Political Quotes

“Mr. President, a short word on dark money. When the Republican justices on the Supreme Court opened the floodgates of unlimited money in the disgraceful Citizens United decision, that suddenly made something new very important, and that was to hide who you are when you are spending the money. If the biggest check you can write is $5,000, there is no great premium in hiding who you are. When you can write a $5 million check to back a candidate, suddenly hiding who you are becomes extremely valuable and salient. So, suddenly, this became very real. But those Justices who had opened the door to unlimited money, when they made that decision, in order to justify that decision, they had to say that the spending had to be transparent. Otherwise, the Citizens United decision would not have worked in the constitutional scheme. They had to say that. But for the next decade, what did they do about it? Case after case came before them where the dark money problem was raised. We rode through a billion dollars in dark money being spent in our elections. This was on the front page of the newspaper. This was being done in plain view. And what did the Republican Justices on the Supreme Court do to enforce their own stated requirement of transparency? Not one thing. And so we have had a decade of corruption of government by billionaire interests who can hide who they are and operate through an enormous phalanx of phony front groups whom they have stood up.…”