Ask Your House Rep & Senators to "Be A Leader" on Overturning Citizens United

Coffee Party USA has launched a campaign called "Be A Leader" to get our House Reps and Senators in DC to go on record with their plans for overturning the disastrous Citizens United v FEC ruling.

They even have some very simple suggested text to use:

Dear Representative or Senator,

It has been three years since the disastrous Citizens United decision.  As a legislator, you are in a position to fix this bad decision, but I don't see anything on your web site about your plans to do so.  Will you please be a leader and post your plans on your web site?  

Your constituent,

 

Below is what Senator Toomey's office sent to me in response to my inquiry. It's clearly a canned response, and it never actually answers the simple question posed.


I've also copied in my reply. I think it's important that our elected leaders hear from us when our questions and concerns go unanswered.

Below the email is additional research and my personal thoughts on Senator Toomey and his position on other issues I feel are important and which influence how I feel about him and his party.

Trust me, I'm not so naive as to believe that he or even a staffer will read my email or feel compelled to respond to it. If they do, I will share it here. I just want the Senator and his staff to know that ordinary citizens are paying attention; very, very close attention.

---

From: "Senator Pat Toomey"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 9:04:01 AM
Subject: Reply from U.S. Senator Pat Toomey

January 23, 2013

Dear Mr. ,

Thank you for contacting me about campaign finance reform. I appreciate hearing from you.

As you may know, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, overturned a federal ban on independent political advocacy by corporations and unions. I understand your concerns regarding this decision and political activities by outside groups and businesses. That said, the Supreme Court has long upheld that political speech, including the funding thereof, is protected by the First Amendment and is an integral part of our constitutional democracy. It is important that Congress be mindful of these constitutional principles, although I understand your concerns about this issue. Please be assured that I will keep your views in mind as Congress continues reviewing changes to campaign finance laws. 

Thank you again for your correspondence. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of assistance.

Sincerely,
 

Pat Toomey
U.S. Senator, Pennsylvania

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Dear Senator Toomey:

Thank you for your response.

With all due respect, your attempt to characterize the Citizens United vs FEC ruling as upholding the rights and protections afforded to actual citizens by the First Amendment is insulting and disingenuous. It's insulting because you and those who defend the activism of the conservatives on the Court seem to believe that you can dupe all of us into believing your partisan framing of that ruling. I humbly remind you that we are not all "low information voters."

Those of us who oppose Citizens United know that it is not about free speech. It is not even about political speech. It is about money. It is about "dark money" and the inordinate influence so much of it is having from too few sources on you and your fellow elected leaders who are supposed to be representing all of us, not just wealthy donors and corporations. (Again and with all due respect, please spare me any rhetoric on trickle down economics. We both know that it's a failed economic theory.)

You have chosen not to answer my question directly about publishing your plans for overturning Citizens United. Given your past role as president of The Club for Growth and the $2.7million they spent on your behalf on attack ads to win you your seat 51% to 49%, I can't say that I'm surprised. I'm left to conclude, therefore, that you are in favor of that disastrous Supreme Court ruling. I invite you, of course, to please write back immediately to correct me and to share your plans if I've come to the wrong conclusion. Nothing would please me more.

Once more and only with the greatest respect, it seems to me that you have a choice to make, Senator. You can follow - and even lead - the GOP's steady decline into political oblivion with everyone except the aging white male evangelical demographic (your tea party base), or you can be part of a more modern, thriving, and progressive (it's not a dirty word, by the way, and is considered by most to be the opposite of 'regressive') Republican party.

My humble and sincere recommendation is that you start by taking a stand against the corrupting influence of big and dark money in our political system by publishing your plan to combat and overturn Citizens United. I realize that that may seem antithetical to your past role as leader of a tea party PAC, but that's not who you're supposed to be representing in the Senate.

Who knows? You might even win back registered Non-Partisan voters like me.

