PEOPLE FOR BLOG

People for the American Way is proud to announce a cluster of new Young Elected Progressives endorsee primary victories this week:

On 11 September,  Bryan Townsend won the Democratic primary for the state senate seat in Delaware's 11th District; he defeated incumbent Anthony Deluca and will run against Republican Evan Queitsch on 6 November.

Meanwhile, in New York's 13 September primaries, Micah Zellner won the Democratic primary for the state assembly's 76th District and Andrew Gounardes won the Democratic primary for the state assembly's 26th District; both ran unopposed and will face Republican opponents on 6 November.

Once again, PFAW congratulates these young progressive leaders on their important success this week!

The Senate Judiciary Committee held an important hearing this morning on the tremendous impact the Supreme Court will have on whether the American people will be allowed to retain control of our own democracy. Testimony focused on the Court's decision in Citizens United and the role the Court will play in upcoming cases in preserving individual citizens' voting rights.

Professor Anthony Johnstone of the University of Montana School of Law testified about Montana's experience with out-of-state corporations corrupting that state's elections. He also contrasted the Court's deep skepticism of the legislature in Citizens United to its deference in Crawford, the case that upheld a strict voter-ID law that strips Americans of their right to vote. Elisabeth MacNamara, president of the League of Women Voters, testified on the nationwide assault on voters that threatens to silence targeted communities through strict voter-ID laws, inaccurate voter purges, restrictions or elimination of early voting, proof-of-citizenship requirements, and outrageous barriers to voter registration drives. As she noted, fair and just courts are the key to protecting the right to vote that our democracy is based on.

The third witness, invited by committee Republicans, was litigator Michael Carvin. Carvin defended Citizens United and harshly criticized that part of the Voting Rights Act that requires federal approval of voting law changes in areas with a history of racial discrimination. Personally, my favorite part of the hearing was when he essentially said that corporations were sitting this election out:

Notwithstanding recent uniformed and irresponsible speculation, corporate expenditures and speech in the wake of Citizens United have not overtaken the political marketplace or drowned out speech by individuals acting alone. To the contrary, recent election cycles have seen an explosion of political participation and contributions by individual voters, and no cognizable uptick in corporate political activity.

I am not aware of any major, for-profit corporation running a single political advertisement in its own name. And the data from the 2012 Republican Presidential primary elections completely refutes the overheated rhetoric that corporations are taking over the political world. Each of the eight leading Republican Presidential candidates was supported by an independent expenditure-only committee—the so-called Super PACs. Notwithstanding the fears of some that wealthy for-profit corporations would dominate politics, we now know from the disclosures filed with the FEC that not a single one of the Fortune 100 companies contributed a single cent to any of these eight Super PACs.

Left unsaid is that corporations are spending their money in secret to make sure voters don't know what they're up to. For instance, an informative article in The Nation last week pointed out the enormous amounts being spent to affect our elections by 501(c)(6) trade associations and 501(c)(4) issue-advocacy groups. Whether it's PhRMA, Big Oil, or the Chamber of Commerce, the last thing that corporate interests are doing this year is sitting out the election. In many parts of the country, the airwaves are being blanketed by propaganda that they have paid for.

Whether it's corporate-bought elections, or corporate-supported elected officials gaming the system to prevent disfavored Americans from voting, our democracy is facing a grave threat.

Late yesterday, the Senate voted 89-1 to confirm Stephanie Rose as a district court judge in Iowa. President Obama has now had 72 women confirmed to the federal bench so far in his presidency – the same number as George W. Bush had in 8 years.

President Obama has made it a priority to nominate not only highly qualified, mainstream consensus nominees, but also ones who reflect the great diversity of the American people. Most prominent, of course, are Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Among his confirmed lower court nominees so far, 65% have been women or people of color (37% have been people of color, and 44% have been women).

Unfortunately, from the beginning of President Obama's term, Senate Republicans have pulled out the stops to block his nominees from ever reaching the bench. The overwhelming majority of them are approved by the Judiciary Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support, usually with no opposition at all. They then proceed to the Senate floor, where ... their nominations languish.

Abusing the power granted to the minority party under Senate rules, Republicans simply refuse to give the consent that is generally needed in order to schedule a confirmation vote. So while President Bush's confirmed district court nominees on average got a floor vote 33 days after committee approval, President Obama's have been forced to wait an absurd 96 days, nearly three times longer. Republicans generally do not say why they are preventing a vote on consensus nominees – they just do it and hope that the public doesn't notice their transparent obstructionism.

There are still be another 17 pending district court nominations that the Senate could vote on today:

• Twelve were nominated to positions where the workload is so high they have been officially declared judicial emergencies.
• All but two were approved by the Judiciary Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support.
• Yet seven of them have been waiting since June or earlier for a vote from the full Senate.

Five of the district court nominees being blocked by Senate Republicans are women or people of color. They include Gonzalo Curiel, a California Latino who Republicans have forced to wait 133 days (and still counting) since clearing committee. Lorna Schofield could have become the first person of Filipino descent in American history to be named as an Article III federal judge any time since July 19, but Republicans have not allowed the Senate to vote. Brian Davis, an African American who has served as a Florida state judge for nearly 20 years, has not been allowed a confirmation vote even though the Judiciary Committee approved him back in June. Also waiting since June is Jesus Bernal, a Latino who has served in the public defender's office in California since 1996.

