In today’s WaPo, columnist E.J. Dionne says that the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which gave corporations the green light to spend unlimited funds in elections, was either “the most Machiavellian in American history or the most naive” decision the high court has made.
In Citizens United, the court’s “5 to 4 conservative majority broke with decades of precedent and said Congress had no right to ban corporate or labor union spending to influence the outcome of elections,” Dionne said. “The decision is Machiavellian if the conservatives on the court consciously want to bring us back to the 1890s. Or it’s naive because the justices didn’t consider what their ruling would mean in practice.”
Legislation that would at least disclose who is funding campaign ads is currently stalled in the Senate, and Dionne says it is up to three Republican senators to move the bill beyond the roadblock. Tell your Senators to support the DISCLOSE Act.
Learn more about Public Citizen’s work to overturn the Supreme Court’s dangerous decision.