Sincerely,

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While not part of the above email, here's some research and conclusions on why ordinary citizens should oppose Senator Toomey (and similarly positioned Republicans).

Energy (the closest "issue" the Senator lists when it comes the Environment and Climate Change)

• Senator Toomey wants to further loosen restrictions on an already under-regulated fossil fuel industry, wants to expand mining and drilling of dirty fossil fuels, and is completely silent on renewable energy. http://www.toomey.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=32

(Affordable) Health Care

• Senator Toomey co-sponsored S.192, the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act," a petty partisan and Bachmann-esque bill that reveals how much more he values the interests of big money from insurance carriers, pharmaceuticals, health care providers, and corporations than he does the actual health and welfare of poor, unemployed, and under-employed people. http://www.toomey.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=34

Life, Family and Marriage (Inequality)

• Senator Toomey seems to have more in common with Rick Santorum than he does with the majority of Americans. Anyone who isn't in support of gay marriage is, in my opinion, a hateful bigot. Period. There is no middle ground and no compromise when it comes to civil liberties, equality, and justice for the LGBTQ community in this country. http://www.toomey.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=33

The GOP: A Party in Decline
It no longer comes as any surprise to me that the GOP is a party in steep decline. This last election was very telling. Beyond older white religious men, Mr. Romney had weak and diminishing appeal(1). And while the GOP kept control in the House, they lost seats in both houses of Congress, and there were fewer votes for House Republicans than there were for House Democrats(2). The GOP's only real appeal now seems to be with a shrinking older, whiter, and more fundamentalist demographic. Oh, and big money.

GOP's Desperate Measures to Rig Elections and Deny Voters Their Rights
This decline in popularity and appeal is undoubtedly part of the reason why Governor Corbett and Republican state legislators all over the U.S. want to change the Electoral College rules so that under-populated and gerrymandered GOP districts have the same Electoral College weight as the overall voting population.

Isn't it ironic? One would think that Libertarians, Teapublicans, and ordinary Republicans everywhere would be staunch supporters of winner-take-all, right? Instead, it looks like the new mantra is, "Since we can't beat the Democrats fairly, we'll rig the system." To whom does this strategy appeal if it's not the white rural evangelical voter; that subset of the party's base who seems intent on voting against their own economic self interests time and time again?

The voter ID law is, of course, another prime example of a party who refuses to face reality. It's nothing more than empty fear-mongering over a problem that simply does not exist except in the minds of Republican politicians and Fox News commentators. To claim that measures must be taken to stop rampant in-person voter fraud is to insult the intelligence of anyone paying attention to the realities of how rare it is for someone to impersonate anyone on election day(3).

Money in Politics
I cling to the belief that politicians are supposed to work for me. My belief was stronger before the Citizens United ruling.

Now it seems all too clear that Senator Toomey and his colleagues on both sides are far more beholden to the Sheldon Adelsons, Harold Simmonses, Karl Roves, and all the Super PACs(4) than they are to you, me, our fellow Pennsylvanians, and ordinary Americans.

To be fair to Senator Toomey, he's presumably most beholden to his biggest donor, the Tea Party SuperPAC, The Club for Growth, According to OpenSecrets,they have contributed $848,033 to him over the course of his political career(5). They also spent $2.7million in negative ads to help their former president to win his seat 51% to 49%(6).

This is what Democracy looks like?

It will take a long and hard struggle to get Citizens United overturned. It's not impossible, and I believe that it's up to us - ordinary citizens - to be united in our unending and unbending effort to understand which politicians agree with us and which don't. I think it's obvious what we need to then do with that information.

