Alexander Ryking

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin explores how Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a seemingly narrow case about political attack ads, ended up fundamentally changing campaign finance law and becoming the signature decision of the Roberts court. So what could be the next Citizens United? Here’s a look at some of the biggest campaign finance cases working their way through the federal court system, and what they could mean for those who’d like to reform the current system (and roll back Citizens United)…

[New York] is considering a campaign finance law that would repair some of the Citizens United damage, and in a way the Supreme Court wouldn’t be able to touch.

The idea is that to offset the power of large donors, citizens without deep pockets should be encouraged to flood the system with small contributions that the government would match. Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has pledged to a state overhaul of this sort, based on the one already in force for New York City elections…

The New York City program is straightforward: The government gives participating candidates $6 in matching funds for every dollar raised from individuals who live in the city, up to the first $175. At a maximum, this means a $175 contribution is augmented by $1,050 in public funds. That’s a mighty incentive for politicians to involve more citizens in paying for campaigns. In the city system, participating candidates have to live within certain spending and contribution limits. In a new statewide system, there are likely to be no spending restrictions but lower limits on contributions.

The beautiful thing is that this approach should answer most of the criticisms offered by those who defend the Citizens United world.

CEOs of massive corporations are poised to secretly funnel millions of dollars from corporate coffers toward electing corporate candidates in 2012. Join our action to stop them now!

They want to keep their spending in the dark. Thankfully, the Securities and Exchange Commission has the authority to expose their hidden influence. But the SEC isn’t going to act without public pressure.

Tell the SEC: Shine sunlight on corporate spending in elections.

Fifty organizations presented letters to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on Tuesday requesting hearings this year on the need to amend the Constitution to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened the floodgates for unlimited independent campaign spending and gave rise to the infamous Super PAC.

So far in the 112th Congress, lawmakers have introduced 13 constitutional amendment resolutions of varying scope, and dozens more have been introduced in state legislatures. Hearings in the Judiciary Committees would be the next step in moving Congress toward proposing an amendment.

The letter comes just weeks after 350 events, protests and teach-ins in communities across the country gave shape to a mass movement to overturn Citizens United.

“As activists have mobilized and protested across the country,” the letter states, “it is time for Congress to explore in earnest the range of resolutions that have been introduced to undo the harmful effects of the court’s decision.”

Republicans celebrated two years ago when the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed groups, corporations, unions and individuals to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns, as long as those efforts were not coordinated with the campaigns.

They now realize that the new unregulated money is one of the main reasons, whether for good or bad, that the race continues and remains so unpredictable.

Before that ruling, when a campaign ran out of money, the candidate usually dropped out. Fundraising networks were also the tool by which the establishment bestowed its benediction upon a favorite contender and crowded everyone else out.

[T]his cycle, our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands.

Over the last few months, Super PACs affiliated with Republican presidential candidates have spent more than $40 million on television and radio, almost all of it for negative ads…

With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm.

Corporations appear to be embracing, albeit slowly, new campaign rules that allow them to make direct contributions to political groups.

The super PACs that have been playing a significant role this election season are getting more of their funding from corporate coffers — 23 percent, according to an analysis of federal records…

Advocacy groups are pushing for a new rule that would require public companies to disclose all of their political activity to shareholders in annual reports, arguing that disclosure would prevent risks to the business.

“There’s really no way for shareholders to have any say in how money is being spent, even though it’s their money,” said Mark Ladov, a counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which is helping to push for the rule.

[A]scribing an outrageous decision to naivetéis actually the most sympathetic way of looking at what the court did in Citizens United. A more troubling interpretation is that a conservative majority knew exactly what it was doing: that it set out to remake our political system by fiat in order to strengthen the hand of corporations and the wealthy. Seen this way, Citizens United was an attempt by five justices to push future electoral outcomes in a direction that would entrench their approach to governance.

In fact, this decision should be seen as part of a larger initiative by moneyed conservatives to rig the electoral system against their opponents. How else to explain conservative legislation in state after state to obstruct access to the ballot by lower-income voters — particularly members of minority groups — through voter identification laws, shortened voting periods and restrictions on voter registration campaigns?

Conservatives are strengthening the hand of the rich at one end of the system and weakening the voting power of the poor at the other.

Rarely have so few imposed such damage on so many. When five conservative members of the Supreme Court handed for-profit corporations the right to secretly flood political campaigns with tidal waves of cash on the eve of an election, they moved America closer to outright plutocracy, where political power derived from wealth is devoted to the protection of wealth. It is now official: Just as they have adorned our athletic stadiums and multiple places of public assembly with their logos, corporations can officially put their brand on the government of the United States as well as the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the fifty states.

Citizens United is but the latest battle in the class war waged for thirty years from the top down by the corporate and political right. Instead of creating a fair and level playing field for all, government would become the agent of the powerful and privileged. Public institutions, laws, and regulations, as well as the ideas, norms, and beliefs that aimed to protect the common good and helped create America’s iconic middle class, would become increasingly vulnerable. The Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow succinctly summed up results: “The redistribution of wealth in favor of the wealthy and of power in favor of the powerful.” In the wake of Citizens United, popular resistance is all that can prevent the richest economic interests in the country from buying the democratic process lock, stock, and barrel.

When the conservative financier Charles Koch sent out invitations for a political retreat in Palm Springs later this month, he highlighted past appearances at the gathering of “notable leaders” like Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court…

The group, Common Cause, filed a petition with the Justice Department on Wednesday asking it to investigate whether Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas should have recused themselves in the case involving Citizens United because of their attendance at past retreats organized by the conservative financier Charles Koch, whose company operates a foundation that is a major [right-wing] contributor to [right-wing] political advocacy groups.

Common Cause also cited the role of Mr. Thomas’s wife, Virginia Thomas, in forming a [right-wing] political group opposed to the Obama administration as grounds for his disqualification.