Privatized politics
by Tom Sullivan
"President Hillary thanks you," I used to say when Republicans saluted any expansion of presidential power under George W. Bush. As someone who watched lots of 1950s science fiction and monster films growing up, I have a healthy appreciation for how what at first seem like good ideas have a way of quickly spinning out of control. And the Citizens United ruling never seemed like a good idea. Yet it spun out of control faster than Frankenstein's monster.
Jim Rutenberg looks at how the decision has allowed America's oligarchs of whatever political persuasion to become "their own political parties." Rutenberg sat in on a strategy session with hedge fund billionaire, Tom Steyer, founder of NextGen Climate Action, itself "a capitulation to the post-Citizens United world." Gubernatorial candidate and former Florida governor, Charlie Christ, could wait:
With the advent of Citizens United, any players with the wherewithal, and there are surprisingly many of them, can start what are in essence their own political parties, built around pet causes or industries and backing politicians uniquely answerable to them. No longer do they have to buy into the system. Instead, they buy their own pieces of it outright, to use as they see fit. “Suddenly, we privatized politics,” says Trevor Potter, an election lawyer who helped draft the McCain-Feingold law.
Now we have Michael Bloomberg, who has committed to spending $50 million to support gun-control legislation; his Independence USA PAC, meanwhile, is spending $25 million this fall to elect “centrists.” We have the TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts and his group Ending Spending, which has spent roughly $10 million so far this year to elect fiscal conservatives to Congress, an effort that has drawn support from the billionaire hedge-fund executive Paul E. Singer, who has also devoted tens of millions to Republican candidates who share his views on Israel. We have Mark Zuckerberg and his FWD.us, with a budget of about $50 million to push an immigration overhaul. In 2014, as of early October, when the campaigns had yet to do their big final pushes, overall spending was already more than $444 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Roughly $231 million was from the parties and their congressional committees, the rest from outside spending. The biggest chunk of that by far came from super PACs — more than $196 million. Looking at those numbers, it’s not hard to understand why Crist was willing to wait outside a conference room in Coral Gables for Steyer.
Citizens United has created new playgrounds for ideological billionaires where America's quasi-democratic process used to be. Are there not enough islands for sale, or enough gulches?