Get involved. It only takes a few minutes to let your elected leaders know what you think.
http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/ask_your_representative_to_be_a_leader


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Sources:
(1) CNN Politics; http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/race/president
(2) Bloomberg, Republicans Can't Claim Mandate as Democrats Top House Vote; http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-16/republicans-can-t-declare-mandate-with-more-democrat-house-votes.html
(3) The Wall Street Journal, Voter Fraud: Hard to Identify; http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443864204577621732936167586.html
(4) ProPublica, Who are the Super PACs's Biggest Donors; http://projects.propublica.org/pactrack/contributions/tree
(5) OpenSecrets.org, Senator Pat Toomey, Top Contributors (Since 1989); http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00001489&type=C
(6) The Boston Globe, Tea Party super PAC pours fund into congressional races; http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/06/05/tea-party-super-pac-pours-funds-into-congressional-races/GrJs2J4PKl7A2L3t4BQWjM/story.html

Will We in the Middle Class Never Learn?

Joe Nocera's New York Times op-ed of June 17, 2011, "The Banking Miracle", makes me wonder why it's so hard for some people to accept what history has to tell us?

America's economic greatness is measured by its middle class, not the wealthy. We seem to be doomed without a vibrant, optimistic, and prospering middle class that has the money to spend on the goods and services that the economy produces. An irony in all of this is that we in the middle class are partly to blame. We are so caught up in striving to be wealthy - or at least occasionally feel like we can live a little of our lives as if we were - that we can be our own worst enemies when it comes to racking up personal debt. The difference between us and the bankers, however, is that our debts are our own and, as we should have learned from history and are so painfully learning again, so are Wall Street's.

We also become our own worst enemies when we start believing and supporting the fallacy of trickle down economics. History proves that model doesn't work. Correction. That model works perfectly well for the very wealthy. It's a superb model for widening the wealth gap and concentrating wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

So I continuously wonder how many more times will it take before intelligent individuals look at history, do the math, and accept that the rich consider the rest of us to be little more than economic chattel; property, as it were, to be bought and sold for the benefit of the uber-rich and powerful? By supporting failed economic models and legislative policies that benefit the wealthy over the middle class, we are doing little more than engaging in wishful thinking while clinging to a blind faith that by prostrating ourselves at the feet of the wealthy we might some day be invited to a seat at their table. Even without such an invitation, some of us cling to an even more dangerous and failed belief that what's needed now is to remove any last bit of regulation and to put our full faith and trust in the hands of wealthy capitalists and bankers. These are the very people who not only have caused the last two great economic collapses, they have mastered the art of duping an uninformed and blissfully ignorant portion of the population into believing that without them we will have even fewer opportunities to live a life that has any hope, dignity, or comfort at all.

IMHO, those of us in the middle class who believe these fairy tales do ourselves and our fellow citizens a grave injustice by thinking that the best a free market system has to offer is whatever scraps the richest among us care to share from their plates.

Economic collapses aren't and never have been caused by unions, the middle class, the poor, or illegal immigrants. Men from places like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and other big houses on Wall Street have been at the root of our economic collapses. They've never really been the catalyst of economic growth and prosperity, either. They've never built a single car, computer, or line of software code. They don't build buildings and they don't grow food. They don't mine minerals and they don't teach our kids in schools or deliver health care. To be sure, they play a role as middle men in making the financing possible to do those things. They ostensibly provide the supposed financial expertise to evaluate the risk-reward equation. They have the contacts to be able to put monied interests together with those who need the investment capital. So at the end of the day, what are they? They are the hosts of a multi-trillion dollar Match Game for which they are paid astronomical sums and for which we are supposed to be grateful for their parts in the "jobs creation" equation.

Here's the rub. When their bets win, they reap the rewards in terms of massive personal wealth which never really trickles down very far, if at all. Good for them. Our system is supposed to reward intelligence and achievement, and I'm all for that. But what happens when there are no rules in place and their gambles go south? Who suffers? Who has to pay for those bad bets?

