The Supreme Court’s recent slim majority decision in Citizens United has opened floodgates that long prevented corporate cash from drowning out the voices of American citizens in election campaigns. Those who care about the integrity of the American political process view this decision with concern and astonishment. Read full story >

The Supreme Court recently freed corporations to spend more money on aggressive election ads. But if businesses take advantage of this new freedom, the public probably won't know it, because it's easy for them to legally hide their political spending.

Under current disclosure laws for federal elections, it's virtually impossible for the public to track how much a business spends, what it's spending on, or who ultimately benefits. Experts say the transparency problem extends to state and local races as well.

"There is no good way to gauge" how much any given company spends on elections, said Karl Sandstrom, a former vice chairman of the Federal Election Commission and counsel to the Center for Political Accountability. "There's no central collection of the information, no monitoring." Read full story >

HELENA - A pro-development group and a Bozeman painting company asked a Helena District Court on Monday to strike down Montana's 1912 ban on corporate donations and expenditures to political campaigns to comply with a January U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Western Tradition Partnership and Champion Painting Inc. filed the lawsuit against Attorney General Steve Bullock and Political Practices Commissioner Dennis Unsworth.

They asked Helena District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock to declare Montana's longstanding prohibition against corporate donations and expenditures to be unconstitutional and illegal. They want Sherlock to stop Bullock, county attorneys and Unsworth from enforcing the law until he issues a ruling. Read full story >

Corporate America is quite capable of communicating political messages that are both false in content and evil in intent. It is never good news when the folks who brought us the fictional characters of Harry, Louise, and clean coal are presented with more opportunity to influence public policy. Read full story >

Reporting from Washington — Proposed legislation to block foreign companies from contributing money to U.S. elections could end up affecting well-known companies such as Chrysler, Anheuser-Busch and Citgo, according to legal experts and company representatives.

The legislation is a reaction from key House and Senate Democrats to a Supreme Court decision in January that struck down a portion of the nation's campaign funding laws, allowing corporations to freely contribute to political campaigns.

We now have a government of the rich

In the slow, miserable, heartbreaking decline of the American democracy, there came a moment of irreversibility. For me, and I dare to think history will confirm, it was the Supreme Court's decision last month in Citizens United vs. The Federal Election Commission — the ruling that basically overturned all limits on financial expenditures by corporations and other interests in federal election campaigns. Read full story >

A trade association for foreign-owned U.S. subsidiaries has hired a former Democratic Party lawyer to lobby on campaign finance reform legislation working its way through Congress.

Joseph Birkenstock, a former chief counsel for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), has registered to lobby for the Organization for International Investment (OFII) on legislation intended to counteract a recent Supreme Court ruling.

Watchdog groups have criticized the high court’s decision in the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case and Democrats on Capitol Hill are seeking a legislative response that would limit its impact on elections. Read full story >

Arizona is moving quickly to rewrite its laws in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations and labor unions to spend money directly on political campaigns, but a handful of states might be in legal limbo until after the 2010 elections.

More than a half-dozen states have major questions hanging over their campaign finance laws after the Supreme Court’s January ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which found that bans on direct spending by corporations and unions in political campaigns are unconstitutional. Read full story >

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress may soon be back in the business of raising soft money, the unlimited corporate and union donations that a 2002 law bans them from collecting for their campaigns.

The National Democratic Redistricting Trust is asking the Federal Election Commission to let lawmakers raise soft money for the legal fights likely to develop as congressional district boundaries are redrawn after this year's census. How a district is drawn — and which voters are included in it — can have a big impact on whether a Democrat or Republican gets elected to represent it. Read full story >

(CN) - Unity08, "a kind of would-be post-partisan political party," isn't subject to regulation as a political committee, the D.C. Circuit ruled, because the group doesn't endorse a "clearly identified candidate."

The group planned on setting up an online nominating process to choose a mixed ticket of one Republican and one Democrat for the 2008 presidential election. Read full story >

Iowa would withhold business incentives or tax breaks to any corporation that makes independent expenditures to influence political campaigns, under a proposed amendment to a bill being considered by lawmakers.

Opponents said the proposal, if approved, would run counter to the constitutional right of free speech.

“It sounds to me that they’re trying tax corporations for exercising their right to free speech. You can’t put a tax on exercise of a constitutional right,” sand Randall Wilson, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa. Read full story >

John J. Cafaro, the recently retired vice president of the Cafaro Co., will be arraigned here at 10 a.m. March 17 before U.S. District Judge John R. Adams on a charge of falsifying campaign contribution information.

Cafaro’s lawyer, Ralph E. Cascarilla of Cleveland, said Cafaro, 58, of Hubbard, intends to plead guilty to making a materially false statement concerning a contribution to the unsuccessful 2004 congressional campaign of his daughter, Capri Cafaro.

