Suggested Discussion Outline

[johnkarls]

.
A. Anything noteworthy about Corruption in America that anyone would like to discuss.

A-1. For example, the Yazoo land scandal (Chapter 4) in which the Georgia Legislature authorized a sale of what now is essentially Alabama and Mississippi and, after the next election, the new Georgia Legislature passed a law declaring the sale void because the previous legislature had allegedly been bribed.

A-2. And, for example, why our author, New Yorker Zephyr Teachout, decided to ignore the case of The Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who was simultaneously Harlem’s Congressman 1945-1971 and who was 1938-1970 the Minister of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church (which had become the nation’s first “Mega Church” with more than 10,000 members under his father) -- which should have rated a chapter because in January 1967 the House Democratic Caucus, led by its famous “Solid South” Segregation Wing (which Richard Nixon later detached from the Democratic Party and merged into the Republican Party), refused to seat him and the entire House voted 307-116 to follow suit. Powell won overwhelmingly Harlem’s special election held to fill his vacant seat but did not attempt to take it because he was suing the House (Powell vs. McCormack) for back-pay and seniority. On 6/16/1969, the US Supreme Court ruled that the US House of Representatives had acted unconstitutionally in denying Powell his seat. [One reason why Yours Truly believes this imbroglio should have rated a chapter is his belief that any mechanism designed to prevent corruption is subject to abuse, in this case by racists, and the only real safeguard we have is the civic-mindedness of our citizens.]


B. A fair reading of Corruption in America appears to indicate that it is simply a polemic against the US Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission which held that First Amendment Free Speech prohibits the government from restricting independent political expenditures by labor unions and corporations.

B-1. Anything noteworthy in the Short Quiz & Suggested Answers (posted under “Participant Comments” on this bulletin board) which had been based on the assumption that Corruption in America would take up the same theme as long-time Washington Post OpEd Columnist Dana Milbank and long-time Business Week Columnist Robert Kuttner (the twin-foci of our 2/14/2008 meeting) that nothing happens in THE CESSPOOL THAT IS WASHINGTON DC except as the result of extortion by the politicians and bribery of the politicians, both in the form of “campaign contributions.”

B-2. Anything noteworthy in the Short Quiz & Suggested Answers posted on this bulletin board under “Participant Comments” for our 3/10/2010 meeting which focused on Citizens United vs. FEC, a mere 48 days after the Supreme Court’s 1/21/2010 decision.


C. The recommendations of our author summarized as (p. 304): “My hope is that lawmakers will quickly act to pass public funding systems and anti-monopoly laws to protect our civic culture.”


C-1. Public-funding systems

C-1-a. Legislation RESTRICTING independent political expenditures is already unconstitutional under Citizens United, so such restrictions would be futile.

C-1-b. Legislation PROVIDING public funding for political campaigns would be constitutional.

C-1-c. Presumably legislation PROVIDING public funding for political campaigns of solely candidates who refuse to accept any other donations would be constitutional.

C-1-d. However, 2008 Candidate Barack Obama’s famous pledge to accept public funding which, at that time, did require a refusal to accept any other donations -- was famously repudiated when Candidate Obama discovered he could raise more funds from other donations than from the public funding.

C-1-e. Aren’t public-funding systems doomed to failure because (A) no limitations can be placed on independent
political expenditures, as well as because (B) PROVIDING enough public funding to wean the official campaigns from accepting other donations will probably only serve, since television/radio/etc. are already saturated during campaign season with political ads in Ohio and Florida (the only two states effectively permitted to vote for President), in driving the stock value of media companies in those states through the roof???


C-2. Enactment of anti-monopoly laws

C-2-a. This recommendation seems to have come “out of left field”!!!

C-2-b. There was nothing in the first 303 of Zephyr Teachout’s 305 pages dealing with anti-trust legislation and whether there is any correlation between corruption and the enforcement of anti-trust legislation.

C-2-c. Whether there is any correlation is dubious because small businesses are capable of lobbying the government and do in fact do so -- both as individual small businesses and through associations.

C-2-d. Moreover, there are already stiff anti-trust laws [The Sherman Act (1890), The Clayton Act (1914) and The Federal Trade Commission Act (1914)] -- none of which have been enforced to any great extent for the last 30 years.


D. Possible solutions


D-1. Vis-à-vis Citizens United vs. FEC, our 3/10/2010 meeting did result in a Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign (a copy of which follows below) to treat corporate campaign contributions that do NOT relate to the corporation’s business, explicitly as non-deductible dividends to the shareholders who would be taxable on the constructive dividends.


