https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwht7dnPJEU
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Watch SEP meeting video: “The Coles Smeaton Grange struggle: The next stage for the working class”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/16/cole-m16.html
Our reporter
13 hours ago
Last Sunday, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) held a public meeting reviewing the political lessons of the more than three-month lockout of Coles workers at the company’s Smeaton Grange warehouse in southwestern Sydney.
The event was attended by almost 90 people, including postal and warehousing workers, as well as teachers and students in Australia, along with participants from New Zealand and Sri Lanka.
Late last month, the Smeaton Grange workers were starved into accepting a sellout agreement by the United Workers Union (UWU), which isolated their locked out members, refusing to provide strike pay or organise any support for industrial action by other Coles workers.
The return-to-work agreement, which had been consistently rejected by workers during the lockout, ratified the closure of the warehouse and the axing of all its jobs in exchange for a paltry wage and redundancy deal demanded by the multi-billion dollar supermarket corporation.
The determined struggle of the Smeaton Grange workers bluntly exposed the unions as an industrial police force, highlighting the urgent need for a new strategy and organisations of working class struggle.
Sunday’s meeting, which can be watched below was, and remains, the only public event examining the longest industrial dispute in Australia’s largest city in decades.
Quad summit consolidates US-led military bloc to prepare for war against China
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/16/quad-m16.html
Peter Symonds
14 hours ago
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard with then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012 (Wikipedia)
The first leaders’ summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad, which took place online last Friday, has dramatically raised the stakes in the accelerating US-led war drive against China. While the Quad is not yet a formal military alliance, the Biden administration clearly views the consolidation of the partnership as a central element in its efforts to undermine, encircle and prepare for military conflict against China.
The summit not only issued a formal statement. Unusually also, Biden and the prime ministers of India, Australia and Japan—Narendra Modi, Scott Morrison and Yoshihide Suga respectively—put their names to an opinion piece published prominently in the Washington Post on Sunday. The comment is replete with cynical motherhood statements about their advocacy of democracy, action on climate change and COVID-19 vaccines, and commitment to “an Indo-Pacific region that is free, open, secure and prosperous.”
However, while China is not mentioned, it dominated the discussion at the summit. The pledges by the four leaders to pursue regional co-operation, partnership and engagement do not, of course, extend to Beijing. Buried in the various public statements were thinly-veiled references to Chinese coercion—from the US that has routinely waged war and ousted governments to advance its imperialist interests—and the need to uphold “freedom of navigation”—that is, for the US Navy to provocatively intrude into waters around Chinese-controlled islets in the South China Sea.
The Washington Post comment includes a fanciful history of the Quad—supposedly borne out of the cooperation of the four countries in response to the catastrophic 2004 tsunami in Asia. “Our cooperation, known as the Quad, was born in crisis. It became a diplomatic dialogue in 2007 and was reborn in 2017,” the leaders write. How and why it mysteriously disappeared, and reappeared a decade later, is left unexplained.
Yet the genesis of the Quad is very revealing. It did not begin with the tsunami but with the election of the right-wing Japanese politician Shinzo Abe as prime minister in 2006. He called for enhancing the US-Japan military alliance by forging close partnerships with India and Australia. The plan was driven by growing concerns in the Japanese ruling class about China, which was about to overtake Japan as the world’s second largest economy. The Bush administration, under fire from the Democrats for inaction over China, seized on the proposal and the first official meeting took place in May 2007. Its military purpose was underscored in September 2007 by the expansion of the annual US-India Malabar naval war games to include the navies of Australia and Japan.
Beijing protested against the formation of what was emerging as a military alliance in the Indo-Pacific targeting China. The Quad ignominiously collapsed months later in February 2008 when the newly-elected Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, concerned about relations with Australia’s largest trading partner and the danger of war, abruptly withdrew from the dialogue. Foreign Minister Steven Smith underscored the Canberra’s determination not to join a grouping that could be construed as anti-Chinese by making the announcement while standing alongside Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.
