hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
- Messages
- 26,575
Another aspect of the Citizen's United ruling which shows how little Roberts actually cares about the rule of law was the way he contrived to create and allow SuperPACs (super political action committees) with ground rules that are completely unenforceable. Basically, Roberts created these new entities called SuperPACs which are allowed to advertise and campaign for a candidate with essentially no restrictions on where there money comes from or how much they raise - neatly sidestepping the limits placed on campaigns themselves. To prevent these new entities from becoming arms of the campaigns themselves (and thus subjecting them to the financing limits of the campaigns), Roberts specified that they can't coordinate with the campaigns directly.
Unfortunately (or perhaps, intentionally), the guidelines to prevent coordination are effectively non-existent. It was immediately obvious to everyone that this system of non-coordination was completely nonviable and Roberts is surely smart enough to have foreseen this. Almost immediately, pundits were poking holes in this new system and within weeks two famous comedians (John Stewart and Stephen Colbert) had created a legitimate SuperPAC which they used to publicly flaunt the no-coordination rules in an effort to show how ridiculous and unworkable they are. I believe since then many campaigns and SuperPACs have been caught red-handed coordinating their efforts but there is effectively no sanction mechanisms or procedures to catch and stop this from happening.
All this goes to show that despite paying lip service to the notion of integrity at the SCOTUS, Roberts is not at all above contriving silly rulings that enable horrible behavior that ostensibly the rulings should have stopped.
And of course this big problem with Citizen's United is on top of the massive problems of the way the case was argued and the way it completely gutted campaign finance reform. The case was a massive miscarriage of justice on many, many levels.
Unfortunately (or perhaps, intentionally), the guidelines to prevent coordination are effectively non-existent. It was immediately obvious to everyone that this system of non-coordination was completely nonviable and Roberts is surely smart enough to have foreseen this. Almost immediately, pundits were poking holes in this new system and within weeks two famous comedians (John Stewart and Stephen Colbert) had created a legitimate SuperPAC which they used to publicly flaunt the no-coordination rules in an effort to show how ridiculous and unworkable they are. I believe since then many campaigns and SuperPACs have been caught red-handed coordinating their efforts but there is effectively no sanction mechanisms or procedures to catch and stop this from happening.
All this goes to show that despite paying lip service to the notion of integrity at the SCOTUS, Roberts is not at all above contriving silly rulings that enable horrible behavior that ostensibly the rulings should have stopped.
And of course this big problem with Citizen's United is on top of the massive problems of the way the case was argued and the way it completely gutted campaign finance reform. The case was a massive miscarriage of justice on many, many levels.
Last edited:
