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Comment by insane_dreamer | Hacker News Reader

Citizens United is possibly the worst SCOTUS decision ever, on par with Dred Scott and Plessy v Fergeson. Abomination.

I think the idea that we should also be able to hide our large donations started here, but got reenforced by later decisions. ok, it's your money, you get to send it to whoever you like. but you shouldn't be able to hide. companies shouldn't act as cover for their owners, and if a candidate is largely propped up by the billionaire class then shouldn't voters at least be aware? shouldn't we be allowed to connect the dots and say 'wow, so you're removing protection for these wetlands because this guy threw you a couple million to get elected'?

the problem is that CU is a way for rich people to get around the limits on individual political contributions (which were designed to prevent the rich from having a lot more influence than regular citizens over the voting process)

maybe the downvotes should instead state their arguments as to why Citizens United is a good idea

Didn’t down vote, but it was a good idea because the government in citizens united was arguing the FEC (and therefore by extension the president) should have the power to preemptively restrict political speech that mentions a candidate within months of an election. I would think given the current state of American politics, the downsides of allowing Trump to suppress all political messaging about him in the months leading up to an election if it was paid for with “corporate” money to be obvious.

But more than that, among the organizations on the side of citizens united and against the government in that case were the ACLU and the AFL-CIO. When the civil liberties people and the unions are all on the same side of an issue as the conservative pundits against the federal government, there’s a very good chance the government is very much in the wrong.

except that the _consequence_ of CU was basically unlimited spending on political campaigns by SuperPACs.

the ACLU may have been right about the particulars they were arguing but they missed the bigger picture of how this would open the floodgates of campaign financing

The CU decision didn't foreclose the government from crafting a different law to address the issue in a more narrow and content neutral way, but congress being the dysfunctional clown show that it is, hasn't. CU also didn't really open any floodgates, it left the state of the law in the same state it was 8 years earlier. It's not like the BCRA was a law that had a long and storied history, it was passed and struck down within the span of two presidential terms.

absolutely, it's congress' fault too for not creating new election funding laws

you're right that CU didn't directly open the floodgates, though it did immediately unlock the option for companies to spend from their general funds without limit

But the bigger problem was SCOTUS' decision provided the reasoning that downstream courts could rely on in their decisions, and _those_ opened the floodgates (Speechnow.org vs FEC specifically)

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