SCOTUS Decision Allows Foreign Influence of U.S. Elections

January 23rd, 2010 9 Comments

That’s the warning coming today from the folks at the Center for Public Integrity, who caution that the recent High Court decision empowering corporations to spend unlimited sums on federal election ads could also have the unintended consequence of ending the ban on foreigners buying influence over U.S. elections. Some foreign companies, the authors write, are owned by foreign governments and also have U.S. subsidiaries. The result?

One prominent example is CITGO Petroleum Company — once the American-born Cities Services Company, but purchased in 1990 by the Venezuelan government-owned Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. The Citizens United ruling could conceivably allow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has sharply criticized both of the past two U.S. presidents, to spend government funds to defeat an American political candidate, just by having CITGO buy TV ads bashing his target.

And it’s not just CPI that’s concerned about that possibility.

In his dissent in Citizens United, Justice John Paul Stevens cautioned that the decision “would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans.”

And here we were worried that the biggest threats to American democracy, post-decision, were AT&T and Goldman Sachs.

via Supreme Court Empowers Foreign Governments to Sway Federal Elections? « TWI.

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9 Comments »

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# 24 January 2010 at 4:00 am

Peter Voth said:

Americans influence political processes in the rest of the world (occasionally via force), so why shouldn’t non-Americans be free to influence American politics?

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matt Reply:
January 24th, 2010 at 5:26 am

two wrongs always make a right

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Joe "UncaJoe" Cook Reply:
January 24th, 2010 at 5:57 am

Two wrong do not make a right, but three lefts do.

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Anomaly100 Reply:
January 24th, 2010 at 12:13 pm

My brother used to say that! Thanks for making me smile.

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# 24 January 2010 at 4:15 am

Goofindoo said:

If the Supreme Court has equated capital to free speech then that means that all of the undercapitalized Americans have a big lawsuit on their hands, doesn’t it? These people without capital are having their freedom of speech restricted by not having any capital to spend. The Supreme Court has laid the foundation for some massive class action lawsuits.

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# 24 January 2010 at 6:10 am

Henry Krinkle said:

Worst Supreme Ct decision ever!!
and the goopers are loving it, they are already on the corporate payroll, they just got a raise. M Steele sees his corp. sponsorship going thru the roof.

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# 24 January 2010 at 7:29 am

Dan said:

The logic eludes me, corporations can’t vote, can’t hold office, can’t be jailed etc. simply put they are not people and therefore do not have a right to Free Speech under the First amendment.

Check out Corporations are not Citizens

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# 25 January 2010 at 4:00 pm