 The Supreme Court just decided an incredibly important case called McCutchen v. FEC, which looked at the question of whether aggregate campaign contribution limits could... Okay, yeah, this is already boring. Uh, let's try this instead. Imagine you're rich. Now, like most Americans, rich you has got all kinds of opinions on the way things ought to work in this country. But unlike most Americans, rich you is, well, rich. That means if you want to influence the political process, you've got options outside of signing petitions or calling your congressperson's office to yell at one of the interns. And the best way to understand the critically important decision the Supreme Court just handed down is to talk about some of those options. The most direct route is to use your money to fund political campaigns. In this day and age, members of Congress don't get to be members of Congress without spending some serious money first. And that is where you come in. Now, there are some rules. Federal law sets certain limits, so you can't just go write a candidate a check for a million dollars. That's because the government limits the amount of money individuals can donate to any one candidate in order to prevent corruption. So you, dear hypothetical rich person, can't give more than $2,600 to any one candidate in the 2014 midterm elections. Even if you were to donate once in the primary election and again in the general, the absolute most you could give is $5,200. And just giving that much would put you in a very exclusive club. In the last election cycle, only .08% of the population made more than $2,500 in political contributions. Which isn't really surprising if you think about it, seeing as how that absolute maximum donation, that $5,200 we were just talking about, is more than the average American family makes in an entire month. But if you're part of that .08% of the population that has money to burn on political giving, why stop at one candidate? Why not dole out $5,000 to 100 different candidates? You know, just to be safe. And this is where McCutcheon VFEC comes in. Before the McCutcheon ruling, there was also something called an aggregate limit of $48,600. In English, that means you'd be legally barred from handing $1,000 each to 49 different candidates. Because even though those $1,000 donations are below the individual candidate limits we were talking about earlier, that $49,000 in total contributions would put you over the aggregate cap. This same principle applies when it comes to national party committees and other political action committees too, but with a higher aggregate limit of $74,600. And I know I'm throwing around a lot of numbers right now, but the important thing to remember here is that if you want to buy political influence, your ability to make direct contributions maxes out at $123,200. Or at least that's how it used to work, because the Supreme Court just made the aggregate limit history. Since that individual cap is still in place, that might not sound like a huge deal. After all, if giving $1,000 to 48 different candidates isn't an issue, why would giving $1,000 to 49 be any worse? This was McCutcheon's argument and it's one that the Supreme Court clearly bought. But this is where things get upsetting, because it's the clearest indication yet that the current majority in the Supreme Court of the United States has no earthly idea how money in politics actually works. Because that whole 48 is fine, why is 49 bad argument sounds reasonable on its face, but it doesn't account for a hideous quirk of campaign finance law called the Joint Fundraising Committee. Joint Fundraising Committees let political operatives haul in huge checks from big donors and then distribute them out to candidates and PACs. And it used to be that the most a donor could show up with was that $123,000 we mentioned earlier. But now, thanks to the McCutcheon ruling, individual donors can cut $2.5 million checks to Joint Fundraising Committees. So the kind of people who are willing to drop more money than most Americans will make in their entire lives on one election can now wield even more leverage over entire parties. Because remember, Joint Fundraising Committees can distribute money to every candidate in a given election. So it's entirely likely that we'll see scenarios when a donor approaches the head of a JFC and says something like, uh, well gee, I'd sure love to send this $2.5 million your way, but I can't do that until I'm sure none of it will go to candidates who support closing the tax loopholes that helped my company pay me enough to write that enormous check in the first place. And suddenly the operative in charge of that Joint Fundraising Committee has 2.5 million reasons to call up every single member of his party and make sure that everyone is on the same page about keeping that tax loophole open for another couple of years, at which point everyone has to raise money to run for office again and the whole cycle starts over. But wait, there's more! The Supreme Court also struck down the aggregate limit on donations to political action committees or PACs. PACs can give money directly to candidates and this, ladies and gentlemen, is what makes McCutchen v. FEC one of the absolute worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. Because while there's a limit on how much PACs can give to each candidate, there's no limit on the number of PACs that can exist. With no aggregate limit, one donor can now give $5,000 each to 1,000 different PACs, and those 1,000 PACs can turn around and funnel that money straight to one candidate, which means that one candidate could haul in $5 million in direct contributions from one donor. And if it comes down to the guy who just gave him $5 million or the average American family, whose side do you think that candidate is gonna take once he's in office? Now, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend this is anything other than a horrible ruling, but truth be told, all the Supreme Court really did was make an already terrible situation marginally more terrible. Even if McCutchen had gone the other way, we'd still be living in a country where the people who can throw campaign fundraisers and hire lobbyists get better treatment from our government than the people who can't. But if there's one silver lining here, it's that more and more people are refusing to accept that this is the way our country is supposed to work. As the ruling was handed down, people all across the country turned out at over 100 events nationwide to protest. Even in our current political climate of breathtaking cynicism and house of cards is real, oh my god Kevin Spacey is gonna kill our families, Americans from every corner of this country still decided to show up and take a stand, and more people are joining them every single day. But there's this story, a great legal activist named Lawrence Lessig likes to tell when he talks about this fight against corruption. And I think it's worth repeating here. When Benjamin Franklin was carried from the Constitutional Convention in September 1787, he was stopped in the street by a woman who said, Mr. Franklin, what have you wrought? And Ben Franklin replied, A republic madam, if you can keep it. On days like today, it's hard not to feel like we're losing that republic. But our republic can't be truly lost until the people stop fighting to keep it. And from what I've seen, that fight is only just beginning. I'm on sore for represent us and I'll see you next time. Today, as the ruling was handed down, people all across the country choked on their own spit. That's, that's awful. That, no, kind of undercuts the patriotism there.