Here’s another one I don’t understand

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-0728-target-politics-20100728,0,6274128.story

There’s been a lot said about Tar­get’s $150,000 con­tri­bu­tion to Min­neso­ta State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tom Emmer’s cam­paign for Gov­er­nor as well as the Supreme Court’s Jan­u­ary deci­sion in Cit­i­zens Unit­ed v Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion. Any­one can guess that I dis­agree that cor­po­ra­tions should receive the same rights and pro­tec­tions that indi­vid­u­als do, but I don’t real­ly care to weigh in on it right now.

What I don’t under­stand from the LA Times sto­ry linked above is how Tar­get con­tributed $150,000 to Emmer’s cam­paign while Tar­get’s Chief Exec­u­tive Gregg Stein­hafel gave $2,000, the max­i­mum con­tri­bu­tion under state law.

Even if I were to con­cede that cor­po­ra­tions have equal rights and pro­tec­tions under the law, I don’t under­stand how a cor­po­ra­tion is exempt from con­tri­bu­tions caps, allow­ing a cor­po­ra­tion to make con­tri­bu­tions to a polit­i­cal can­di­date 75 times larg­er than an indi­vid­ual is allowed to.

When the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion came down, a lot of peo­ple called it the end of democ­ra­cy. I thought they were being reac­tionary and hys­ter­i­cal. But if the result is that cor­po­ra­tions now have unlim­it­ed abil­i­ty to make cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions while indi­vid­u­als remain ham­pered by cam­paign finance reg­u­la­tions, then per­haps I under­es­ti­mat­ed the danger.

Published by splicer

4 Replies to “Here’s another one I don’t understand”

  1. The Cit­i­zens Unit­ed decision

    The Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion did not have any­thing to do with how much mon­ey cor­po­ra­tions, unions, or indi­vid­u­als could give to a polit­i­cal par­ty. It mere­ly said that cor­po­ra­tions had the same right to state their opin­ions pub­licly as an indi­vid­ual does. The rules on dona­tions are still lim­it­ed by McCain-Feingold.

    The 2008 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cost $1.6 bil­lion and the total spent in 2008 includ­ing con­gres­sion­al races was $5.8 billion.

    Last week our elect­ed offi­cials gave the teach­ers union back $12 bil­lion and the SEIU $14.5 bil­lion. That is a pret­ty good return on their invest­ment. We saw what the finan­cial sec­tor got back for their dona­tions. Since we don’t have the mon­ey to pay for any of these pay­backs, it just adds to the deficit. I’m old enough that I won’t have to pay for all that debt, but your gen­er­a­tion and the next will. I believe the coun­try is strong enough to sur­vive this, but it won’t be easy and it isn’t a cer­tain­ty. We already have four states whose finan­cial posi­tion is worse than Greece’s. Unbelievable!

    At this point, I believe that any­one who wants to be a politi­cian should auto­mat­i­cal­ly be dis­qual­i­fied. We’d be bet­ter off hav­ing a com­put­er choose a ran­dom cit­i­zen to run the country.

    Dad

    1. None of that answers why a

      None of that answers why a cor­po­ra­tion can legal­ly give hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to a can­di­date’s cam­paign when a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen of the US is lim­it­ed to two thou­sand. Grant­ed that we’re talk­ing about state law in a state nei­ther of us lives in, but some­thing smells rot­ten there.

      1. They did­n’t give the money

        They did­n’t give the mon­ey direct­ly to a can­di­date; they gave it to a sep­a­rate orga­ni­za­tion that sup­ports the can­di­date, but is not con­trolled by the can­di­date. It is the same as George Soros giv­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to left-wing groups like MoveOn.org. He could only give $2000 direct­ly to the Oba­ma cam­paign, and I assume he did that as well.

        The point is that all the cam­paign finance reform laws are total­ly inef­fec­tive at what they are osten­si­bly writ­ten for. Both par­ties manip­u­late them, hop­ing to gain an advantage.

        How can the gov­ern­ment lim­it my spend­ing on a can­di­date with­out vio­lat­ing my First Amend­ment rights? Answer that and we can fig­ure out how to come up with real cam­paign finance reform.

        Dad

        1. PS

          More pre­cise­ly, accord­ing to the arti­cle you linked, they gave the mon­ey to a group called MN For­ward, which runs TV ads sup­port­ing Emmer.

          Dad

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