Do you remember Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's rebuttal of President Obama during this year's State of The Union address?
"Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections," Said President Obama. "Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito silently mouthed "not true" when Obama criticized the Supreme Court's decision.
Obama was talking about the Court's "Citizen's United" ruling, that threw open the floodgates for unlimited spending on campaign ads by corporations.
In particular, Alito is reported to have been objecting to the claim that foreign corporations would be able to finance campaign commercials in the United States - an interpretation that the Fox News Right had solidly supported in its insistence that Alito Was Right.
Now we get to grade the test. So far this election season campaign ads by outside groups are far outnumbering ads from candidates. One group in particular is more active than the rest - the US Chamber of Commerce (a group which unlike your local chamber represents multinational corporations rather than the small businesses on Main Street) - The US Chamber of Commerce has pledge to spend $75 million during this election season. So where does the Chamber's money come from? Big corporations, including:
- State Bank of India (state-run) and ICICI Bank of India
- Esnaad, a subsidiary of the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
- Russian state-run VTB Bank
- BP [UK]
- Royal Dutch Shell [Netherlands]
- Siemens [Germany]
- Bahrain Maritime & Mercantile International
- Bahrain Petroleum Company (state-owned)
- And hundreds more
Foreign-Funded ‘U.S.’ Chamber Of Commerce Running Partisan Attack Ads
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