Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders says he has a litmus test for potential Supreme Court justices: They must be ready and willing to overturn Citizens United. That’s the horrid 2010 law that equates corporations with people and allows big money to pervert the US electoral campaign system. Speaking before students at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics earlier today, Sanders said he wants to keep billionaires from having an undue influence on the nation’s elections, CNN reports.
“No nominee of mine to the United States Supreme Court will get that job,” Sanders insisted, “unless he or she is loud and clear that one of their first orders of business will be to overturn Citizens United.”
The self-proclaimed democratic socialist calls for public campaign financing, saying the present system is a “sad state of affairs.”
From the Bernie 2016 website:
Public funding, he [said], would level the political playing field and make elections more competitive. It also would let candidates spend more time meeting voters and discussing issues and less time raising campaign funds.
“That’s called democracy and I am going to do everything I can to bring that about,” Sanders said.
… Citizens United … and others which followed in its wake have gutted decades-old limits on campaign funding and paved the way for millionaires and billionaires to spend unlimited sums to influence election outcomes. …
“We are increasingly living in an oligarchy where big money is buying politicians,” Sanders added.
He cited former President Jimmy Carter’s concerns about how the Citizens United ruling [results] in “unlimited political bribery.”
I’m with Bernie. Citizens United, the unlimited funds of boorish billionaires like the Koch Brothers, and situations such as the Super PAC funding for David Fox’s campaign that poisoned the recent mayoral race are all such jiggery pokery.
Agree? Help the Sanders campaign: Nashville for Bernie holds its twice monthly organizing meeting tonight at the Nashville 4 Bernie Sanders Club House, 1200 49th Ave. N, 37206. For more info, call 615-207-5803 or visit the Sanders campaign site.
