Dark money

According to a new report released Thursday by two liberal non-profits, the Centre for Media and Democracy (CMD) and the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, hundreds of millions of dollars in financing from the last election cannot be traced.

The report states that around 17 percent of business contributions to the “super PAC” groups that are allowed to engage in political campaigning came from “shell corporations”, which appear to have been set up solely to funnel corporate money.

“Dark money non-profits” also claimed to have spent around 300 million dollars, although that amount may in actuality be far higher because these groups are not required to disclose their funding sources.

“Not a lot of corporations made donations to super PACs,” Brendan Fischer, a researcher with CMD and co-author of the new report, told IPS. “Instead, it appears that corporations that wanted to spend on the election gave to these ‘dark money’ groups so the public wouldn’t know.”

“In many cases, this money is used for attack ads that are false, misleading, even offensive,” Fischer added. “This way, however, the funder doesn’t have to publicly stand behind such a message.”

While much of this money was aimed to benefit Republican candidates, Republicans overall did not do nearly as well as they had hoped in the last election. Yet Fischer and others have rejected the suggestion that outside money is not as insidious as originally feared.

“This still has a corrupting influence,” he said. “Candidates’ interests and policy positions are increasingly shaped by the people writing these big cheques.”

Outsized influence

The number of people actually writing those cheques, however, is remarkably small, extending outsized influence to a tiny group of donors.

“In a country of more than 300 million people, nearly all of the money raised by Super PACs came from just a few thousand,” according to a second report released Thursday, co-produced by U.S. PIRG and Demos, an advocacy group.

“Super PACs provided such a convenient avenue for large donors to dominate the political process that the top 32 Super PAC donors, giving an average of $9.9 million each, matched the $313.0 million that President Barack Obama and [Republican challenger] Mitt Romney raised from all of their small donors combined.”

The end result, the authors say, is heavily skewed towards elites, special interests and incumbents.

According to CMD’s Fisher, there are potent lessons here for those outside the United States watching the evolution of the country’s democratic system.

“As developing countries expand protections for free speech, it is important to clarify that spending on elections should not be considered ‘speech’ and should not be subject to the same protections,” he said.

“What we have seen is that big donors are spending on elections not as a form of ‘speech’ but as a way to exert influence and buy access.”