{"id":238465,"date":"2016-04-17T17:31:59","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T17:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=238465"},"modified":"2016-04-17T19:45:06","modified_gmt":"2016-04-17T19:45:06","slug":"hillary-clinton-agrees-citizens-united-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/hillary-clinton-agrees-citizens-united-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillary Clinton Agrees with the Citizens United Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

On April 14th, Glenn Greenwald, a brilliant U.S. Constitutional lawyer,\u00a0documented that Hillary Clinton actually agrees with the Citizens United decision by the five Republican members of the U.S. Supreme Court,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0even though she routinely says she doesn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is how he opened (my emphasis is in bold<\/b>):<\/span><\/p>\n

FOR YEARS, THE Supreme Court\u2019s 5-4 decision in Citizens United was depicted by Democrats as the root of all\u00a0political evil. But now, the core argument embraced by the Court\u2019s conservatives to justify their ruling has taken\u00a0center stage in the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders \u2014 because Clinton\u00a0supporters, to defend the huge amount of corporate cash on which their candidate is relying, frequently invoke\u00a0that very same reasoning.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The crux of the Citizens United ruling was that a legal ban on independent corporate campaign expenditures\u00a0constituted a limit on political speech without sufficient justification, and thus violated the First Amendment\u2019s free\u00a0speech guarantee. A primary argument of the Obama Justice Department and Democrats generally in order to\u00a0uphold that campaign finance law was that corporate expenditures are so corrupting of the political process that\u00a0limits are justified even if they infringe free speech. In rejecting that view, this was the key argument of Justice\u00a0Anthony Kennedy, writing for the five-judge conservative majority (emphasis added):<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

“For the reasons explained above, we now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by\u00a0corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Does that sound familiar? It should. That key argument of the right-wing justices in Citizens United has now\u00a0become the key argument of the Clinton campaign and its media supporters to justify her personal and political\u00a0receipt of millions upon millions of dollars in corporate money:<\/i><\/b> \u201cExpenditures, including those made by\u00a0corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption\u201d \u2014 at least when the candidate in\u00a0question is Hillary Clinton.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, the Clinton argument actually goes well beyond the Court\u2019s conservatives: In Citizens United, the right-wing justices merely denied the corrupting effect of independent expenditures (i.e., ones not coordinated with the\u00a0campaign). But Clinton supporters in 2016 are denying the corrupting effect of direct campaign donations by\u00a0large banks and corporations and, even worse, huge speaking fees paid to an individual politician shortly before and after that person holds massive\u00a0political power. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

What his article failed to document is that Hillary Clinton herself has given this same argument, which was the majority-opinion in that court case she routinely condemns. So: here are some of her statements, seconding those that Anthony Kennedy wrote for all five Republican jurists in Citizens United:<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In\u00a0the Democratic debate on 14 November 2015<\/span><\/a>, Bernie Sanders challenged Hillary Clinton, \u201cPeople should be suspect of candidates who receive large sums of money from Wall Street and then go out\u00a0and say, \u2018Trust me, I\u2019m going to really regulate Wall Street\u2019.\u201d Moderator John Dickerson followed up by asking her directly: \u201cSo you’ve received millions of dollars in contributions and speaking fees from Wall Street companies. How\u00a0do you convince voters that you’re gonna level the playing field when you’re indebted to some of its biggest\u00a0players?”<\/span><\/p>\n

Her reply was: \u201cWell, I \u2014 I think it’s pretty clear that they know that I will. You\u2019ve got two billionaire hedge fund managers\u00a0who\u2019ve started a super PAC. And they’re advertising against me in Iowa as we speak. So they clearly think\u00a0I\u2019m going to do what I say I will do. [She ignored whether they were Republicans, or Democrats, which is key here.] And you can look at what I did in the senate. I did introduce legislation to\u00a0reign in compensation. \u2026\u00a0And I am going right at them. [How? She didn\u2019t say.] I\u2019ve got a comprehensive, tough plan [about which she said nothing]. But I went further than that. We have to\u00a0go after what\u2019s called the shadow banking industry, those hedge funds [though they had nothing to do with the 2008 crash].\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She was against Sanders\u2019s statement that the megabanks are already too large and must be required to sell off parts in order to meet new maximum-size requirements, and against his statement that the Glass-Steagall Act separation of commercial banking (which has government-backing) from investment banking (stocks and other forms of Wall Street gambling, which under Glass-Steagall had had no federal backing at all). And she said that voters should trust her honesty, that the huge campaign and personal payments to her and her campaign from the megabanks have no connection to her opposition to those proposals from Sanders, the megabank-regulations proposed by him.<\/span><\/p>\n

