Corporate America Flag
For those who follow American politics know all too well, big money has long been a dominant factor influencing the electoral process.
But since the January 2010 Supreme Court's decision in "Citizens United v/s F.E.C." granting corporations full 1 st Amendment rights of free speech and the right to contribute unlimited funds to influence election outcomes, that decision has opened the door for corporate interests to donate millions in secret to influence election outcomes.
According to Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, "Companies want to be able to quietly push for their political agendas without being held accountable for it by their customers because so many donors want to remain anonymous".
So companies for the most part are now avoiding the notorious "Super Pac" giving which by law are required to report their donors and instead most corporations are sending their cash to tax exempt non profits like the Chamber of Commerce or so called "social welfare" groups which are not required to disclose their donors.
Thus millions of dollars are funneled through these "non profit" and "social welfare" groups that technically are not political organizations, purportedly labeled as "educational, not political in nature" but in reality are sham charities not promoting social welfare but established for winning elections.
Representative Chris Van Hollen (D. MD.) put it succinctly, "These groups are being used as a conduit to hide from voters the identity of people and corporations who are bankrolling these television ads, which are designed to influence the outcome of elections.
Two weeks ago this "legalized" flood of individual and corporate largesse into our political process was reaffirmed by the Court when it summarily dismissed the challenge by the state of Montana, overturning its 100 year old law banning corporate giving in that states elections citing its Citizens United ruling.
Let's face it our elections are a sham, up for sale and auctioned off to the highest bidders, cloaked in a misreading of the Court granting 1 st Amendment rights of free speech to corporations.
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