TT's Lost in Tokyo — by TokyoTom

I’ve commented extensively on the recent Supreme Court decision that in effect held that our corporation-hating Founding Fathers intended to protect “speech” by corporations under the Fourth Amendment.

The effects of that decision are starting to materialize … and it seems that GOP and “Tea Party”-backed candidates have been the primary beneficiaries of a large tide of new money from undisclosed donors.

As the Desmogblog notes:

The success of GOP and Tea Party-backed candidates in the 2010 U.S. midterm elections was enabled by a massive influx of secretive spending thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC.

A new analysis by the Sunlight Foundation identified $126 million in unrestricted funds spent during this midterm without any disclosure of whose money it was. That figure represents more than a quarter of the total $450 million spent by outside groups on the midterms. …

The two leading GOP shadow groups, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS – both founded and guided by GOP veterans Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie – are reportedly “gloating” over their influence on the elections. The two groups spent more than $38 million on attack ads and misinformation campaigns to defeat Democratic candidates.

NBC News reports that “a substantial portion of Crossroads GPS’ money came from a small circle of extremely wealthy Wall Street hedge fund and private equity moguls.”

According to an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation (a clean-government group established in 2006 by left-leaning securities lawyer Michael R. Klein that publishes its donor lists here):

The 2010 midterm election is filled with both “known unknowns,” outside groups raised and spent $126 million on elections without disclosing the source, and “unknown unknowns,” we don’t know what those undisclosed donors want. We do know one thing: the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling allowed this election to be the costliest and least transparent midterm in recent history.

The impact of Citizens United can be judged by simply following the money. The $126 million in undisclosed money represents more than a quarter of the total $450 million spent by outside groups. Add the $60 million spent by groups that were allowed to raise unlimited money, but still had to disclose, to the undisclosed money and the total amount of outside money made possible by the Citizens United ruling reaches $186 million or 40 percent of the total spent by outside groups.

The outside groups taking advantage of the Citizens United ruling are largely tilted towards the Republicans. Republican groups raising unlimited money and disclosing their donors spent $35.7 million, $11 million more than their Democratic counterparts. By a nearly six to one margin Republicans outspent the Democrats among groups that failed to disclose the source of their money ($59 million to $10 million).

Click to see the top 20 outside groups and how they fared in the 2010 elections

This heavy partisan tilt in outside spending aided the Republicans in expanding the playing field and likely helped them exceed predictions for House seat pickups.

According to a report by Politico’s Jeanne Cummings, the Republican outside groups coordinated their spending, maximizing their ability to influence the elections with a massive wave of spending.

I’m not in favor of ANY corporate spending on campaign contributions or political speech. It seems to me that several avenues remain after Citizens United – in addition to efforts to get Congress to require further disclosure:

– states, which create corporations in the first place (most founders accept grants of limited-liability shareholder status), can change laws (1) to prohibit such activities by corporations (in which case shareholders, executives and employees retain their Constitutional rights to speak individually or as a group) and/or (2) provide regulatory incentives that favor companies that foreswear political activities;

– concerned citizens of all stripes can form groups that monitor and publicize political activities by companies, and that provide favorable publicity of corporations that foreswear political activities.