Sadly, the DISCLOSE Act, part of the remedy to Citizens United, has been held up by Senate Republicans.  Joe Lieberman, for some reason, had to miss the vote, though he plans to vote with the Democrats next time around, but the ball got left in Senator Olympia Snowe’s court, and she continued to prove that there is no such thing as a moderate Republican.  Basically, the DISCLOSE Act requires that companies and interests groups (with some exceptions that a few powerful interests, namely the NRA, got into the bill) to reveal their contributors, have CEOs stand by the ads their corporate PACs fund, and ban foreign money.  Somehow, apparently, requiring the people who put up ads like what we saw in the Senate race here to reveal who they are counts as silencing critics in the view of Minority Leader McConnell.

Free speech exists for the benefit of the people and for our democracy.  To put it simply, it guarantees the free flow of ideas that a free country needs to survive.  But if the Supreme Court is going to interpret the First Amendment to allow corporations to buy elections, then we should at least get to know who’s buying them.  Apparently, Republicans would rather let shadowy corporate contributors operate in secret-even foreign companies.  But hey, they are their base after all.

The DCCC apparently didn’t get the memo that Tim Griffin was supposed to be coronated in the second district. They’re calling for him to say where he stands on the DISCLOSE Act:

Career DC insider Tim Griffin, who is best known as a backroom political operative in Washington, owes it to Arkansas voters to reveal how he would have voted on the DISCLOSE ACT, a bipartisan plan which requires transparency and disclosure in campaign spending by the Big Special Interests – including Wall Street banks and foreign companies.

“Tim Griffin made a career out of protecting special interests in Washington,” said Jesse Ferguson, Southern Regional Press Secretary at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Tim Griffin now needs to tell voters if he thinks these same Wall Street Interests and foreign companies should be able to spend unlimited money without any accountability to influence his race and others across the country. Arkansas voters certainly don’t think the CEOs on Wall Street or companies from China and India should be telling them how to vote, does Griffin disagree?”

That’s not the only thing that Griffin, and John Boozman, Rick Crawford, and Steve Womack for that matter, need to come clean on. Day after day after day we see how corporations are out of control in this country and they have allies in the form of the Republican Party (and conservative Democrats). The DISCLOSE Act barely passed the House and Wall Street Reform may be in jeopardy now. Boozman, Crawford, Griffin, and Womack all need to say where they stand on DISCLOSE, Wall Street Reform, and the Citizens United decision. It’s a simple question, do they stand with the American people or with big business. Yeah, we know the answer to that one…

Good news from Congress tonight as the House passes the DISCLOSE Act, the first major step in fixing the mess that the Citizens United unleashed by gutting regulations of corporate contributions in campaign finance law.  The DISCLOSE Act isn’t perfect.  But it’s a good start in increasing the transparancy of the ads that fly back and forth, and there are going to be plenty of corporations who aren’t going to be willing to stand by things like those racist ads we saw ran against Bill Halter.

Speaking of which, you’ll recall that the Chamber of Commerce was quick to tell me that they weren’t behind those ads.  As such, you would think they’d come out and support a bill that simply requires corporations, unions, etc. to come out and make it clear that they’re the ones backing these ads.  You know, just to make sure they’re not blamed for that kind of stuff again.  But apparently not:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce: “The Democratic majority in the House jammed through a piece of legislation that clearly violates the Constitution, as well as basic principles of fairness and equity. The Supreme Court calls it ‘viewpoint discrimination,’ and every first-year law student knows that it’s illegal.”

Anyway, I digress.  All three of our Democratic House members voted for this bill, and that’s something to applaud!  Boozman voted no, and if I were Blanche Lincoln, I’d take note.  (Granted, she’d have more credibility on corporate abuses if she wasn’t doing the Walton’s dirty work.)  So yeah, contact Marion Berry, Vic Snyder, and, yes, even Mike Ross, and thank them for doing this.  Yeah, we have some serious problems with two out of three on that list, especially the last one, but it’s the old carrots and sticks approach.  We should reward good behavior and encourage more of the same.  (Although, I personally think using the stick is more effective…)

To be sure, this isn’t the end of the road by a long shot.  This bill still has the Senate to make it through, and it’s very important that we pressure Mark Pryor and especially Blanche Lincoln to vote yes.  Then we have to start pushing for more aggressive reform, and I’ll have something on that tomorrow…

More proof that the entrenched money interests run Washington. Yes the NRA counts as an “entrenched money interest”. Do you really think the gun lobby would be so powerful or would try to make guns such a big issue if it wasn’t a billion dollar industry?

Increasingly, it has started to look like the answer to the Citizens United ruling was the DISCLOSE Act, which would basically increase the transparency in ads like those that we saw running all through the Senate primary from both sides. But the NRA and their pet Democrats managed to carve out a nice little exception for the organization:

The NRA had objected to some of the strict financial disclosure provisions that Democrats have proposed for corporations and politically active nonprofits and that had kept moderate, pro-gun Democrats from backing the legislation.

But if the NRA signs off on the deal, the bill could come to the House floor as early as this week. The NRA said it would not comment until specific legislative language is revealed.

An NRA official also noted that the group would not be supporting the bill but would not actively oppose it if the deal with the Democratic leadership holds up.

The legislation in question is designed to restore more campaign finance rules in the wake of last year’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which removed prohibitions on corporations and unions running TV ads opposing or backing candidates in the run-up to an election.

And what are the Democrats that have worked out this deal saying about it?

Democrats are justifying the NRA exemption, saying the organization has a long history of being involved in the political process, and they say the real goal of the new campaign finance bill is to expose corporations and unions that create ambiguous front groups to run attack ads during campaigns. Unions would not be allowed to use the NRA exemption.

North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler, an NRA backer and conservative Democrat, proved to be pivotal to the NRA deal. Shuler was the first to offer an amendment to exempt the NRA and other nonprofits from the legislation, but that move drew objections from campaign watchdog groups.

“There were a number of concerns that the DISCLOSE Act could hinder or penalize the efforts of certain long-standing, member-driven organizations who have historically acted in good faith,” Shuler said, referring to the NRA. “Most of those concerns are addressed within the manager’s amendment.”

You know another organization that has long been involved in the political process that has historically “acted in good faith” (or at least as much as the NRA has)? The AFL-CIO. But as Ezra points out, can you imagine the screaming if Democrats had tried to carve out an exception like this for unions? Hell, go beyond that? What if it was for ACORN? Or the Human Rights Campaign? Or any other progressive organization for that matter? And notice, the NRA didn’t say they’d support the act now, just that they wouldn’t aggressively oppose it, which may well be a promise grounded in sand.

I’ve said it many times here before and I’ll repeat myself. I’ve got no problem with guns and I’m all for the 2nd Amendment just as I am for every other part of the Constitution. But the right to bear arms is not absolute any more than any other right is-felons and the mentally ill shouldn’t be able to get a gun, no one has the right to a machine gun or a bazooka or armor piercing rounds, and guns don’t belong in a school or a church or a park or anywhere near the President. And yeah, they should have to disclose their donor list and their responsibility for their ads just like everyone else. I know a lot of members of the NRA, and the ones I do know are on board with commonsense stuff like this. Unfortunately the organization is run by a bunch of jackasses.