Feingold responds

First let me say the following. I am not sure whether or not this is his canned response (all elected officials have them) or not especially since it does address a lot of the points I made in my original letter to him. However, I still disagree with him on the very specific point that we need a Constitutional Amendment to go further on this. Senator Feingold is looking at this singularly in the context of this one case.

In this one case we're discussing, federal elections spending is at issue. So he narrows his focus to change the decision based on this one issue. However, my issue is larger than that. What the Supreme Court did was not a one-off out of character move. It was not relegated to this one case nor will their process affect just this one decision.

It was what enabled them to come to their conclusion, the obvious application of Corporate Personhood that allowed them to make the assumption that corporations, since they are viewed as people by the courts, have the same rights as people and hence this somehow impeded their free speech.

So while the good Senator and I agree completely on the disastrous ramifications of this court decision, our remedies couldn't be any more completely different. He discusses passing laws that will cripple aspects of the ruling however I see that as a futile choice. What is to stop conservatives from challenging the laws in court and having the conservative, pro-corporation Supreme Court make the same exact decision in their favor once again, thus striking the new laws down?

The only Supreme Court proof option is to eliminate Corporate Personhood all together with a Constitutional Amendment. There is no other way and no, this is not a kneejerk reaction to a single case. Ever since the initial court mistake that allowed this glitch become precedent we the people have had an ever shrinking voice in our democracy at the expense of corporate money. It's time to change this for once and for all.

Here's Senator Feingold's response. (Below is the Op-Ed he enclosed as a .doc file)

Dear Mr. Poole,

Thank you for contacting me about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. I appreciate hearing your suggestions.

I agree that the U.S. Supreme Court made a terrible mistake in deciding this case. Presented with a relatively narrow legal issue, the Supreme Court chose to roll back laws that have limited the role of corporate money in federal elections since Teddy Roosevelt was president. Ignoring important principles of judicial restraint and respect for precedent, the Court has given corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns. Just six years ago, the Court said that the prohibition on corporations and unions dipping into their treasuries to influence campaigns was 'firmly embedded in our law,' yet this Court has just upended that prohibition, and a century's worth of campaign finance law designed to stem corruption in government.

The American people will pay dearly for this decision when, more than ever, their voices are drowned out by corporate spending in our federal elections. However, it is important to note that the decision does not affect the ban on unlimited "soft money" contributions, which was the central provision in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) that Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and I authored. The ban will continue to prevent corporate contributions to the political parties. Knowing of your interest in this issue, I have attached a newspaper op-ed I wrote in response to the Supreme Court's decision.

In the coming weeks, I will work with my colleagues to pass legislation restoring as many of the critical restraints on corporate control of our elections as possible. Thank you again for contacting me about this important issue.

ENCLOSED OP ED:

High court opens the floodgates
By Russ Feingold

In its ruling in the case of Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court unraveled campaign-finance laws that stood for more than a century. The court was originally presented with a relatively narrow legal issue in the case, but chose instead to consider a much broader question: whether to roll back laws that have limited the role of corporate money in federal elections since Theodore Roosevelt was president. Now the court has handed down its ruling, and made a terrible mistake in giving corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns.

It is important to note that the decision does not affect the ban on "soft money" contributions, which was the core provision in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as McCain-Feingold. That ban will continue to prevent corporate contributions to the political parties from corrupting the process. But the decision does significantly increase corporations' clout in campaigns.

For decades, corporations could only contribute to candidates and pay for political ads from funds collected from their administrative and executive employees and kept in special accounts called PACs. With the court's decision, corporations will now be able to dip into their huge general treasuries to pay for independent advertising. With their enormous resources, corporations can now vastly outspend the candidates and other outside parties in almost any race.

With the gates opened for a virtually unlimited amount of corporate money, I fear that our elections will become like NASCAR races — underwritten by companies. Only in this case, the corporate underwriters won't just be seeking publicity, they will be seeking laws and policies that the candidates have the power to provide.

During the 2008 election cycle, Fortune 500 companies alone had profits of $743 billion. By comparison, spending by candidates, outside groups, and political parties on the last presidential election totaled just over $2 billion. There's just no comparison; corporations and unions have the resources to effectively dominate federal campaigns.

Just six years ago, the state of campaign-finance law was quite different. When the Supreme Court ruled that the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act that Sen. John McCain and I championed was constitutional, it noted that the prohibition on corporations and unions dipping into their treasuries to influence campaigns was "firmly embedded in our law." Yet the court only a few years later has upended that prohibition.

A majority of the court ignored several time-honored principles that have served for the past two centuries to preserve the public's respect for and acceptance of its decisions. One is the concept of "judicial restraint," the idea that a court should decide a case on constitutional grounds only if absolutely necessary, and should rule as narrowly as possible. Here, the court did just the opposite — decided the constitutionality of all restrictions on corporate spending in connection with elections in an obscure case in which many far more narrow rulings were possible.

The court also ignored stare decisis, the historic respect for precedent, which Chief Justice John Roberts termed "judicial modesty" during his 2005 confirmation hearing. It's hard to imagine a bigger blow to stare decisis than the court's decision to strike down laws in over 20 states and a federal law that has been the cornerstone of the nation's campaign-finance system for 100 years.

Finally, the court ignored the longstanding practice of deciding a case only after lower courts have fully examined the facts. Here, because the broad constitutional questions considered by the Supreme Court were not raised in the court below, there was no factual record at all on which the court could base its legal conclusions.

We now face the undoing of laws that have helped to prevent corruption in government for more than a century. Some will say that corporate interests already have too much power and that members of Congress listen to the wishes of corporations instead of their constituents. While the campaign-finance system certainly needs further reform, I can only imagine how much worse things will be in a system where the views and interests of American voters are completely drowned out by corporate spending.