The elder Cafaro caused an official of his daughter’s congressional campaign to falsely report he had given only $2,000 to her campaign, when, in fact, he gave an additional $10,000 in the form of a loan to an unidentified campaign staff member for the campaign’s benefit, the U.S. attorney’s office said. Read full story >

SOUTH BURLINGTON -- New federal legislation that would impose limits on election spending by special interests won a ringing endorsement Monday by U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and three private-sector representatives.

The legislation was introduced in the U.S. House and Senate in an effort to counteract a U.S. Supreme Court decision in January that lifted longtime restrictions on corporate and union campaign contributions. Read full story >

The recent retirement announcement of U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) shook Capitol Hill.

Bayh had been polling strong and was expected to win re-election to a third term. He has also been fund-raising like he was running for re-election, generating nearly $9 million since his last election in 2004. His campaign committee boasts nearly $13 million in cash on hand. But Bayh had had enough of electoral politics, he said.

So now that Bayh is leaving elected office when his term ends early next year, where does all that money go? Read full story >

Campaign committees for the Democratic and Republican parties are being sued for more than $1.6 million in contributions alleged to have been stolen from people in Louisiana and elsewhere.

At the center of the dispute is Texas promoter Robert Allen Stanford, 59, who is in federal custody in Houston. Stanford is under indictment for allegedly masterminding worldwide investment frauds totaling more than $7 billion. Read full story >

The Supreme Court decision last month allowing corporations to spend unlimited money on behalf of political candidates left a loophole that campaign finance lawyers say could allow companies to pay for extensive political advertising while avoiding the disclosure requirements the court appeared to leave intact.

Experts say the ruling, along with a pair of earlier Supreme Court cases, makes it possible for corporations and unions to donate anonymously to nonprofit civic leagues and trade associations. The groups can then use the money to finance the types of political advertisements that were at the heart of last month’s ruling, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Read full story >

WASHINGTON – At its open meeting today, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) approved an Advisory Opinion and a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for Standards of Conduct.

In Advisory Opinion 2010-01 (Nevada State Democratic Party), the Commission concluded that proposed payments by the State Party for campaign materials to be used in connection with volunteer activities on behalf of a Federal candidate before the Nevada 2010 primary election would be exempt from the definitions of “contribution” and “expenditure” if the candidate is the State Party’s presumptive nominee. Candidate filing closes on March 12, 2010. If a Candidate is unopposed after that date he is the presumptive nominee. Only volunteer activities which take place after that date qualify for the exemption.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for Standards of Conduct proposes possible revisions and supplements to the agency’s current rules governing the conduct of Commissioners and Commission employees. Read full story >

The American Constitution Society (ACS) hosted an event to discuss the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Five panelists assessed the prospects for congressional legislation. Not surprisingly, their opinions diverged on the ruling's long-term impact. There are numerous practical and constitutional issues involved in passing any of the bills introduced and it is doubtful whether or not legislators would even be able to agree on any of the proposals. Read full story >

Rep. Frank Pallone is sitting on $3.9 million in campaign contributions — the richest war chest in the House — and he won’t need much of it to win reelection in November.

The New Jersey congressman has already given the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee the $100,000 in dues he owes for the year, and he doesn’t plan to hand over a penny more than is required of him. Read full story >

New Disclosure Rules, OCE May Explain Rise

Congressional campaigns are spending more on legal services, according to a Roll Call analysis of Federal Election Commission data.

That analysis, based on payments to a variety of law firms favored by Members for assistance with campaign law or ethics matters, including Perkins Coie and Wiley Rein, shows a significant increase in spending between the 2005-06 cycle and the end of 2009.

Spending at those law firms by incumbent lawmakers’ re-election committees and political action committees totaled at least $5.69 million in the 2007-08 cycle, up from $2.26 million in the previous cycle. Read full story >

WASHINGTON — Democratic governors came here last weekend to meet with the president about health care. First, though, they had a date with their corporate sponsor: the drug maker Pfizer.

A poster crediting the company welcomed the governors on Saturday night to a rooftop nightclub where they dined with lobbyists for corporate and union donors to the Democratic Governors Association. Read full story >

Shareholder and advocacy groups launched a letter-writing campaign Wednesday seeking corporate disclosure of all political contributions made with company funds in response to the Supreme Court's January decision enabling unlimited business spending on elections. Read full story >

On one point, they were unanimous. The five panelists speaking at the National Press Club on Wednesday agreed that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is unlikely to drastically change the campaign finance landscape in the 2010 election.

On the ruling’s long-term implications, their opinions diverged. Read full story >

In the recent Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allows corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on political advertisements supporting candidates in elections, there was only one issue that all but one of the justices agreed upon: the importance of disclosure. Read full story >

The Center for Political Accountability, the Council of Institutional Investors and a number of shareholder advocacy groups have launched a letter-writing campaign urging companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to disclose all political contributions they make with corporate funds.

Currently, 73 S&P 500 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Merck, United Technologies, eBay, Aetna and Microsoft, make such disclosures, they said. Read full story >