She was saying the same that Anthony Kennedy\u2019s Citizens United<\/i>\u00a0ruling had said: that people should just trust the honesty of politicians and their financial backers. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then, in the Democratic debate on 4 February 2016, she responded to Sanders\u2019s attack against her megabank-backing, by saying:<\/span><\/p>\n

CLINTON: \u2026 You know, Senator Sanders has said he wants to run a positive\u00a0campaign. I\u2019ve tried to keep my disagreements over issues, as it should be.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

But time and time again, by innuendo, by insinuation, there is this attack\u00a0that he is putting forth, which really comes down to \u2014 you know, anybody\u00a0who ever took donations or speaking fees from any interest group has to be\u00a0bought.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

And I just absolutely reject that, Senator. And I really don\u2019t think these\u00a0kinds of attacks by insinuation are worthy of you. And enough is enough. If\u00a0you\u2019ve got something to say, say it directly.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

But you will not find that I ever changed a view or a vote because of any\u00a0donation that I ever received. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

So I think it\u2019s time to end the very artful smear that you and\u00a0your campaign have been carrying out…<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

But, she constantly says that Citizens United<\/i> must be overturned (even though it\u2019s correct in her particular case).<\/span><\/p>\n

And, actually, she did<\/i> \u201cchange a view or a vote\u201d to please her megabank-backers. She switched from opposing a draconian bankruptcy-reform bill to supporting it, after her political career had begun drawing in millions from Wall Street.<\/span><\/a> The milktoast Bernie Sanders refuses to cite that specific against her, but it\u2019s true \u2014 she\u2019s lying. On 9 February 2016, the Huffington Post\u2019s terrific political reporter Zach Carter not only documented that it\u2019s true, but he headlined \u201cDemocrats Are Fuming About Hillary Clinton\u2019s \u2018Smear\u2019 Line\u201d<\/span><\/a> because they recognized that she was implicitly defending there the Citizens United decision by saying it was true in her particular case \u2014 even though her actions proved the exact opposite (that she had done the corrupt thing and switched her vote in order to please her financial backers). She\u2019s a poster-case for the lie that was Anthony Kennedy\u2019s argument in the Citizens United<\/i> decision. And she lies to say that she\u2019s not.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Greenwald himself is similarly hypocritical. Just as Hillary is using \u2018freedom of speech\u2019 (in the Citizens United<\/i> argument for allowing political corruption) insincerely; so, too, does Greenwald, when he censors-out from his news-site anything that the site\u2019s owner, Pierre Omidyar, doesn\u2019t want the site\u2019s readers to know, such as that the change of government that occurred in Ukraine in February 2014 was a U.S. coup, not a \u2018democratic revolution\u2019 against corruption. Though there were public demonstrations at Ukraine\u2019s Maidan Square against corruption, they were organized by the CIA, inside the U.S. Embassy<\/span><\/a>) to serve as cover for the gunmen the CIA hired to perpetrate the overthrow. The head of Stratfor called it \u201cthe most blatant coup in history\u201d<\/span><\/a> and it was very bloody<\/span><\/a>, with U.S.-hired snipers dressed as state-security forces, in order to appear to be President Yanukovych\u2019s people. It was run by Obama\u2019s agent, Victoria Nuland<\/span><\/a>. Pierre Omidyar was one of the U.S. billionaires who financed it. When his other employee, the great investigative journalist Mark Ames, wrote about that on another of Omidyar\u2019s sites, pando, on 28 February 2014, immediately after the coup<\/span><\/a>, he became virtually sidelined there, mainly onto Silicon Valley topics, as if he were no longer permitted such a freedom (to go against his boss). There was one minor follow-up by Ames<\/span><\/a>, about his boss\u2019s involvement with USAID in controlling the post-coup Ukrainian government, but Ames has been little more consequential as a journalist under Omidyar than Greenwald has been, and neither of them has been allowed, or allowed submitters onto his respective site, to provide any ongoing news about the efforts by the Obama Administration \u2014 with the help of corrupting U.S. oligarchs such as Pierre Omidyar and George Soros<\/span><\/a> \u2014 to transform Ukraine into a base for U.S. nuclear missiles against Russia, nor even about the Obama operation to overthrow another Moscow-friendly ruler, Bashar al-Assad, who has been the sole block against the takeover of Syria by U.S.-Saudi-backed foreign jihadists. The total journalistic product of Omidyar\u2019s operation has been minuscule against the core goals of the U.S. aristocracy (or \u201coligarchs\u201d) \u2014 which includes themselves (and which is why those sites are censored about it). And Greenwald\u2019s compliance with Omidyar has been total: no contributions at all regarding the U.S. operation to take over Russia by overthrowing Russia-allied leaders of other nations have been allowed onto his site, \u201cthe Intercept.\u201d He might as well be a CIA plant, like a mole or an FBI agent, someone who works undercover for the aristocracy.<\/span><\/p>\n