D-2. Vis-à-vis campaign contributions which Dana Milbank and Robert Kuttner argued are the “root of all evil” in THE CESSPOOL THAT IS WASHINGTON DC, it would appear that the only effective solution would be a constitutional amendment.

D-2-a. Is this accurate???

D-2-b. What should such a constitutional amendment provide (taking into account such issues as whether independent political expenditures will be prohibited despite First Amendment Free Speech, and whether wealthy candidates will be permitted to spend as much of their own money as they would like)???


E. Anything else??? Anyone???


**************************************************************************************************************
“SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION” CALL TO ACTION = The Supreme Court’s Recent Corporate-Campaign-Contribution Decision - (ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED TO PARTICIPATE)
.
If you agree with our legally-sound legislative response to the Supreme Court's 1/21/2010 decision to invalidate the restrictions of McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law on independent campaign expenditures of corporations and unions, please click here to participate in our six-degrees-of-separation campaign to request every American to contact both President Obama and Senator McCain to propose and support our suggestion.

******************************
Our Legally-Sound Practical Legislative Response (NB: 506 views vis-à-vis the 3/10/2010 meeting materials + another 358 views in Section 1 of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org in which all 24 of our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mails are collected)
Posted by johnkarls » Sun Mar 14, 2010 11:23 am
.
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
To: ReadingLiberallyEmailList@johnkarls.com
Bcc: Our E-Mail List of Approximately 150 Addressees
Subject: “SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION” CALL TO ACTION = The Supreme Court’s Recent Corporate-Campaign-Contribution Decision - (ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED TO PARTICIPATE)
Date: March 14, 2010
Time: 11:06 am MDT > 1:14 pm MDT


Dear Friends,

(details about our next meeting omitted)

**********
CALL TO ACTION – ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED TO PARTICIPATE

We take pride in the fact that there are NO MORE THAN SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION between us and 100% of the American electorate.

And that, on important occasions, we can send to all of our friends and acquaintances an already-prepared e-mail for them (1) to send to America's decision maker(s) to influence governmental policy, and (2) to send to all of their friends and acquaintances to do the same in an unending chain.

At our meeting this past Wednesday, we decided that this is one of those occasions. That all of us should (1) contact both President Barack Obama and Senator John McCain (the co-author of the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (aka BCRA) whose corporate-campaign-contribution restrictions the Supreme Court struck down), and (2) contact all of our friends and acquaintances requesting them to do the same in an unending chain.

Our legally-sound practical legislative response is described in the already-prepared e-mails below. Further information is available on our bulletin board = http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.

*****
ANSWERING THE CALL TO ACTION IN 5 MINUTES

Below are two already-prepared e-mails that you can use for this purpose.

All you have to do is -

(1) hit your e-mail forward button and erase from this e-mail which will now be forwarded, everything down through the line of asterisks following the second PS below, and then put the e-mail addresses of all your friends and acquaintances into the address section (the subject of this e-mail will remain as the subject of your e-mail that is being forwarded).

(2) send to President Barack Obama and Senator John McCain a copy of the already-prepared messages following the instructions contained in the e-mail message you are forwarding to all your friends and acquaintances.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION.

Your friend,

John K.

PS - To un-subscribe, please press "reply" and type "deletion requested."

PPS - In forwarding this e-mail to all of your friends and acquaintances you should, after pressing your e-mail forward button, erase from this e-mail now being forwarded everything through the following line(s) of asterisks (however, this will leave intact the subject of this e-mail).

****************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Dear Friends,

In his recent State-of-the-Union address, President Obama criticized the January 21, 2010 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the McCain-Feingold restrictions on independent campaign expenditures by corporations and labor unions.

I have received an e-mail from a friend requesting that all Americans contact both President Obama and Senator McCain to urge them to propose and/or support a practical legislative response to the Supreme Court decision.

The practical legislative response is explained below in the already-prepared e-mails that you and all of your six-degrees-of-separation friends/acquaintances can send to President Obama and Senator McCain.

If you agree with our proposal, please

(1) hit your e-mail forward button and put the e-mail addresses of all your friends and acquaintances into the address section so that, through no more than six degrees of separation to 100% of the American population, we reach everyone.

(2) send to President Obama a copy of THE FIRST E-MAIL BELOW WHICH IS DESIGNED FOR HIM at whitehouse.gov/contact -- which will require (A) inputting your name, an e-mail address and a ZIP code, (B) selecting “I Have A Policy Comment" from the pull-down menu for “Subject" and then “Other” from the next pull-down menu, and (C) pasting the following message into the box provided. (It is also recommended that you select a salutation = “Dr.” from the pull-down menu before your first name and that you check the box at the end for “Contact me – a response is requested” -- both suggestions in order to maximize the chances that the message will actually be read.)