History cannot be denied. We know by looking back that when there are either too few or no borders, boundaries, or rules by which people - including capitalists - must play, bad things tend to happen. Call it a sad reality of human nature. Call it whatever you like. The reality cannot be denied. The concentration of wealth - and the unregulated power that goes with it - is what was at the root of the Great Depression and the Great Recession. And while the post-WWII prosperity this country enjoyed for the latter half of the 20th century is not completely the result of Glass-Steagall, the undeniable truths are that the bill existed until Reagan and Greenspan successfully vilified government and financial regulation, and Clinton signed a GOP piece of legislation into law that the Republicans had wanted since the 30s to reverse Glass-Steagall known as Gramm-Leach-Bliley.

And where do we find ourselves again and as a result? In an economy that widens the wealth gap, divides us on ideologies to the point where people stop talking to each other, and where, saddest of all, facts no longer matter.

Know what else cannot be denied? It's who pays for the *unregulated* bets that Wall Street makes and loses. Bets that we're now learning that Wall Street was making both ways by continuing to sell unregulated securities like mortgage backed securities and collateralized debt obligations even while they bet against them with credit default swaps? I can tell who didn't pay for those bad bets; the Wall Streeters who made them and who, despite the collapse, continue to make historic bonuses instead of being fired or going to jail. Whatever happened to accountability? Whatever happened to paying for one's mistakes? Whatever happened to business ethics?

So I have to ask, "Is the desire to regulate really socialism, and what is it called when an economic system privatizes all the gains and socializes all the losses?"

Are we witnessing a perversion of capitalism? Is the erosion of the middle class and vilification of the poor what happens when a wealthy and powerful oligarchy wields ever more unchecked and unregulated power, reaps all the rewards, and passes all of their losses onto us?

Is what we are witnessing really the truest expression of capitalism? Is the ultimate manifestation of our system really the plutocracy we are seeing now; a system where the rich few tell all the rest of us what to think and what's good for us and, out of shear fear and panic, we believe them?

Are we really going to become a society in which social programs are seen as wasteful and frivolous; where the availability of medical science and technology that can improve and save lives is reduced to an economic ROI calculation; where average people who have played by the rules and worked hard all their lives become indigent in their old age; and where we gladly pursue and support economic and political policies that produce short term gains for a few with no regard for long term pains for the many?

Are we that blind? Are we that cold? Have we really lost our intelligence and our humanity at the same time?

What happens next? Do we continue to allow our system to devolve into a kleptocracy where government is replaced by capitalism, ruled completely by and for the exclusive and sole benefit of the richest among us, and where we finally and completely see them steal any lingering shreds of dignity and paltry wealth we have left?

It just seems to me that we are hurtling toward a doom that comes only from a completely unregulated capitalist system - at least as capitalism is being practiced today in America. IMHO, we have some people within the middle class who support the idea of less regulation, who refuse to learn from history, and who won't face reality to partially thank for it.

If we were united in the middle class and in our demands for fairness, equality, and sensible rules to protect the economy as a whole, I could see us creating the environment for real recovery and prosperity just as was the case during that period in the 20th century when the wealth gap wasn't so wide and legislation like Glass-Steagall kept people from making fortunes by knowingly making bets that only paid the dividends and never saddled them with the losses.


Related Sources
Rampell, Catherine. (June 17, 2011). For Want of a Word, Arizona’s Jobless Lose Checks. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/business/18benefits.html

Howard, John. (June 2, 2011). Goldman Hit With Subpoena Over MBS Antics. Law360.com Retrieved from http://www.law360.com/topnews/articles/248863

The Daily Show: Exclusive - William Cohan Interview Parts 1 and 2 (April 28, 2011). Retrieved from
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-28-2011/exclusive---william-cohan-extended-interview-pt--1
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-28-2011/exclusive---william-cohan-extended-interview-pt--2


----- Original Message -----

Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2011 7:15:29 AM
Subject: The Banking Miracle

The president of the American Bankers Association was railing against excessive regulation in a speech at the Waldorf Astoria. The banking reform bill, he complained, “would destroy a substantial part of our bond-distributing machinery.” He added, “Can anyone expect that a step of this kind will improve the quality of our long-term investments?”

