If you have yet to hear the words "Super PAC" this year, plan on hearing them a great deal between now and the November General Election. Sadly, they're the effects of something we've been telling you about for quite a while now.
We've written about it extensively before, so we'll only summarize it here.
Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission first came before the Supreme Court in 2008, and it was decided two years ago this month. In short, the Supreme Court decision eliminated most major regulations on campaign financing, and left the door open for a special type of Political Action Committee to develop - the Super PAC. That type of PAC has truly altered the entire political landscape - and not for the better.
Unlike candidates, who have a limit on how much money they can take from individual donors, corporations, and unions, Super PACs have NO limit on how much money they can take in - or what candidate or cause they can support. What's more, Super PACs don't have to disclose who is giving them money in a timely fashion, and to a large degree, even how much money they've received, until long after the election is over. From casino magnates to former employees, and from major religious officials to members of a candidate's family, almost any American can be a Super PAC donor or operator.
That lack of timely reporting is a major loophole. While U.S. election law says that foreign interests, individuals, and corporations aren't supposed to donate money to American political campaigns, since Super PACs don't legally have to tell the FEC - the Federal Election Commission - who their donors are before the election, if a Super PAC is taking foreign money, who can tell? By the time it's known they've broken a rule, they can get away with paying a relatively small fine - with the candidate they helped sitting safely in office.
Of course, Super PACs can't directly coordinate with the candidate or the cause they nominally support. But other than that one major rule, Super PACs can do pretty much anything they want. They can even do what candidates say publicly that they don't want the Super PAC to do.
Of course, what those behind the Super PACs want to do is to collect vast sums of money.
So far this year, the numerous Super PACs that already exist have spent - not collected, but SPENT - $27.5 million dollars, according to a report by the Center for Responsive Politics. The final figure you've likely heard bounced around - as we have - for the final cost of all this political deregulation looks to be more than two billion dollars, for just this year's Presidential race. That's more than a billion dollars apiece spent by or for both the President and whoever the GOP nominee ends up being (likely Mitt Romney) by the finish of the Presidential election this year. The total tally looks to be closer to $6 billion dollars.
All because there are very few election rules with any kinds of teeth right now, mostly thanks to the Citizens United decision by our activist Supreme Court.
This ridiculous farce of swiss-cheesed pseudo-rules has become the primary focus of comedians Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart of Comedy Central, over the course of the last couple of weeks. Colbert has created a legitimate and fully legal Super PAC of his own, and using our currently worthless laws, has already run political ads on TV and online that have jokingly called Mitt Romney a serial killer and told South Carolina voters to vote for "Herman Cain" - while a picture of Colbert fills the screen.
The point that Colbert and Stewart make - and the point of a growing number of media figures from across the political spectrum, including us - is that having a system where these kinds of entities are allowed is a farce and an insult to our democratic republic.
For those idealists who somehow believe money doesn't rule our political system, this fact should make things crystal clear - right now, 94% of all federal offices go to the candidate who raises the most money.
What we have is no longer a system of politics and justice. It's the world's most expensive puppet show. As long as we allow it to continue, only the richest individuals and corporations will get a real say in how our government is run. The rest of us will simply be bystanders, while our politicians remain puppets controlled by the whims of the wealthiest idiots on Earth.
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