It is a constant refrain that Super PACs are a big factor in this election and that they are the direct result of Citizens United. For instance:
Super PACs are the byproduct of the 2010 Supreme Court decision commonly known as "Citizens United," which granted corporations, unions and individuals the right to donate unlimited funds to outside groups to campaign for or against candidates.I'm continuously confused here particularly because this discussion often arises when some billionaire (Rachel Maddow suggests each candidate seems to have their "own" or perhaps vice versa) is behind things. The ruling did not concern individuals providing unlimited funds. No. The concern were that it gave too much power to "corporations," yes? So, why exactly would Citizen United be to blame when Super PACs are not funded by corporations (or perhaps unions)? Is it that they would not be as problematic without corporate funds?
As with the whole "corporations are people" business, this is seriously confused. At least, I am. I checked Wikipedia. It notes that another case is also involved here, involving SpeechNOW.org, which applied a principle of Citizens United involving the assumed lack of corruption (at least for so-called independent groups, the "so-called" fodder for Colbert et. al.) being a legitimate interest to limit donations. It is that broader principle, not just the protection of corporations as such, which connects things to Citizens United. As summarized at the link to that case:
However, the [lower] Court, following the Citizens United holding that independent expenditures do not create actual or apparent quid pro quo corruption, found that applying limits to contributions for independent expenditures would violate the First Amendment rights of SpeechNOW.org and its donors. The Court held that SpeechNOW.org was entitled to accept unlimited contributions from individuals for IE’s, but also stated “...we only decide these questions as applied to contributions to SpeechNOW, an independent expenditure-only group. Our holding does not affect ... limits on direct contributions to candidates.”
The FEC then made rulings pursuant to these principles. This underlines that focusing on "corporations" here is misguided, since broader game is involved. The legal conclusion (the result of not much analysis and not overly convincing as compared to Scalia's more honest "that's how the system works" stance) the corruption is not really a compelling state interest in this context is the real problem with Citizens United.
The fact "corporations" are involved as compared to individuals or other types of business arraignments is not the biggest problem. There are various ways to regulate corporations, but if the basic idea of the corruption or appearance thereof is not allowed, we will have the path taken here. Personally, I think we can work around the ruling, including with better disclosure rules, public financing and other methods while various problems such as people speaking in apparently nefarious ways in an unbalanced fashion is inherent to the First Amendment.
Regardless, it is helpful to understand more why the ruling was so important, even though they are not just corporately funded.