The American people are benefiting from the more diverse federal bench that President Obama is creating, with Stephanie Rose being an excellent example. But Americans deserve better than to have Republicans obstruct every nomination, no matter what, simply because it was made by Barack Obama. Every one of the 17 remaining pending district court nominees should be voted on this month, before the Senate leaves for its next recess.

At 6:00 p.m. on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, Arizona officials announced the granting of a multi-million dollar contract to Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison giant, for the operation of one thousand medium security prison beds.  The grant was not exactly a big surprise; CCA had hired as lobbyists people close to Gov. Jan Brewer.

What should be more surprising is that officials are arguing with a straight face that the deal is good for taxpayers, in spite of evidence to the contrary.  As the Arizona Republic reported,

The contract calls for CCA to be paid a per diem rate of $65.43 per bed. The most recent information available shows the average daily cost per inmate in a state-run medium-custody facility in 2010 was $48.42. The award to CCA is 35percent more than what it cost the state to house and monitor inmates two years ago.

Unfortunately for taxpayers, Arizona officials have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to tap taxpayers in order to advance an anti-government ideology and boost the profits of a company that is generous with its spending on lobbying and campaign contributions. 

People For the American Way Foundation’s recent report “Predatory Privatization” noted that private prisons in Arizona cost the state as much as $7 million more in 2009 and 2010 than units operated by the state department of corrections.  The report also noted CCA’s aggressive expansion plans:

Earlier this year, CCA wrote to officials in 48 states offering to buy and run prisons if states would guarantee a 90 percent occupancy rate. A coalition of religious groups urged state officials to turn down the offer, which the groups said would create an incentive for mass incarceration and “be costly to the moral strength of your state” as well as costly financially.

This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

In today's polarized political climate, there are a few things on which American voters overwhelmingly agree. For all our disputes, we can find common ground in this: we're completely fed up. About 80 percent of us don't think Congress is doing a good job. Only aboutone third of us view the federal government favorably. In a precipitous drop, less than half of Americans have a favorable view of the Supreme Court. Across all political lines, 75 percent of Americans say there is too much money in politics, and about the same percentage think this glut of money in politics gives the rich more power than the rest in our democracy.

Interestingly, another thing that most Americans have in common is that 80 percent of us have never heard of Citizens United v. FEC, the case in which the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. Our feelings of frustration with Washington are deeply connected with the widespread, and entirely founded, suspicion that our elected officials aren't representing voters, but are instead indebted to the wealthy interests that pay for their campaigns. This distrust has only deepened as politicians and the courts have handed over more and more power to those with the deepest pockets.

Citizens United is only the most famous of the recent spate of Supreme Court decisions aimed at eliminating hard-won campaign finance regulations. In fact, shortly before Citizens United, the George W. Bush-created right-wing bloc of the Supreme Court issued major rulings that had already begun to undermine decades of federal clean election laws.

And we are only partway down the slippery slope. It keeps getting worse as the Supreme Court gradually dismantles state-level clean elections laws, as it did in Arizona, and clarifies that its sweeping decision in Citizens United applies to states as well, as it did in Montana. Indeed, it won't be long before this or some future right-wing Supreme Court cuts to the chase and lifts the century-old ban on direct corporate contributions to political candidates, one of the most basic checks we have against widespread corruption.

Believe it or not, this November, we'll have the chance to vote on whether this slippery slope continues, or whether we stop it and roll it back. Each of these regressive campaign finance rulings has had a monumental impact on our democracy. It's easy to forget that they have been made by one-vote 5-4 majorities of the Supreme Court. That means we're just one Supreme Court vote away from stopping the trend in its tracks -- and even reversing it. Although Mitt Romney has flip-flopped on many issues, he's crystal clear about how he feels on this issue and exactly what kind of judge he would appoint to the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts. He has said he believes "corporations are people" and he means it. He's promised to nominate more Supreme Court justices like the ones who handed down Citizens United. And his chief judicial adviser, former judge Robert Bork, is legendary in his opposition to individual voting rights while advocating expansive corporate power. On this issue in particular, President Obama has been very clear and comes down unambiguously on the opposite side. Look no further than his Supreme Court picks so far. Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor have consistently resisted the right-wing court's radical transformation of our democracy. In fact, his nominees now represent half the votes in the High Court who are standing up for democracy against "government by and for" the highest bidder.

Some 2008 Obama voters may not be thrilled by the last four years. Some may even be considering giving Mitt Romney a chance, despite their misgivings. But no matter who your candidate is, what issues you care about or on what side you come down on them, most importantly your vote this November will likely determine the Supreme Court for a generation. If Romney has the opportunity to replace one of the more moderate Supreme Court justices, the Court's far-right majority will not remain narrow. The votes will be there to dismantle any remaining limits of money in politics for the foreseeable future. Conversely, future Obama appointments give Americans the chance to halt this downward spiral and the opportunity to reclaim our democracy.

Whatever the issues you most care about, this November's election will be a choice between two Supreme Courts. And the two alternatives could not be more different. Quite simply, this is the chance that the overwhelming majority of Americans -- who recognize that there is too much money in politics and that it is corrupting our government at every level -- finally have to vote on it.

Will we seize this opportunity?