Supreme Court Protects Dark Money Donors From Being Revealed

The Supreme Court this week ruled that a California law that forced dark money groups to disclose their donors was somehow unconstitutional. This decision was entirely predictable, but that doesn't make it any less infuriating. Our politics has been taken over by the wealthy elite, and in many instances we don't even get to know which billionaire is funding which initiative. We have no voice left in what happens, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

This week, the United States Supreme court handed down multiple different decisions that are all just flat out terrible for the United States. I mean, let's, let's not sugar coat in any way. These are terrible decisions. You know, they upheld repressive, suppressive, voting laws, and then case from California, they actually struck down a California law that forced charities to have to disclose their donors. Now why on earth would the Supreme court take the side of, of charities? And the reason by the way that California had passed this law forcing charities to disclose their donors was to cut down on charitable fraud, which is a very real problem with the Supreme court said, no charities don't have to disclose these donors. So again, you're probably wondering why what's because a lot of these political action committees across the United States that rely on dark money are non-profits, which means they do operate just like charities.

And yes, they had been included in that California law and therefore Supreme court says, Nope, can't do it. Can't force them to disclose their donors, even though money is free. Speech money is also anonymous, free speech, apparently, which is absolutely ridiculous. This was not a limit on how much these individuals could donate. It was not limiting their free speech in any way, which I don't believe money is free speech, but the court does. So let's talk about it in those terms, but the court said you have the right, I guess, to anonymous free speech. We don't get to know who's paying what who's funding, which initiative and as expected, it was a Coke organization that helped bring this lawsuit to the United States Supreme court, the Americans for prosperity foundation funded by the Cokes, along with, um, the Thomas Moore law center

From Michigan, Michigan, not California, Michigan. This was designed to strike down this law to take it to the Supreme court, to make sure they ruled that you do not have to disclose your dark money donors for these political action committees. This is a sad, sad day for the United States, because basically what it means is that you and I don't have a voice anymore. We don't have a say, there

Is no transparency in American politics today. And with the Supreme court, the six, three division that we have on it, which right, not ironically is how the vote split. Every conservative on that court voted to protect the dark money donors. And gee, I wonder why, But this is what it is today.

We do not have a voice. If you do not have enough money to pay off a politician, to fund somebody running for office or to hire a lobbyist, if you don't have the money to do one of those things, you don't matter in this country, you don't, you don't get your voice, you Get nothing.

And every time we try to not even level the playing field, but maybe just take these millionaires and billionaires down a notch. Every time we try it, we get struck down by the idiots on the conservative Supreme court. Every time, the only way to fix this is a constitutional amendment to permanently ban corporate money from our elections hell. At this point, I say, we ban all money from elections. We create a public fund, a public trust where each candidate gets equal money.