Campaign-finance reform has to be equitable to be fair

Shortly after the 2013 presidential inaugural, Organizing for America, the Obama campaign fundraising organization formed by the Democratic National Committee morphed into Organizing for Action, an organization with a stated goal of promoting Obama’s second-term agenda.

This translates to financial support for federal and state left-wing progressive candidates. OFA was readily granted 501(c)(4) tax exempt status by the IRS, meaning it can accept unlimited corporate donations, and has already received contributions from left-wing billionaire George Soros.

The chief executive officer of OFA is Obama campaign manager and exalted University of Montana commencement speaker Jim Messina, whose efforts on behalf of Obama were vastly aided by the purely coincidental suppression of conservative fundraising groups and donors by the IRS.

Sen. Tester and his liberal cohorts are incorrectly blaming the Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court for all the dark money in campaigns and are calling for a constitutional amendment declaring that corporations aren’t people.

Isn’t this inconsistent (some might say hypocritical) with what OFA is doing? They should read what the Supreme Court actually said: The government may not suppress political speech on the basis of a corporate identity. No sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on the political speech of nonprofit or for-profit corporations and a ban on independent expenditures is a ban on free speech.

In other words, corporations have the same rights as thousands of other organizations such as labor unions, PACs, MoveOn, Sierra Club, NRA, AMA, OFA, etc., etc., whose leadership decides how to spend millions of dollars to promote their political agendas and candidates.

To be fair and equitable, all of these special interest groups should be included by our elected representatives in any campaign-finance reform proposal.

Barney is a resident of Polson