Shyster President Lies Again

Our faux lawyer, phony President has done it again. He has again lied about a major holding in the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. This makes the second time. Once in the State of the Union Address, and again last Monday. The first time could have been a mistake. The second time was a lie. Oddly, it's a lie that is aimed at bringing those awful nativist, xenophobic Republicans and Independents into the suppression of free speech camp.

Just in case you've forgotten what the Supreme Court ruling was, the court found that massive restrictions on corporate campaign and political ads are unconstitutional. Putting corporations which receive their funds from voluntary investments from free Americans on a level field with unions that extort their funds from unwilling forced members is not acceptable to the Obamacrats. So Obama lied at the State of the Union address, ultimately prompting Justice Sam Alito to mouth the famous "not true." The alleged Constitutional law professor and Harvard Law editor has had plenty of time to correct his mistake (if it was a mistake), but has chosen instead to repeat the lie. "The Supreme Court campaign-finance ruling allows foreign entities to pour money into US elections."

This time the lie supports his agenda of getting the corporations off the field so the unions and leftist Democrats can win by default. It was made in a Rose Garden speech touting the union-beloved DISCLOSE Act, which effectively requires so much disclosure from corporations in a political ad that there's no time left for the politics. Says the legal genius: "Because of the Supreme Court's decision earlier this year in the Citizens United case, big corporations--even foreign-controlled ones--are now allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money on American elections." For a grandiose President who considers himself a "citizen of the world," that's a pretty strange argument along with being a lie.

He also used the populist expression "special interests" several times to describe corporations, even though he is convinced that big labor is not a special interest. Remember that the "I" in SEIU stands for International. But that's OK, because unions represent the workers of the world united in losing their chains. How can that be a special interest?

Hence, the DISCLOSE Act. The Senate was scheduled to pass the bill on Tuesday, but Republicans and a few moderate Democrats were able to prevent a successful cloture vote on the bill, scoring a victory for free speech and the rule of law. Beside being union-friendly, the Obamists had managed to carve out a few exceptions for ads produced by formerly patriotic corporate organizations. As I've mentioned before, that's the danger inherent in single-issue organizations--throw them a bone on their special issue, and they'll sell out their fellow patriots in a hot New York minute.

One of the juicier provisions of the Act is the requirement of personal appearance in the ad of the CEO of the corporation sponsoring the ad to say that he or she "personally approves of the message." And it required as well that the top funder of the commercial also appear. Then there's the long list of contributors that must be disclosed in the ad if they fit into a certain level of monetary contribution to the message. By some mysterious calculus, the union members whose forced dues go into paying for political ads of which they likely disapprove do not rise to that monetary level, so there's no list of contributors required for union-sponsored ads other than the name of the union itself. Unions also regularly cook the books to show that the percentage of union dues used legally for political purposes is dramatically lower than the true percentage.

The Supreme Court ruling kept in place the rule that neither unions nor corporations can contribute directly to a candidate's campaign, but pretty much everything else is fair game. It also left in place the rule that blocks direct foreign contributions to candidate political campaigns, and changed nothing--absolutely nothing--in existing legislation regarding foreign involvement in issue campaigns. Still, lest some furriners become involved, the DISCLOSE Act specifically aimed its guns at corporations by not only keeping foreign corporations out of American politics, but also American corporations in which 20% or more of the shares are owned by those nasty foreign folks. If the same rule were applied to the SEIU, it would be the political death of the union, considering how many of their members are not American citizens and are often illegal aliens.

The rules that the Supreme Court left untouched include FEC Regulation 11 CFR 110.20(i) which says "A foreign national shall not direct, dictate, control, or directly or indirectly participate in the decision-making process of any person, such as a corporation, labor organization, political committee, or political organization with regard to such person's Federal or non-Federal election-related activities . . . . and 2 USC 441-Section 441(e) prohibiting foreign donations to political campaigns. The restrictions were left untouched, Mr. Obama. Untouched. And you bloody well know it.

The Court went out of its way to stay out of the political arena in the decision, stating per Justice Kennedy, "we need not reach the question whether the Government has a compelling interest in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our Nation's political process." In case the great Chicago professor of constitutional law doesn't understand what that means, the Court was making it clear that the participation of foreigners in elections is a matter solely for the political branches, and not for the Court, and therefore the Court will not rule on the issue. So quit lying, Mr. President.