Rudd’s withdrawal from the Quad was just one of the “crimes” for which he was ousted in a US-orchestrated regime-change operation in June 2010. While he was fully committed to the US-Australian alliance, Rudd’s advocacy of the US making compromises with China to avert war came into conflict with the thrust of the Obama administration’s policy to confront China. Rudd was summarily removed as prime minister by four key Labor powerbrokers, later revealed by WikiLeaks to be “protected sources” of the US embassy in Canberra, in an operation that kept, not only the public, but Labor ministers and party members in the dark.
The following year, in November 2011, Obama, who had twice called off visits to Australia when Rudd was in office, announced his “pivot to Asia” strategy directed against China. Unveiled by Obama in the Australian parliament, the “pivot” involved comprehensive diplomatic, economic and strategic plans to undermine and encircle China throughout the region. Militarily, the Pentagon foreshadowed the restructuring of US bases in the region, the strengthening of alliances and strategic partnerships and the transfer of 60 percent of its naval and air assets to Asia. While in Australia, Obama and a fawning Prime Minister Julia Gillard signed an agreement to station US Marines in the country’s north.
Biden, as vice president under Obama and former chair of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was closely involved in all these machinations. By convening last Friday’s summit, he elevated the Quad to a new level, demonstrating that his administration will intensify the aggressive anti-China stance of the Obama and Trump administrations. The Quad, which was revived under Trump, is about to play a far more prominent role, with regular ministerial-level meetings, a face-to-face summit later this year, and a further expansion of joint military exercises.
None of the strategic commentators on the Quad is under any misapprehension that it is targeting China. It is already a quasi-military alliance engaged in a range of annual war games. Australia and Japan are longstanding military allies of the US, while India has forged intimate ties through a strategic partnership that includes comprehensive basing arrangements and technological assistance.
In the lead-up to the Quad summit, Trump’s former Defence Secretary James “mad-dog” Mattis and two other military analysts wrote a comment for Foreign Policy entitled “Getting the Quad right is Biden’s most important job.” It said “the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is the best hope for standing up to China.” It declared that Biden faced “a resurgent China, more confident than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic” and praised him for continuing Trump’s initiative in reviving the Quad.
The comment identified four areas where the Quad had to take action: to counter China in the South China and East China Seas; to ensure “supply-chain security”—that is, to guarantee access to vital imports necessary to fight a war; to maintain the technological edge over China particularly in crucial hi-tech areas; and to enhance diplomatic ties throughout Asia, “in ways not possible for Washington alone.” All four areas were referred to, if only obliquely, in the joint statement issued by the Quad leaders. Each item has been a preoccupation of the US military as it prepares to fight what would be a war between nuclear-armed powers with incalculable consequences.
Over the past decade, the US plans for war against China have been more and more evident: from the steady military build-up throughout the Indo-Pacific, including anti-ballistic systems designed for fighting a nuclear war, to the increasingly strident and bellicose anti-Chinese propaganda, featuring fraudulent “human rights” campaigns over Xinjiang, Tibet, Mongolia, Hong Kong and Taiwan aimed, above all, at weakening and fracturing China.
In the lead-up to the Quad summit, the head of the US Indo-Pacific command, Admiral Philip Davidson testified to the US Congress. He called for a doubling of the Pentagon’s budget for the region and predicted that the US could face war with China within five years. The headlong plunge toward war by US imperialism is driven by the fear in Washington that China is overtaking it economically and technologically, as well as by the need to direct the tensions fuelled by the profound political and social crisis at home outward against an external enemy.
The World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) have been alone in warning the working class of growing danger of a disastrous world war and calling for a unified international anti-war movement of workers. In its powerful statement entitled “Socialism and the Fight Against War” issued in February 2016, the ICFI outlined the principles that have to animate such a movement:
The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population.
The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and put an end to the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war.
The new anti-war movement must therefore, of necessity, be completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organisations of the capitalist class.
The new anti-war movement must, above all, be international, mobilising the vast power of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism.
We urge workers and young people who want to discuss these issues and join in the struggle to build such an international anti-war movement to contact us.
The first leaders’ summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad, which took place online last Friday, has dramatically raised the stakes in the accelerating US-led war drive against China. While the Quad is not yet a formal military alliance, the Biden administration clearly views the consolidation of the partnership as a central element in its efforts to undermine, encircle and prepare for military conflict against China.
