PAYING THE PRICE FOR FREE SPEECH
posted by Michael Chihak
In politics, money talks. Just ask the U.S. Supreme Court, which has ruled that people and corporations, which the court says are people, are exercising their right to free speech when they donate money to political campaigns.
So in politics, that’s how money talks. And these days, money is having a lot to say. Or more accurately, those with money are having a lot to say. Even scarier, politicians are listening, more than ever before.
Quarterly reports on campaign financing are coming out this week, and we’re hearing big figures for campaign cash, although we’re still a year away from the next national election.
What we’re hearing, though, is only a small part of the story. The biggest dollars are being raised without being reported and without any transparency. And they’ll be spent pretty much without disclosure of who’s behind them.
The spending, big spending, will manifest itself in your mailbox and on your TV screen. And, by the account of one political analyst, Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, it won’t be pretty.
" ... outside groups are going to come in and buy up all the television time, and the candidates are going to have an increasingly difficult time having their own voices heard directly because they won't be able to buy the prime-time spots," Ornstein said in an interview for Arizona Week.
"So brace yourselves. For the commercial statios, it's going to be a great year ... For the rest of us, it's going to be awful;."
Behind those TV spots will be organizations and individuals lurking in the shadows of politics, hiding their identities but wanting their points of view and influence to prevail.
They come from all along the political spectrum, and they are driven by the desire to keep the status quo. They, and their money, are speaking loudly, and anonymously.
And while according to the Supreme Court, it’s free speech, there’s little prospect of freedom in it.
Caveat civis – let the citizen beware.
More from Norman Ornstein on Arizona Week, 8:30 p.m. MST on PBS-HD-6 or at azweek.com.
