Thursday, February 9, 2012
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Guest Column: Maryland must act quickly to protect voters from special interests

Published 02/18/10

On Jan. 21, the Supreme Court overturned decades of precedent and more than a century of American tradition by ruling that corporations have the same rights as citizens when it comes to political speech.

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The decision threatens to open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign companies - to spend without limit in our elections.

To put the threat in perspective, consider that candidates, political parties, political action committees and outside groups spent a total of $3 billion on all 2008 federal elections.

Now, let's say Exxon Mobil, which raked in $45 billion in profits in 2008, decided it wanted...

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Report Abuse or Vote In order to allow the user community the ability to collectively rank the value of comments posted on the Capital Gazette websites we have implemented a thumbs-up/down system. All logged-in users may participate by voting up/down each comment. If others vote on your comment, your individual score will go up/down depending on the votes. Initially, everyone starts with a score of zero, and must earn credits to have significant voting weight. Individuals with higher scores will have more voting weight.    0 2

Special Interests? - 2010-02-18 19:18:57

As in the Trial Lawyers Association and the Unions that already buy and sell politicians?
Oh that's right, they're exempt from the law.
At least now political contributions will be in black and white not whitewashed.
But what ARE 'Special Interests'? To Liberals it's anything 'big' but never anything they personally support. So 'Green' companies are not special interests but somehow the NRA is.

Peter Dennis is right. We need real representatives, not the 40+ years of tax and spend Liberals we have suffered under.

unhide Comment hidden due to low ranking. Why is this comment hidden?

Paul O'Flanagan - West River, MD - Karma: Excellent


Report Abuse or Vote In order to allow the user community the ability to collectively rank the value of comments posted on the Capital Gazette websites we have implemented a thumbs-up/down system. All logged-in users may participate by voting up/down each comment. If others vote on your comment, your individual score will go up/down depending on the votes. Initially, everyone starts with a score of zero, and must earn credits to have significant voting weight. Individuals with higher scores will have more voting weight.    0 3

It never - 2010-02-18 14:09:00

ceases to amazing me how liberals pick and choose what constitutional rights they are going to follow. The political monopoly in Maryland and on the Fed level, that are bankrupting our country, is a much larger threat to our rights than who can donate money. The liberals will do what ever it takes to maintain their strangle hold on Maryland. I wonder if there are any Scott Browns living in Maryland.

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Peter Dennis - Annapolis, MD - Karma: Neutral

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