The summit not only issued a formal statement. Unusually also, Biden and the prime ministers of India, Australia and Japan—Narendra Modi, Scott Morrison and Yoshihide Suga respectively—put their names to an opinion piece published prominently in the Washington Post on Sunday. The comment is replete with cynical motherhood statements about their advocacy of democracy, action on climate change and COVID-19 vaccines, and commitment to “an Indo-Pacific region that is free, open, secure and prosperous.”
However, while China is not mentioned, it dominated the discussion at the summit. The pledges by the four leaders to pursue regional co-operation, partnership and engagement do not, of course, extend to Beijing. Buried in the various public statements were thinly-veiled references to Chinese coercion—from the US that has routinely waged war and ousted governments to advance its imperialist interests—and the need to uphold “freedom of navigation”—that is, for the US Navy to provocatively intrude into waters around Chinese-controlled islets in the South China Sea.
The Washington Post comment includes a fanciful history of the Quad—supposedly borne out of the cooperation of the four countries in response to the catastrophic 2004 tsunami in Asia. “Our cooperation, known as the Quad, was born in crisis. It became a diplomatic dialogue in 2007 and was reborn in 2017,” the leaders write. How and why it mysteriously disappeared, and reappeared a decade later, is left unexplained.
Yet the genesis of the Quad is very revealing. It did not begin with the tsunami but with the election of the right-wing Japanese politician Shinzo Abe as prime minister in 2006. He called for enhancing the US-Japan military alliance by forging close partnerships with India and Australia. The plan was driven by growing concerns in the Japanese ruling class about China, which was about to overtake Japan as the world’s second largest economy. The Bush administration, under fire from the Democrats for inaction over China, seized on the proposal and the first official meeting took place in May 2007. Its military purpose was underscored in September 2007 by the expansion of the annual US-India Malabar naval war games to include the navies of Australia and Japan.
Beijing protested against the formation of what was emerging as a military alliance in the Indo-Pacific targeting China. The Quad ignominiously collapsed months later in February 2008 when the newly-elected Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, concerned about relations with Australia’s largest trading partner and the danger of war, abruptly withdrew from the dialogue. Foreign Minister Steven Smith underscored the Canberra’s determination not to join a grouping that could be construed as anti-Chinese by making the announcement while standing alongside Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.
Rudd’s withdrawal from the Quad was just one of the “crimes” for which he was ousted in a US-orchestrated regime-change operation in June 2010. While he was fully committed to the US-Australian alliance, Rudd’s advocacy of the US making compromises with China to avert war came into conflict with the thrust of the Obama administration’s policy to confront China. Rudd was summarily removed as prime minister by four key Labor powerbrokers, later revealed by WikiLeaks to be “protected sources” of the US embassy in Canberra, in an operation that kept, not only the public, but Labor ministers and party members in the dark.
The following year, in November 2011, Obama, who had twice called off visits to Australia when Rudd was in office, announced his “pivot to Asia” strategy directed against China. Unveiled by Obama in the Australian parliament, the “pivot” involved comprehensive diplomatic, economic and strategic plans to undermine and encircle China throughout the region. Militarily, the Pentagon foreshadowed the restructuring of US bases in the region, the strengthening of alliances and strategic partnerships and the transfer of 60 percent of its naval and air assets to Asia. While in Australia, Obama and a fawning Prime Minister Julia Gillard signed an agreement to station US Marines in the country’s north.
Biden, as vice president under Obama and former chair of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was closely involved in all these machinations. By convening last Friday’s summit, he elevated the Quad to a new level, demonstrating that his administration will intensify the aggressive anti-China stance of the Obama and Trump administrations. The Quad, which was revived under Trump, is about to play a far more prominent role, with regular ministerial-level meetings, a face-to-face summit later this year, and a further expansion of joint military exercises.
None of the strategic commentators on the Quad is under any misapprehension that it is targeting China. It is already a quasi-military alliance engaged in a range of annual war games. Australia and Japan are longstanding military allies of the US, while India has forged intimate ties through a strategic partnership that includes comprehensive basing arrangements and technological assistance.
