Free speech in campaign reform should be consistent
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Editor,
Shortly after the 2013 Presidential Inauguration, Organizing for America, the Obama campaign fund-raising organization formed by the Democratic National Committee morphed into Organizing for Action (OFA), an organization with the stated goal of promoting Obama’s second term agenda. This translates to millions of dollars in financial support for federal and state left wing “progressive” candidates and issues. OFA was readily granted 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status by the IRS, meaning it can accept unlimited corporate contributions and has already received funds from socialist billionaire George Soros.
The new CEO of OFA is Obama campaign manager and exalted University of Montana commencement speaker Jim Messina, whose efforts on behalf of Obama were vastly aided by the purely coincidental suppression of conservative fund-raising groups and harassment of their donors by the IRS.
Senator Tester and his liberal cohorts are inappropriately and incorrectly blaming the “Citizens United” decision by the U.S. Supreme Court for all the “dark money” in political campaigns, and are calling for a constitutional amendment to declare, “corporations are not people.”
Isn’t such action inconsistent (some may say hypocritical) considering what OFA is doing? They should read what the Supreme Court of the United States actually said: “the Government may not suppress political speech on the basis of a corporate identity. No sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on political speech of non-profit or for-profit corporations … a ban on independent expenditures is a ban on free speech.” In other words, corporations have the same political free speech right as thousands of organizations such as Labor Unions, MoveOn, Sierra Club, NRA, AMA, OFA, etc., whose leadership decide on how to spend millions of dollars to promote their political agendas and candidates. To be fair and equitable all of these special interest groups should be included by Tester and our other elected representatives in any campaign finance proposal.
Philip L. Barney, M.D.
Polson
