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"Citizens United": like patent reform, you need a scorecard

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Bill Moyers' Journal on 4 Sept 09 had a debate of sorts between Trevor Potter and Floyd Abrams over issues surrounding Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission, which has grown from a limited question about a political documentary (concerning Hillary Clinton) to a broad challenge to the government's right to restrict corporations from spending money to support or oppose political candidates. It was interesting to see Floyd Abrams (nominally a Democrat) arguing AGAINST limits, while Potter, associated with John McCain arguing for limits. Such nonobviousness also pervades patent law reform.

There were sound bites about the "Senator from Standard Oil" [ from the web: Nelson Aldrich, a powerful Republican Rhode Island senator, whose daughter married John D. Rockefeller, Jr., did not object to being called ?senator from Standard Oil.? ] and campaign contribution issues with Teddy Roosevelt as if these were something from a by-gone era.

Think about more recent events:

Overall, members of Congress have received more than $4.8 million in political contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the last ten years. According to OpenSecrets.org, from 1998 through 2008, the top ten recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's political largess, are as follows: Senator Dodd (D-CT), then-Senator Obama (D-IL), Senator Kerry (D-MA), Senator Bennett (R-UT), Rep. Bachus (R-AL), Rep. Blunt (R-MO), Rep. Kanjorski (D-PA), Senator Bond (R-MO), Senator Shelby (R-AL), Senator Reed (D-RI).

Senator Dodd, the top recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions, is Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee responsible for regulating the mortgage industry. Notably, President Obama was a top recipient of campaign monies despite being in the Senate for only three years.

**Of Roosevelt, from Wikipedia-->

During the campaign, there were a couple of instances were Roosevelt was vulnerable. First, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World carried a full page story about alleged corruption in the Bureau of Corporations. President Roosevelt admitted certain payments had been made, but denied any "blackmail." Secondly, in appointing George B. Cortelyou as his campaign manager, Roosevelt had purposely used Parker's former secretary of commerce because Cortelyou, knowing the secrets of the corporations, could extract large contributions from them. The charge created quite a stir and in later years was proven to be sound. In 1907, it was disclosed that the insurance companies had contributed rather too heavily to the Roosevelt campaign; that Roosevelt himself, only a week before the election, had called E. H. Harriman, the railroad king, to Washington to ask him to raise funds to carry New York state.

Full post as published by IPBiz on September 05, 2009 (boomark / email).