Year: 2012

Why campaign spending rules hurt small business

By David Brodwin, Special to CNN

CNN

January 26, 2012

(CNN) — Two years ago, the Supreme Court upended the rules for campaign finance, unleashing a tsunami of unregulated, unrestricted and undisclosed spending that has, in effect, allowed donors to buy elections. The full impact of this decision is just now becoming clear, and it’s bad both for America’s businesses and for our democracy.

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Speaker makes case to overturn Citizens United

By Nancy Brumback/Special to the Town Crier

Wicked Local Sudbury

January 25, 2012

Jeff Clements, author and activist, called on citizens to support a Constitutional amendment overturning the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision and got a pledge Tuesday from a Sudbury state legislator to do just that.

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Montana Takes on Citizens United

Editorial

New York Times

January 23, 2012

Two years ago, when the Supreme Court struck down bans on independent corporate and union expenditures in elections in the Citizens United case, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion claimed that money does not “give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” While it might result in “influence over or access to elected officials,” he wrote, it is not the same as bribery.

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‘We the People’ can overturn Citizens United

By Jim McGovern and Jeff Clements

The Boston Globe

January 21, 2012

THE FIRST three words of the preamble of our Constitution are “We the People.’’

Two years ago today the US Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission upended that promising vision. Corporations — which do not have mouths, minds, or consciences — won a “free speech’’ right to spend unlimited money to influence elections.

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