Now that the Presidential election is over....

whatever will the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson do to spend money on politics?  There are few, if any campaigns for them to contribute to.

I suspect that they will be spending money supporting organizations that want to keep the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission from being successfully challenged and overturned.  For those who weren't aware, this was a 2010 decision.  It determined that a federal law known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (more commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act) contained several provisions that were unconstitutional.  That those provisions violated the First Amendment.

Some, in particular members of the Occupy Wall Street movement want to see this decision overturned.  One of the ideas they have advocated is passing a new law that would reinstitute those provisions of campaign finance reform.  The problem with that is that pesky First Amendment thingie.  As long as the First Amendment is upheld, then most attempts at limiting this kind of campaign finance reform will ultimately be ruled as an unconstitional infringement of a person's or corporation's right to free speech.

The Supreme Court, as presently constituted is not going to overturn this particular decision.  In fact, it probably wouldn't hear any lower court ruling in any similar case unless that ruling overturned their decision.  In that case they would probably overturn that ruling in short order.

Let's review.  There's a decision that allows so-called "Super-PACs" to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.  Unions and corporations can contribute virtually unlimited sums of money to these Super-PACs.  Congress can't pass a law preventing this and the Supreme Court isn't going to overturn its own decision.

Is there an answer?  Sort of.  The answer is to prevent these Super-PACs from raising money in secret.  A law that required Super-PACs to issue regular reports on all contributions received would not violate the First Amendment.  Some will argue that there should be a limit below which contributions shouldn't have to be reported.

Seems reasonable.  Do you remember the late George Steinbrenner?  He was owner of the New York Yankees baseball team.  Did you know that in 1974 he pled guilty to making illegal campaign contributions to the Nixon reelection campaign, and to one felony count of obstruction of justice?  Probably not.  One of Ronald Reagan's last acts as President was to pardon Steinbrenner, who served no jail time. 

What he did was to have a number of his employees make contributions within the limits that existed at the time for personal contributions, and then reimbursed them with corporate funds.  In effect, he was making a large corporate contribution which was illegal at the time.  Something would have to be part of any new law that attempts to lift the shroud of secrecy from how Super-PACs are funded by people like the Koch brothers and Mr. Adelson.

I actually believe that the Supreme Court ruled properly that limiting how much a person or a corporation, or a union can spend on a political campaign is an infringement of free speech rights.  If I want to produce a documentary on why someone is a bad candidate, or take out regular full page ads in newspapers to denounce them, or contribute to their opponent's campaign fund, I should be able to do so.  That is a component of free speech.

But I shouldn't be able to do this without everyone knowing who is doing it.  That is where the beginning of an answer to the quandry of money's pervasive influence of politics may be found.