Op-Eds Archive
In August, 2015, Charles and David Koch gathered their fellow billionaires and multimillionaires at a semi-annual meeting of the Koch network “to save” the country, in the words of Charles Koch. It was not exactly the same kind of meeting that occurred in July 1776 when the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia to create a […]
Some have recently commented that Donald Trump is the best thing that has happened to the campaign finance reform movement in years. I disagree. Donald Trump has made clear he has been a heavy user and beneficiary of the currently broken campaign finance system. During the August 6th Republican debate, Trump correctly described the problems […]
The Huffington Post The Perversion of the American Presidency By: Fred Wertheimer July 28, 2015 Children long have been taught by their parents that anyone in America can grow up to be president. Today that message needs to be revised: anyone can grow up to be president if they are willing to circumvent and break […]
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined the Super PAC circus last week when she met with top donors to Priorities USA to help raise huge contributions for the individual-candidate Super PAC supporting her presidential campaign. In doing so, she joined Jeb Bush and the other presidential candidates who are raising unlimited contributions for the […]
Reuters Why Jeb Bush’s super PAC plan is potentially illegal Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is preparing to push the role of the individual-candidate super PAC to new, brazen heights. The Bush campaign is reportedly planning to reverse the role of Bush’s campaign committee and the “independent” super PAC supporting him – so that the super PAC […]
The American Constitution Society Five Years Later, Citizens United Wreaks Havoc on Our Democracy By Fred Wertheimer, President, Democracy 21. Democracy 21 is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to strengthen democracy, prevent government corruption and empower citizens in the political process. On January 21, 2010, five Supreme Court justices rejected decades of the Court’s […]
Reuters Democracy is drowning in a sea of dark money By Fred Wertheimer The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United five years ago left the nation’s campaign finance system in shambles and our constitutional system of representative government dangerously undermined. Citizens United threw out a century of national policy and overturned decades of Supreme Court precedent to […]
Who Shot John: The Story of How $777,600 Contribution “Limits” Ended up in The Omnibus Bill By Fred Wertheimer | HuffPost | 12/15/14 Campaign finance laws are generally enacted to solve problems and deal with corruption scandals. The Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974 (FECA) followed the Watergate scandals of the 1970s. The Bipartisan […]
The Huffington Post 2014 Election Confirms Citizens United Decision Based on Fundamentally Flawed Premises By: Fred Wertheimer The 2014 congressional elections confirmed that the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United was based on fundamentally flawed premises. The Court majority in Citizens United explicitly based its misguided decision on two grounds: campaign expenditures by outside groups […]
Symposium: The Supreme Court and the McCutcheon decision The Supreme Court majority in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission has continued on its step-by-step path to destroy the nation’s campaign finance laws. The Court in McCutcheon overturned forty years of national policy and thirty-eight years of judicial precedent to strike down the overall limits on the total contributions an individual […]