Modern echoes, for sure. But I read about the speech in a Jan. 27, 1933, article culled from the wonderful archives of The American Banker, the bankers’ bible now celebrating its 175th birthday. The speaker, one Francis H. Sisson, was complaining about an early version of the Glass-Steagall Act, the most famous of all Depression-era bank laws, and the one that, in retrospect, probably did the most good. Less than six months after Sisson’s speech, President Franklin Roosevelt signed it into law.

From my vantage point here in 2011, Glass-Steagall seems miraculous. It was amazingly radical, not just for its time, but for any time; it didn’t so much reform banking as upend it. Most notably, it ordered banks to get out of the securities business. As Sisson complained: “The effect of the proposed banking reform is to renounce investment banking rather than regulate it.” Because investment banking was then the chief activity of the big banks, this was a very big deal.

Glass-Steagall also created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insured customer deposits for the first time, and outlawed branch banking by national banks, among other things. It is impossible to imagine anything like it passing today; although the modern reform bill, Dodd-Frank, surely does some good, it’s not even comparable.

I’d long wondered how Senator Carter Glass, the powerful Virginia Democrat, and his House counterpart, the Alabama congressman Henry Steagall, managed to get it passed. What were the politics like? What did they fight over? Why didn’t people like Sisson have better luck pushing back against it, the way bank lobbyists do today? So I asked the editors at American Banker if they would send me some articles from the era that would shed some light on the question. Happily, they obliged.

The first thing I realized is that all the horse-trading over the bill’s provision was done by Democrats. The Republicans, having been badly defeated in the 1932 election, had no ability to block it or even amend it. For instance, Republicans tended to view the creation of deposit insurance as “socialism.” (Sound familiar?) But it didn’t matter: Steagall cared deeply about deposit insurance. Many community bankers — as strong a force back then as today — also supported the idea because they believed it would renew customers’ faith in the banks, and bring back deposits. (This turned out to be true.) Glass, though skeptical, went along so he could get things he cared about, mainly a stronger Federal Reserve with more power over the banks.

The second thing I realized was that, the Sisson speech notwithstanding, there was surprisingly little controversy over what we now think of as the law’s primary achievement: splitting commercial and investment banking. The fights were all over issues that seem inconsequential by today’s lights. It’s as if the notion of breaking the banking business into two was always a foregone conclusion.

And, for the most part, it was. Partly, this was because, unlike today, bank failures in the 1930s were often ruinous to customers. So reform was more pressing. But it was also because, for the entire time the legislation was under consideration, the Pecora hearings were going on — in which Ferdinand Pecora, the flamboyant chief counsel of the Senate Banking Committee, dragged one well-known banker after another before the committee and grilled them mercilessly, exposing how they had abused their investment banking roles, sometimes to the point of criminality. The Pecora hearings serve as a steady drumbeat in the American Banker articles.

Those hearings infuriated the country, and made it unthinkable that banks would continue to be allowed to sell securities. In fact, some banks, seeing which way the wind was blowing, applauded: “The spirit of speculation should be eradicated from the management of commercial banks,” declared Winthrop Aldrich, the chairman of Chase National Bank, according to Michael Perino, Pecora’s biographer. Ironically, Glass loathed the Pecora hearings, deriding them as “a circus, and the only thing lacking now are peanuts and colored lemonade.” But the hearings made his bill — which had been filibustered by Huey Long just 18 months earlier — not just possible but inevitable.

How inevitable? Charles Geisst, a finance professor at Manhattan College and an expert on the law, says that the House and Senate didn’t even bother with a roll-call vote for final passage. This seminal piece of legislation, which helped keep the banks out of trouble for the next 70-plus years, flew through on a voice vote. On Friday, June 16, 1933, when Roosevelt signed it into law, The American Banker gave the news all of three paragraphs. There was nothing left to say.



Joe Nocera