 Good morning, bad news. Do you ever wonder why it seems like billionaires have suddenly become outrageously powerful while the rights and needs of average Americans are at best ignored and at worst eviscerated? Hi, I'm Robert Reich. Here to talk about one of the most destructive events in our recent political history, a Supreme Court ruling from 2010 called Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission. This decision was the final nail in the coffin for nearly a century of reforms that had been designed to curb the influence of corporations and the super rich. You see, during the gilded age of late 19th century, corporations could contribute almost unlimited sums of money to politicians in exchange for legislative favors, and many Americans correctly saw this as a form of legalized bribery. So in 1907, Congress banned direct corporate contributions by passing the Tillman Act, beginning an era of campaign finance reform during which Congress enacted strict limits on election spending and eventually created an agency responsible for overseeing them, the Federal Election Commission. Fun fact, the FEC was partly created in response to secret donors and corporations literally handing Richard Nixon's re-election campaign duffel bags full of cash. But in the 1970s, the Supreme Court began chipping away at these reforms. In Buckley versus Vallejo, the court ruled that independent political spending, money that an individual spends on their own, without coordinating with the campaign, was protected under the First Amendment, and in Boston versus Balotti, the court overturned a Massachusetts law that prevented corporate spending and state ballot measure campaigns, saying it violated the First Amendment rights of corporations. The court thereby invented a new kind of political free speech for corporations. When Citizens United came up, the five to four conservative pro-business majority struck the final blow to our democracy. The court proclaimed that any limits on corporate campaign spending violated the free speech of corporations. This allowed organizations called super PACs, which could accept billions in independent contributions from corporations, essentially an independent arm of a political campaign, with almost unlimited spending power. They can run ads, canvass voters, hold rallies, and compile mailing lists. Really, the only difference between a campaign and a super PAC is that super PACs cannot directly coordinate with candidates, but they can be run by former campaign staff who are in constant contact with a candidate. If a corporation or an individual making a large contribution doesn't want anybody to know their identity, they can hide behind a non-profit that makes the donation on their behalf. Huge amounts of money flow anonymously through this dark money loophole. To give you an idea of how pervasive this is, the 2008 election was at the time the most expensive in U.S. history. Outside independent groups spent over $300 billion then here. And in 2020, outside independent groups spent nearly $3 billion. The Supreme Court has effectively transformed our electoral system into a playground for big corporations and the super rich. So what can we do? How do we, what do we do? We have to fight for public financing of campaigns and stronger disclosure requirements, which will help people-powered candidates take on those funded by big money. It's also up to us as voters to elect candidates who refuse to take donations from corporations. Now I know this sounds daunting, and it is. After all, we are fighting to overcome fundamental imbalances of power, and those with power will not give it up without a fight. But I sincerely believe we the people can win. The only way we lose is by giving up. Thanks for watching Good Morning, Bad News. I'm Robert Reich, and you can find me here on TikTok at Arby Reich. If you wanna see all of the scripts and sources for this episode, or if you just like this channel and wanna help support them on other platforms, follow the link in the bio.