No Anonymous Donations Allowed

Yesterday's Supreme Court Decision to remove all limitations on corporate expenditures in politics will have ramifications across the governance of our nation that can scarcely yet be imagined. That fact, while undeniable by supporters or detractors of that decision, does not in and of itself portend whether those effects will be positive or negative, and, as can be imagined, no corporations have released news of how they will use or abuse the new opportunity to twist American Politics back upon itself under their newfound ability to outspend all parties, and all donors.

And so, if you are a person reading this, ... and you are, for corporations are truly insensate organisms, ... the imagined reality of one or more human minds, who already had a right to donate and speak or not (foreigners are not allowed in American Politics except through this loophole provided by five justices), and absolutely without emotion, ... save, that is, for the stockholders and employees, who always had the right of other persons to speak politically, ... no more and no less.

This fact, ... that a corporation is an entity created not to replace its owners, but to protect them personally, isolate them from identification, and organize them collectively into a business venture, means that owners who were citizens already can speak twice, and without limit on the expense in doing so. Yet the funds would not come from their own assets, ... rather from the assets of the corporation, ... with its special tax treatments, and protections from individual liability. Score one advantage the corporation has over the person in American politics. To be clear, nothing precludes the creation of a corporation for the sole purpose of political action, ... nothing.

And what of the liability? It would seem the corporation can speak from behind the corporate veil of limited liability, and say almost anything it would like against a political opponent, ... far more than it is allowed in business. "Free Speech" is free for all in the public place of ideas, while it has severe limits in commerce. Where will the limits be placed, and how will we know when a corporation speaks "politically" and not "commercially". Could that one right become a defense against the other limitation? Score two points for the corporation, who may just have escaped the shackles of commercial obligations and regulatory limits, ... by being brought to life by Scalia and Company. If you doubt the risk, ... imagine how a firm like Pfizer will spend its campaign dollars to avoid settlements with the government for alleged misbehavior in the market. How much influence could be bought with even half the $ 427,000,000 they paid in settling a single complaint for selling beyond the approved uses for only one medication! How do you think the FDA will act in the future, when similar complaints are lodged against this or other corporate behemoths?

It becomes clear that, just as we person voters and donors must register to vote, or disclose our identity when we donate or advertise, corporations MUST be made to do the same. There can be no facade or charade allowed by these entities who have been granted access to the political landscape by this farcical, and disastrous decision.

Just as anyone can see that I gave $ 50.00 to this candidate, or $ 100 to that party, ... we must know the highest and truest identity of every corporate political donor, the specific amounts they have given, to whom, and when. The penalties for perpetrating identity fraud, ... E.g. Pfizer donating as "Americans for Healthcare Freedom, Inc.", or some other corporate subsidiary, and should be directly proportional to the total donation amounts given under that name. So, ... if I gave $ 50, and lied about my identity, ... I would face a fine of, say, 10 times that amount, or
$ 500. If "Americans for Healthcare Freedom, Inc." gave $ 100,000,000 under that identity, when they were principally owned by Pfizer, and the entity was used to obscure the fact that Pfizer gave that money, ... then the parent corporation would be liable for $ 1,000,000,000 in fines. Ten times. Fair is fair, as they say.

And how are we to know?

A good friend had an ingenious idea as we absorbed this disastrous news of yesterday over a glass of wine last evening. As she suggested, there are "crawls" at the base of almost every news or business channel on TV, moving streams of text that alert the viewer to important information. Every political ad should be made to carry a crawl which details the donors and advertisers in support of any politician's campaign, ... not as part of the ad, ... but from a database provided at the FEC (Federal Elections Commission) at the time of broadcast. This would be mandatory, and would, by law be applied to every ad broadcast over the air, on cable, satellite, or internet advertising. In print advertising the same would apply, ... and should require 10% of the advertising space or copy, to be reserved for the top 10% of donors and advertisers on behalf of a candidate's campaign, ... again to be downloaded by the publisher so as to be current at the moment of print. Radio and audio advertising should be required to allocate the last 15% of broadcast time to name the top donor or advertiser, and the amount of donation or cost of advertisement, ... E.g. "As largest advertiser on behalf of the candidate, Pfizer Corporation has spent $ 225,000 toward this candidate's campaign for this office."

Why be concerned with all this?

Truly, Gulliver has come to our political Lilliput. Not some benign giant who traveled to our shores to bid us well and learn our ways, ... but rather to change everything about our political way of life. The analogy is apt as well for there appear to be no limits on what foreign Gulliver owns the corporations who are allowed to speak in our elections. Anyone anywhere in the world who owns a corporation may speak, it seems. Place of registration? Nation where shares are traded? Those appear to mean absolutely nothing to the five majority justices on the bench in DC. If so they need to speak very quickly to avoid an avalanche of ads from overseas.

Corporations here who are owned by the governments or citizens of Dubai, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, England, France, China, Viet Nam, ... you name it, ... have the same right now to advertise on behalf of US politicians as do you or I, and far more money than we have to do it. Is that truly what American Corporatists imagined when they let loose this zombie Gulliver upon our body politic?

Why would foreigners want to advertise in support of one American Politician over another?

I can't imagine!