{"id":77,"date":"2011-11-07T23:08:48","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T23:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bridgechronicles.com\/garyballardauthor\/?p=77"},"modified":"2011-11-07T23:08:48","modified_gmt":"2011-11-07T23:08:48","slug":"how-citizens-united-creates-consequence-free-lying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bridgechronicles.com\/garyballardauthor\/2011\/11\/07\/how-citizens-united-creates-consequence-free-lying\/","title":{"rendered":"How Citizens United Creates Consequence-Free Lying"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve written before about the atrocity that is the Citizens United<\/em> decision. You know the one, the Supreme Court decision that equated political advertising dollars with free speech, granting corporations the same free speech rights as individuals. I’d like to give you an example of how this decision is starting to poison the already poisoned political process. In what should surprise no one, this lesson comes courtesy of the master of shitbag political tactics, that rat bastard Karl Rove.<\/p>\n

It seems Karl Rove really doesn’t like unions<\/a>, especially public-employee unions such as those helping out teachers, firefighters, police and other civil employees. Most of the big money Republicans like the Koch Brothers don’t either, and they’ll all spent lobbying dollars and campaign contributions to elect union-busting dirtbags like Scott Walker in Wisconsin and the subject of the linked article, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. Karl Rove has this so-called “Super” Political Action Committee called American Crossroads GPS. Thanks to Citizens United and our idiotic campaign finance laws, a group like Crossroads doesn’t have to disclose its donors, and it can take unlimited money from anyone for any reason. From the article:<\/p>\n

In March, Rove\u2019s Crossroads GPS group launched a $750,000 cable television advertising campaign that demanded to know, \u201cWhy are Democrats shutting down state capitols to protect a system that pays unionized government workers 42% more than non-union workers?\u201d<\/p>\n

That was a false claim; an Economic Policy Institute study found that public employees were actually under-compensated in comparison with their private-sector counterparts.<\/p>\n

So not only can this group buy up as much advertising as they wish, without having to tell anyone who paid for the advertising, but since it’s advertising, they can spew a torrent of absolute lies. At least when someone lies to your face, you have the option to punch them in the jaw. This shadowy, amorphous blob of money-speech doesn’t even have a mouth to punch.<\/p>\n

According to the Columbus Dispatch, the shadowy group that was set up to preserve Kasich\u2019s anti-labor law\u2014Building a Better Ohio\u2014expects to spend as much as $20 million on this fall\u2019s campaign. And it is Building a Better Ohio that has been \u00a0a Rove-style campaign to confuse Ohio voters, and to demonize public employees and their unions.<\/p>\n

Building a Better Ohio is running a big-budget campaign. And so are other groups, such as Make Ohio Great\u2014which is backed by Republican operatives and donors around the country\u2014and Liz Cheney\u2019s Alliance for America\u2019s Future, which are playing big in a campaign that will see the same level of spending as a hotly contested gubernatorial or US Senate contest. In fact, the tens of millions spent in Ohio will rival what was spent to win the state in recent presidential elections.<\/p>\n

How much of that money is coming from Rove and the billionaire\u00a0CEO’s\u00a0and hedge-fund mangers associated with his American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS groups? Building a Better Ohio isn\u2019t saying. The group was established as a nonprofit 501(c)4 organization, so that it\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0have to reveal its donor list.<\/p>\n

The thing that infuriates me the most about this is the scenario I mentioned above. One of the important foundations of free speech isn’t freedom from the consequences of that speech. After all, if I claim that Karl Rove is a goat-fucking child rapist to his face, he’s liable to swing his doughy hands towards my melon and that might hurt. If I blog it, I could be accused of printing a libelous statement. After all, as an individual writer, I have no proof that Karl enjoys the sweet carnal embraces of the Billy Goat Grimm, nor can I claim evidence that he does indeed indulge in the art of man-boy love. I have no evidence to exonerate him of such claims either though, and as Donald Rumsfeld said, “The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.” He may very well be a goatfucker and a molester, but we’ll never know. Regardless of Karl’s predilection for farm animals or toddlers, as an individual writing a blog, I am responsible for my words. I have a face and a name which can be sued, or punched.<\/p>\n

Not only do these faceless donors NOT have punchable faces, their money ensures that were I somehow to find their identities, I’d never be able to take them to task for outright falsehoods. They could purchase ads claiming that I was the goatfucker, and what could I do about it? Hire a lawyer I couldn’t afford to pay? Change my name and move to Canada? My lies do not come without the risk of consequences. The Koch Brothers can lie with impunity to millions through Rove’s shadow organization. Politicians can smear their opponents through proxies while pretending to be SHOCKED, SHOCKED I TELL YOU at the mud-slinging.<\/p>\n

Transparency in political races is just as vitally important to a functioning democracy as transparency in government. Words do matter and paid-for lies have a tendency to remove the freedom from the people being lied to. If you really want to see our political system un-fucked, the first step is to elect politicians who promise to really, fundamentally fix the fucked up campaign finance laws we live under. If not, we’ll soon enough find ourselves under the yolk of an oligarchy and be completely oblivious as to how it happened.<\/p>\n

In March, Rove\u2019s Crossroads GPS group launched a $750,000 cable television advertising campaign that demanded to know, \u201cWhy are Democrats shutting down state capitols to protect a system that pays unionized government workers 42% more than non-union workers?\u201d
\nThat was a false claim; an Economic Policy Institute study found that public employees were actually under-compensated in comparison with their private-sector counterparts.
\nThe advertising Rove aired in March attacked not just public-employee unions but President Obama, claiming that he was aiding unions that\u2014through their political activities\u2014pose \u201ca threat to democracy.\u201d
\nIt was an absurd charge.
\nBut Rove wasn\u2019t worried about truth or falsehood.
\nThe political strategist was putting his marker down, identifying the Ohio fight as central to the Republican and conservative causes.
\nHe hasn\u2019t backed off. According to the Columbus Dispatch, the shadowy group that was set up to preserve Kasich\u2019s anti-labor law\u2014Building a Better Ohio\u2014expects to spend as much as $20 million on this fall\u2019s campaign. And it is Building a Better Ohio that has been \u00a0a Rove-style campaign to confuse Ohio voters, and to demonize public employees and their unions.
\nBuilding a Better Ohio is running a big-budget campaig. And so are other groups, such as Make Ohio Great\u2014which is backed by Republican operatives and donors around the country\u2014and Liz Cheney\u2019s Alliance for America\u2019s Future, which are playing big in a campaign that will see the same level of spending as a hotly contested gubernatorial or US Senate contest. In fact, the tens of millions spent in Ohio will rival what was spent to win the state in recent presidential elections.
\nHow much of that money is coming from Rove and the billionaire CEOs and hedge-fund mangers associated with his American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS groups? Building a Better Ohio isn\u2019t saying. The group was established as a nonprofit 501(c)4 organization, so that it doesn\u2019t have to reveal its donor list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve written before about the atrocity that is the Citizens United decision. You know the one, the Supreme Court decision that equated political advertising dollars with free speech, granting corporations the same free speech rights as individuals. I’d like to give you an example of how this decision is starting to poison the already poisoned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgechronicles.com\/garyballardauthor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgechronicles.com\/garyballardauthor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgechronicles.com\/garyballardauthor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgechronicles.com\/garyballardauthor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgechronicles.com\/garyballardauthor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bridgechronicles.com\/garyballardauthor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgechronicles.com\/garyballardauthor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgechronicles.com\/garyballardauthor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgechronicles.com\/garyballardauthor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}