If Congress Won’t Do What You Want, Just Bypass Them!

If Congress Won’t Do What You Want, Just Bypass Them! by The Elephant's Child

January 21, 2013, 6:57 am
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Law, Politics, The Constitution | Tags: Citizens United v. FEC, The DISCLOSE Act, The First Amendment

You may not remember Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court decision that was first argued in March 2009, re-argued in September and finally decided on January 21, 2010. You can rest assured that Democrats remember.

Background: During the 2008 election campaign, the nonprofit group Citizens United wanted to make a film available on cable-on-demand that was critical of then-candidate Hillary Clinton.  Because Citizens United is organized as a corporation, under the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, its speech was banned.  The movie was not allowed to be shown, and the law was backed by criminal sanctions.  Section 441b makes it a felony for all corporations — including nonprofit advocacy corporations — either to expressly advocate the election or defeat of candidates or to broadcast electioneering communications within 30 days of a primary and 60 days of a general election.

The Democrats were OUTRAGED:  Corporations are not entitled to free speech, political expenditures are not “speech”, protections of the Free Speech Clause properly apply to individuals not corporations, this will corrupt the democratic process,  will radically increase powerful corporate influence in politics, blah, blah, blah. Democrats are afraid that corporations benefit Republicans, and free speech should not apply to anyone who might be critical of Democrats.

Democrats have never given up. A Senate bill titled the DISCLOSE Act — a bill they have been unable to get past the Senate, would require political organizations to publicly name their donors and the amounts they give. Now the Obama administration is attempting to bypass Congress and force publicly-traded companies to reveal their political donations through regulation. If Congress won’t pass the law we want, we will just do it with a regulation from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Bypassing Congress

Obama does not understand the tripartite nature of the three divisions of government, does not accept the equal power of the other two branches, and wants to overrule the other two with executive orders or agency regulations. He does not grasp the limits of executive orders, and has no intention of paying attention to them anyway. File this under ‘arrogance.’

The free speech clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution refers specifically to political speech. If free speech only applies to speech that is pleasing to you, then it isn’t free, and it isn’t freedom, but tyranny.

The ruling in Citizens United is a straightforward application of basic First Amendment principles:  “When Government seeks to use its full power…to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought.  This is unlawful.  The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”

What enrages Democrats even more than the idea of corporations engaging in political speech, is the idea of the Koch brothers making donations. These Libertarian philanthropists have become the Democrats’ boogie-men. They are blamed for everything, receive daily death threats, and Democrats just want to make them personally illegal. Whatever George Soros donates or controls is fine, as are all the massive donations from the Democracy Alliance representing big numbers of Democrat millionaires and billionaires.  Powerline has a collection of pieces on the Democrat’s War on the Koch Brothers, that is worth your time. It’s funny too.

In August, Obama participated in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” question-and-answer discussion in which he announced that he would consider amending the Constitution “to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t revisit it.)”

And only today he took an oath “to preserve, protect and defend…” Guess he didn’t mean it.

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