Tag: citizens united

In Colorado, organizing, infrastructure and fundraising within the Democratic Party and progressive organizations are the stuff of legend. The story of how liberal mega-millionaires and single-minded cooperation on the left turned this formerly solid red state to purple and blue have been told and retold for years. The story of coordination among conservatives groups, however, and the way millions of dollars each election cycle slosh to candidates and causes on the right has received relatively scant attention.

A court ruling in Washington, D.C., on Friday evening may put a stop to the epidemic of secret donors who bankroll political groups that now fill the airwaves with vague and often specious election campaign ads.

On the heels of a new poll that shows 70 percent of Americans think Super PACs should be outlawed, Colorado Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet has joined a task force to craft a new legislative response to blunt the impact from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision allowing corporations and anonymous special interests to spend unlimited sums to influence elections.

Voters deserve to know who is paying for political advertisements, Colorado Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and 10 other senators wrote Tuesday in a letter to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Broadcast media still dominates the world of political campaign ads, which are financed more than ever by interest groups that will play an increasing role in the 2012 presidential election, according to media reports issued this week.

On the 2nd anniversary of the United States Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission, human people gathered on the West Steps of the Colorado Capitol to protest the decision they say granted human-like rights to corporations.

The combative head of an anti-environmentalist Washington, D.C. nonprofit with Colorado roots vowed on Thursday to appeal last week’s Montana Supreme Court ruling upholding the state’s nearly 100-year-old ban on corporate campaign spending.

A Florida congressman has introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. The OCCUPIED Amendment would make it clear that corporations are not people and cannot spend money electioneering.

Last week, New Mexico Senator Tom Udall, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet and five fellow Democratic colleagues, proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would allow Congress to regulate the campaign finance system. Long an advocate of campaign finance reform, Udall seeks to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the Citizens United decision, in which the high court ruled it unconstitutional to regulate the money spent during elections by corporations and unions. In that decision, the Court essentially based its ruling on an earlier Supreme Court decision of 1976, Buckley v. Valeo, which ruled that spending money in elections is a form of speech.

Catholic Answers, an information and advocacy group run by non-clergy members, last week asked the US Supreme Court to examine the way the Internal Revenue Service determines whether or not a nonprofit group has engaged in improper political activity. The group drew the attention of the IRS after criticizing Sen. John Kerry during his bid for president in 2004. To many, a case of this kind will seem long overdue, given the increasingly politicized nature of religious organizations in the United States over the last four decades.