As if the Citizens United ruling were not malevolent enough, the House Republicans are seeking to make it worse. According to the Supreme Court in Citizens United, corporate spending does not distort the political process, give rise to the appearance of corruption, or undermine the people’s faith in democracy. Obviously, they are out of their minds, but a big part of their reasoning is that disclosure requirements should allow the people to see who is sending them a political message. To further that end, the FCC released new guidelines in late April.
A new FCC guideline that would have forced the nation’s top television stations to list the funders behind political advertisements online.
But the House Appropriations financial services subcommittee voted along party lines to prohibit the FCC from implementing their proposal to add another layer of transparency to the political ad process.
We’re entitled to the information. According to the High Court of Antonin Scalia, this information protects us so much from the corrupting influence of corporate money that we should probably consider it to have superpowers. It’s this information that is keeping corporations and politicians honest, after all, and also allowing us to make informed choices.
But, no, you can’t have it in a nice easy to search online form. No, you need to go down to the television stations on your own and request the records. You can see how easy that is here.
This is the worst kind of collusion. The billionaires want to give anonymously. The Republicans want to protect the billionaires. The television stations want to keep it difficult to figure out what they’re charging for their ads. So, even though the law says this information must be publicly available, they work together to make it extremely burdensome for anyone to see it.
