The Right's Secret Plan to Help Billionaires Buy Elections

[Nevilledog]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/jd-vance-right-plan-billionaires-elections-1235445122/

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https://archive.li/pm1FD

On the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Roberts Supreme Court, one point of consensus persists: Most Americans believe money corrupts the political process — and they want to overturn the Citizens United precedent that empowers oligarchs to buy elections.

And yet, in two little-noticed cases — including one spearheaded by Vice President J.D. Vance — the high court could soon do the opposite, eliminating the last restrictions on campaign donations and obstructing law enforcement’s efforts to halt bribery.

As we recount in our new book Master Plan, the Citizens United case was the culmination of conservatives’ 50-year master plan to deregulate the campaign finance system and legalize corruption. What started as an incendiary memo from soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell became one ruling equating money with constitutionally protected speech and another extending personhood rights to corporations.

Soon after John Roberts and Sam Alito were installed on the court two decades ago, they helped deliver the apotheosis: 2010’s Citizens United opinion manufacturing the legal fiction that spending by — and donations to — allegedly independent political groups cannot be limited because those expenditures “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

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