The bipartisan Citizens United sleeper cell
by digby
Jonathan over at Michael Moore’s place reminds us all of the unintentional hilarity of the Citizens’ United opinion:
[W]e now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption…The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.
That is a knee-slapper. He then talks about the Chrystia Freeland article in the New Yorker about the whining greedheads (which I wrote about here.)And then delivers the punchline:
Scaramucci, the organizer of the dinner, told me the next day that the guests had witnessed the “activation” of a “sleeper cell” of hedge-fund managers against Obama. “That’s what you see happening in the hedge-fund community, because they now have the power, because of Citizens United, to aggregate capital into political-action committees and to influence the debate,” he said…“If there’s a pope of this movement, it’s Lee Cooperman.”
(And the punchline is … The Aristocrats!)
He then makes a serious point about what this means in light of the Supremes’ starry eyed idealism (or deep dishonesty, depending how you look at it) he notes that there were politicians there too, notably Al Gore and LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Gore was standoffish, but good old Antonio was there tugging his forelock and eagerly giving Cooperman his private phone number. (He was the Chairman of the Democratic Convention at the time.)
As Jonathan says, here’s what we are supposed to believe:
1. Billionaires will get together in Las Vegas to plan political strategy—and their honored guests aren’t Republicans, but Democrats.
2. The hedge fund managers at the meeting openly talk about how, thanks to Citizens United, they’re forming a “sleeper cell” to “aggregate capital.” The head of this sleeper cell will be a guy who compares Barack Obama to Hitler.
3. The mayor of Los Angeles, who’s going to be running the Democratic National Convention in three months, will give his direct phone number to the guy who compares Barack Obama to Hitler.
4. Nevertheless, none of this gives rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption, or will cause Americans to lose faith in our democracy.
I think it’s fair to say that we’ve now heard from the mouth of the billionaires themselves, the ones who love Citizens United so much, that the Citizens United decision was total garbage.
Indeed, it was. Honestly it reminds me of the movie Casino. Las Vegas was the perfect venue for this meeting.
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