BY Paul Lehto

SOURCE: DU

"Citizens United" Attorney and Strategist Admits He's Almost Done with 10-Year Plan to Destroy Campaign Laws, The Final Step is Destroying Disclosure Rules Creating SECRET Contributions

James Bopp, Jr., the spearhead strategist for the group Citizens United as well as their lead attorney in the trial court for the Citizens United case just decided at the US Supreme Court, said the following about his several US Supreme Court successes in demolishing the idea that the government has the power to do ANYTHING in terms of regulation of campaign finance:

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From Monday, January 25, 2010 New York Times, Page A11:

“We had a 10-year plan to take all this {campaign finance regulation} down,” he said in an interview. “And if we do it right, I think we can pretty well dismantle the entire regulatory regime that is called campaign finance law.”

“We have been awfully successful,” he added, “and we are not done yet.”

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I HOPE I have your attention at this point?

Good, because I'm on an email listserv that includes Mr. Bopp and several hundred other election lawyer, professor, writer and media types, and I can confirm that there's a definite firefight going on for the intellectual principles upon which free countries are founded. You see the ideals of freedom and equality and democracy are so powerful that they will EITHER lead us out, upward and onward like the guiding star principles they are, or else, as with Citizens United, they will be the Orwellian wrapper to your worst political nightmares.

Freedom or slavery or oligarchy, they will ALL be "Brought to you by Freedom, Equality and the First Amendment." THe only question is whether that statement will be Orwellian, and how Orwellian it will be, or whether it will be the realization of something much closer to Martin Luther King's beloved community: "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighy We're Free at Last."

The reason these mere "ideas' are so important: America was the first country in world history founded upon IDEAS instead of a territory or a specific national ethnic group. Thus, the battle of America is a battle of ideas that's constantly being re-argued.

America is a landscape of the mind: we have to tend our garden, people. EVERY ACTION - Every single one, is preceded by an idea and an inspiration. Ideas are the fountain and the source of action, and the well is being poisoned. See Citizens United.

I'm going to take the risk of giving you my "controversial" conclusion first, but I'm also telling you that I'll provide the proof by the link at the end of this post.

CONCLUSION: The 10 year plan to use specific Supreme Court cases to totally destroy campaign finance regulation and the First Amendment (in the name of the First Amendment) is nearly complete after several big US Supreme Court victories, and the final 2 blows are working their way up, with one already having a grant of cert by the US Supreme Court - the "Doe" secret-petition signers case from Washington state attacking gay rights. The other is in the trial courts, the plaintiff is the Republican National COmmittee, the attorney is James Bopp, Jr., and the idea is that it's senseless to regulate political party contributions when independent ads are a propaganda free-for-all.

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NY Times:

“If you cannot ban corporate spending on ads, how is it that you are allowed to ban corporate contributions to candidates?” asked Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Columbia Law School. “That is the next shoe to drop.”

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The ENDGAME: Totally unlimited, totally unregulated and TOTALLY SECRET CAMPAIGN FINANCE at all levels.

The most important ENDGAME is the secret contributions right, so that we don't even KNOW WHO OUR CORPORATE MASTERS ARE WHO ARE blasting their propaganda from media outlets. Sure, we'll all call it Big Brother not just metaphorically but because it will have NO OTHER NAME and disclosure would violate the constitutional rights of oligarchs who paid for the ads.

Oh yeah, my "endgame" is not my "theory" or fantasy or "conspiracy theory". Here's the mastermind of Citizens United in Monday's New York Times:

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"Mr. Bopp said the next step in his 10-year plan is to roll back the {campaign finance} disclosure rules." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/us/politics/25bopp.ht...

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One can see Mr. Bopp's and Mr. Scalia's version of those principles in the majority and concurring opinions in Citizens United. Boiled down, they are:

1. Survival of the richest.

2. Money is free speech, and money trumps everything else including the need for an informed citizenry, or balanced debate. As a voter, you're supposed to be one of the 130 million equal kings and queens of this self-governing country, but you've "No Right to Know" and "No Right to Good Information" - just a right to publish all the propaganda you can afford.

3. It's NOT just that campaign finance laws and state constitutional provisions banning corporate influence are "flawed" or unconstitutional - It's that NOTHING IN THIS AREA can ever be constitutional if it limits the power of money. Their message via the first Amendment: THE GOVERNMENT IS POWERLESS TO PROTECT We the People.

4. The proper view of the law, as declared in Citizens United, is as a Mirror Image of theDred Scott case, which held that people are property, only this time in Citizens United it's mirror image is held up for inspection: (corporate) Properties are People.

If I were to say what I really thought yesterday, namely that there's a ten year plan in the works by a prominent right-wing lawyer and Christian conservative friends to totally demolish (in the name of First Amendment freedom) all campaign finance regulations via strategically selected court cases planned for the US Supreme Court, and if I claimed that the final step was near at hand, which was to make SECRET CONTRIBUTIONS the constitutional law of the land, I'd be called a conspiracy theorist.

Yup. If I were to say the above, I'd be called a conspiracy theorist. But I'd also be 100% correct too. And now we have the proof and the admissions.

Read it for yourself: The lead attorney and mastermind of this plan just confessed or, rather, bragged about it to the New York Times. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/us/politics/25bopp.ht...

Secrecy always means NO accountability & No Right to Know.

I can't say it strongly enough how damaging SECRET contributions (i.e. no requirement of disclosure) will be. Just imagine being on a jury - the method for public control of the judicial branch, and having all the witnesses claim the right to appear before you with hoods over their heads and all refusing to give their names. How could you make a proper decision as a juror/voter in such conditions?

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"Mr. Bopp said the next step in his 10-year plan is to roll back the {campaign finance} disclosure rules."

I think we can pretty well dismantle the entire regulatory regime that is called campaign finance law.”

“We have been awfully successful,” he added, “and we are not done yet.” http://www.nytimes.com...

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I've been at my 'post' now in election law about full time every day since the 2004 election. I've been warning about the secret unaccountable computerized vote counts as deadly to democracy and an invitation to open fraud for all those years. The secrecy there is an undisputed fact. I've also been on campaign finance and seeing the growing tsunami of litigation for secret contributions. I'm relieved to have the secrecy plans out in the open now, because it's been an intense email fight where I've wondered if they were really going to try this secrecy ploy. Yes, they are. Now we know.

In the last five years, I've lost basically everything "of this world." But I'm staying at my "post" so to speak, because I know that 76% of Americans want limits on corporations and union contributions according to an October 2009 Gallup Poll, and even more importantly, to fight for the real ideas of America.

Despair is the soft, sinking exhalation of air that is the precursor to action, the antidote to despair.

So, I'm going back to the election law wars, I'm going to look for a little work I can do from home to keep our head above water, and I'm gonna give 'em hell.

You know what to do. If not, ask someone!