(3) send to Senator John McCain a copy of THE SECOND E-MAIL BELOW WHICH IS DESIGNED FOR HIM at mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm -- which will require (A) inputting your name, an e-mail address and a physical address, (B) selecting “Not Listed" from the pull-down menu for “Subject" and (C) pasting the following message into the box provided. (It is also recommended that you select a salutation = “Dr.” from the pull-down menu before your first name and that you resist the temptation to select “Government Affairs” rather than “Not Listed” as the subject –- both suggestions in order to maximize the chances that the message will actually be read.)





**********PRESIDENT OBAMA E-MAIL**********

The Supreme Court’s Recent Corporate-Campaign-Contribution Decision –- A Legally-Sound Legislative Response

President Barack Obama

Dear Mr. President:

Thank you very much for expressing your concerns regarding the recent Supreme Court decision in your State-of-the-Union Address.

A legally-sound legislative response would be to:

(A) extend the “disclaimer and disclosure” provisions for television of McCain-Feingold that the Supreme Court did approve: (1) so that they apply to cable, satellite and the internet, (2) so that they specify for the first time that the identity of the ultimate funder(s) must be disclosed (blowing past fronting organizations or judgment-proof individuals) –- and to the extent that the ultimate funder(s) might be foreign, the U.S. should negotiate more extradition treaties with foreign countries, and (3) so that the threshold for applicability is reduced to “zero tolerance” to avoid “game playing” with “political SPAM” that is divided into multiple messages, each of which is addressed to slightly fewer addressees than any threshold that is specified.

(B) specify for the Internal Revenue Code’s “ordinary and necessary business expense” provision for corporate tax deductions that already requires that to be deductible an expenditure must relate to the corporation’s business: (1) that any expenditure that does not relate directly to the corporation’s business must be submitted to the shareholders for a vote with each dissenter receiving her/his portion of the expenditure as a cash dividend and each remaining shareholder being reported to the IRS as having received a non-cash taxable dividend for her/his portion of the expenditure; (2) that any expenditure aimed at affecting the policy of any governmental organization or agency is subject to the shareholder-vote requirement unless it finances a message that is confined to the merits of the issue affecting the corporation’s business (rather than comprising an unrelated attack on an organization or individual whose policies may affect the corporation’s business); and (3) that a penalty will be imposed on the corporate officer who authorized such an expenditure without a shareholder vote (or the chief financial officer if the expenditure was not authorized by any other officer) equal to three times the amount of the expenditure.

Thank you for your consideration.





**********SENATOR McCAIN E-MAIL**********

The Supreme Court’s Recent Corporate/Union-Campaign-Contribution Decision –- A Legally-Sound Legislative Response

Senator John McCain

Dear Senator McCain:

Thank you very much for all of your efforts vis-à-vis campaign-finance reform and your concerns with the recent Supreme Court decision on corporate/union campaign contributions.

A legally-sound legislative response would be to:

(A) extend the “disclaimer and disclosure” provisions for television of McCain-Feingold that the Supreme Court did approve: (1) so that they apply to cable, satellite and the internet, (2) so that they specify for the first time that the identity of the ultimate funder(s) must be disclosed (blowing past fronting organizations or judgment-proof individuals) –- and to the extent that the ultimate funder(s) might be foreign, the U.S. should negotiate more extradition treaties with foreign countries, and (3) so that the threshold for applicability is reduced to “zero tolerance” to avoid “game playing” with “political SPAM” that is divided into multiple messages, each of which is addressed to slightly fewer addressees than any threshold that is specified.

(B) specify for the Internal Revenue Code’s “ordinary and necessary business expense” provision for corporate tax deductions that already requires that to be deductible an expenditure must relate to the corporation’s business: (1) that any expenditure that does not relate directly to the corporation’s business must be submitted to the shareholders for a vote with each dissenter receiving her/his portion of the expenditure as a cash dividend and each remaining shareholder being reported to the IRS as having received a non-cash taxable dividend for her/his portion of the expenditure; (2) that any expenditure aimed at affecting the policy of any governmental organization or agency is subject to the shareholder-vote requirement unless it finances a message that is confined to the merits of the issue affecting the corporation’s business (rather than comprising an unrelated attack on an organization or individual whose policies may affect the corporation’s business); and (3) that a penalty will be imposed on the corporate officer who authorized such an expenditure without a shareholder vote (or the chief financial officer if the expenditure was not authorized by any other officer) equal to three times the amount of the expenditure.

Thank you for your consideration.