Man! Dude! Session #274

(D)ude: Man! What happened at the Supreme Court yesterday?  

(M)an: Dude! Calculated injustice, specifically lifting the total limit on how many candidates a financial contributor can back with his or her money. There were limits set twice in history on the amount of direct donations a person could contribute, through the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, its amended version in 1974 that set up what is known as the aggregate limit, or the total amount overall that one can donate annually to a national political party, and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which divided the calendar year into two and took into consideration inflation in order to construct an aggregate limit.

D: Man! What was the difference between what John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Samuel Alito decreed and what Clarence Thomas concurred? What’s the concurrence?

M: Dude! Clarence Thomas wanted to go a step further and erase all the limits on financial contributions, including erasing the aggregate limit altogether, including a rule of the campaign finance reform still in effect that basically says that a person cannot give more than $2,600 dollars per election cycle to the candidates they want to endorse.   

D: Man! So, I still cannot give aimless amounts of money to all the candidates I would like to endorse?

M: Dude! Yeah, you can only give $2,600 dollars per candidate every election cycle, but Clarence Thomas wanted that aggregate limit tossed out as well.

D: Man! What does this Supreme Court decision mean for the nation? What about US?

M: Dude! The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the aggregate limits that the John Roberts Supreme Court struck down yesterday. The plaintiffs in the District Court case became the appellants in the Supreme Court case, which goes by the title McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission 2014.

D: Man! What about the Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 2010?

M: Dude! Well, the District Court sided with the Federal Election Commission and President Obama’s Administration’s concerns concerning what the three District Court judges spelled out in their written decision as needing federal regulating, as a means of preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption.

D: Man! What needed federal regulating specifically? And how are the decisions in Citizens United and McCutcheon related?

M: Dude! Campaign finance needs regulating by the federal government, according to the U.S. 

District Court for the District of Columbia. But the Supreme Court basically axed that provision of campaign finance reform in yesterday’s decision.

D: Man! What about Citizens United?

M: Dude! Apparently, there are two terms that were distinguishable prior to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

D: Man! Did the Supreme Court of the United States basically side with the Republican appellants there as well?

M: Dude! The Supreme Court of the United States decided that there would be no limits on independent expenditures, but there would be a cap on contributions.

D: Man! Huh? Independent expenditures and contributions? What’s the difference?

M: Dude! The Koch Bothers and Sheldon Adelson can basically make all the commercials they want supporting and promoting their Republican Tea GOP candidates and calling for the defeat of their Democratic challengers. The Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson just can’t support and promote their candidates by consulting and corroborating one-to-one with the actual candidates and political parties that court their interests.

D: Man! Who is the appellant McCutcheon anyways?

M: Dude! Shaun McCutcheon is a Birmingham, Alabama CEO and Republican Party Executive 

Committee member in Jefferson County, Alabama since the 1990’s and could possibly have played a major hand in the sewerage rates and water rates increasing 329% on his watch in Jefferson County and leading residents in its poorest districts to rely on unsanitary conditions like portable toilets that private sanitation companies charge to empty out on a monthly basis and the actual utilization of outhouses while bathing in bottled water from the local gas station.   

D: Man! Who covered the story? The New York Times? That’s certainly front page news for the United States, isn’t it?

M: Dude! Of course not! Brian Wheeler covered the story brilliantly for BBC News on December 14, 2011.  

D: Man! December 14, 2011? Don’t say it! The Jefferson County Republican Party Executive Committee most likely placed the blame on President Obama’s watch?

M: Dude! President Clinton’s! The local politicians oversaw the rapid degradation of Jefferson County’s sewerage facilities before the federal government came in and demanded that Jefferson County replace its tattered infrastructure in 1996, but that too was forgot when the first unelected president of the United States assumed office in 2001.

D: Man! President George Walker Bush?

M: Dude! Yes! The financial crisis on Bush #43’s watch hiked the price from $300M in 1996 to over $3B in 2008 due to construction mishaps and shady financial dealings concerning bonds and other derivatives.

D: Man! That’s despicable! Bonds and mortgages comprise one category of derivatives?

M: Dude! Yeah! Wikipedia gives excellent lessons on what exactly is involved in the contracts made between two entities, giving the example of the wheat farmer and the miller agreeing to a future contract involving a specific amount of wheat for a certain prearranged pricing.

D: Man! What about the possibility of drought or other unforeseeable results due to climate change?

M: Dude! The United States House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee comprising of Republican Tea GOP Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan and Republican Tea GOP Vice Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee make it inevitable that the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget and agenda will be devastated, if not ravaged.

D: Man! Somebody outside of the Republican Tea GOP needs to construct their House Energy and Commerce Committee’s website!

M: Dude! The House of Representatives and the Supreme Court in the United States have obscured the system of checks and balances in our democracy.

D: Man! We need to evolve as a democracy and embrace a system that moves beyond Montesquieu 

and John Calvin!

M: Dude! We need to get the citizens of the United States reengaged in the political process enough to register and come out to vote on November 4, 2014. And the Democratic Senate Majority needs to demand that candidates like Kesha Rogers in Texas not be able to run as members of their political party.

D: Man! If the Democratic Party cannot call out pretenders like Kesha Rogers—who, by the way, is running for the United States Senate position in Texas and trying to dissolve David Alameel’s chances of representing Texas Democrats during Tuesday, May 27, 2014 Democratic runoff election—then the Democratic Party can only be labeled unprepared for Election Day Tuesday, November 4, 2014!

M: Dude! Amen!

D: Man! Alameel!