But he\u2019s an excellent<\/i> lawyer, and here are some of Hillary Clinton\u2019s lying statements pretending to be an opponent of, and to disagree with, the Citizens United<\/i> decision:<\/span><\/p>\n

And let\u2019s remember, Citizens United, one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our country\u2019s history, was actually a case about a right-wing attack on me and my campaign. A right-wing organization took aim at me and ended up damaging our entire democracy. So, yes, you’re not going to find anybody more committed to aggressive campaign finance reform than me.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding that one, Mark Joseph Stern at slate, listed the three valid reasons for condemning the Citizens United decision, and then contrasted them with her reason; he brilliantly observed<\/span><\/a>: \u201cInstead of relying on these rationales, Clinton concocted a fourth: Citizens United was bad because it let a corporation attack my candidacy.\u201d Only suckers could vote for a candidate such as that. But there are plenty of them: as Stern noted about the audience\u2019s response to her having said this: \u201cThe line received a huge applause.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

On her campaign site, she promises she will (she doesn\u2019t say how) \u201cOverturn Citizens United.\u201d<\/span><\/a> Yet more sucker-bait.<\/span><\/p>\n

She issued an op-ed at CNN, on 21 January 2016, headlined, \u201cHillary Clinton: The cure for Citizens United is more democracy.\u201d<\/span><\/a> It opened:<\/span><\/p>\n

Six years ago Thursday, the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United transformed our politics by allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The effect was immediate. In the 2010 midterms, outside groups spent nearly 60% more than in 2006. In 2014, the top 100 donors spent nearly as much as all 4.75 million small donors combined. National networks of big-money donors funneled mountains of cash into targeted state races. By 2014, one party controlled both the governor’s mansion and the state legislature in 36 states — the most since the 1950s.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Restricting voting rights<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Republicans launched an aggressive campaign to restrict voting rights across the country. …<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

As if that \u201caggressive campaign\u201d were even relevant to the Citizens United decision? In the rest of her 700-word essay, she said virtually nothing more about that Supreme Court decision \u2014 a decision which enables and empowers her own corruption, as well as that of all other corrupt politicians. The only additional reference she made to it in her essay was: \u201cCitizens United and its aftermath have twisted and perverted our democratic system.\u201d She\u2019s seeking suckers\u2019 votes.<\/span><\/p>\n

And: as Greenwald said, she\u2019s the very model of the type of politician that the five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court were trying to empower. The suckers whose votes she gets are fooled merely by her labeling herself a \u2018Democrat\u2019<\/span><\/a> and slinging the type of bumper-sticker phrases that draw Democratic suckers instead of Republican ones.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse On April 14th, Glenn Greenwald, a brilliant U.S. Constitutional lawyer,\u00a0documented that Hillary Clinton actually agrees with the Citizens United decision by the five Republican members of the U.S. Supreme Court,\u00a0even though she routinely says she doesn\u2019t. Here is how he opened (my emphasis is in bold): FOR YEARS, THE Supreme Court\u2019s 5-4 decision […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":238187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461,17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-238465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials","9":"category-politics","10":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}