In the lead-up to the Quad summit, Trump’s former Defence Secretary James “mad-dog” Mattis and two other military analysts wrote a comment for Foreign Policy entitled “Getting the Quad right is Biden’s most important job.” It said “the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is the best hope for standing up to China.” It declared that Biden faced “a resurgent China, more confident than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic” and praised him for continuing Trump’s initiative in reviving the Quad.
The comment identified four areas where the Quad had to take action: to counter China in the South China and East China Seas; to ensure “supply-chain security”—that is, to guarantee access to vital imports necessary to fight a war; to maintain the technological edge over China particularly in crucial hi-tech areas; and to enhance diplomatic ties throughout Asia, “in ways not possible for Washington alone.” All four areas were referred to, if only obliquely, in the joint statement issued by the Quad leaders. Each item has been a preoccupation of the US military as it prepares to fight what would be a war between nuclear-armed powers with incalculable consequences.
Over the past decade, the US plans for war against China have been more and more evident: from the steady military build-up throughout the Indo-Pacific, including anti-ballistic systems designed for fighting a nuclear war, to the increasingly strident and bellicose anti-Chinese propaganda, featuring fraudulent “human rights” campaigns over Xinjiang, Tibet, Mongolia, Hong Kong and Taiwan aimed, above all, at weakening and fracturing China.
In the lead-up to the Quad summit, the head of the US Indo-Pacific command, Admiral Philip Davidson testified to the US Congress. He called for a doubling of the Pentagon’s budget for the region and predicted that the US could face war with China within five years. The headlong plunge toward war by US imperialism is driven by the fear in Washington that China is overtaking it economically and technologically, as well as by the need to direct the tensions fuelled by the profound political and social crisis at home outward against an external enemy.
The World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) have been alone in warning the working class of growing danger of a disastrous world war and calling for a unified international anti-war movement of workers. In its powerful statement entitled “Socialism and the Fight Against War” issued in February 2016, the ICFI outlined the principles that have to animate such a movement:
The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population.
The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and put an end to the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war.
The new anti-war movement must therefore, of necessity, be completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organisations of the capitalist class.
The new anti-war movement must, above all, be international, mobilising the vast power of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism.
We urge workers and young people who want to discuss these issues and join in the struggle to build such an international anti-war movement to contact us.
Bloodiest crackdown yet on Myanmar protests
Owen Howell
14 hours ago
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/16/myan-m16.html
Myanmar’s military regime launched a vicious crackdown on unarmed protesters on Sunday, in which at least 63 people were killed and hundreds injured by security forces firing live ammunition, making it by far the bloodiest day since the February 1 military coup.
Doctors and rescue workers fear that the present toll of over 150 deaths will continue to rise as many of the wounded victims are in critical condition. Reports are also surfacing of dead bodies seized by police, after protesters were unable to retrieve them.
As previously, demonstrations in towns and cities across the country were confronted early in the day by a massive show of force by riot police and soldiers. One protester was shot dead in Mandalay, the second largest city, and another in Hpakant in Kachin State. Two were found dead after gunfire dispersed a mass student rally in Bago: a young boy and a woman whose body was dumped in a drain by security forces.
However, the most shocking display of violence was in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, where at least 59 people so far have been reported dead. Military assaults were largely focused on the city’s poor industrial suburbs, including Hlaingthaya, Thingangyun, Shwepyitha, Kyimyindaing, and South Dagon townships. Local hospitals were still filling with dead or seriously wounded protesters late Sunday night and Monday morning.
Health workers spoke to the independent news agency Myanmar Now of the devastation. A senior official at Yangon General Hospital claimed that seven of 56 people brought to hospital were pronounced dead on arrival, while Thingangyun Sanpya Hospital received around 18 dead and 70 injured, according to a striking doctor. In Hlaingthaya, which witnessed the bulk of the violence, 34 dead protesters were brought to the main hospital and 40 others admitted with serious gunshot wounds.
The killing in Hlaingthaya Township, a working-class district on the western outskirts of Yangon, reportedly began after fires broke out at two separate garment factories early Sunday afternoon. Hlaingthaya is home to a large population of impoverished migrant workers from rural areas across the country.
The circumstances surrounding the factory fires remain murky. An official from the industrial zone explained that the factories, Global Fashion and Tsang Yih, were owned by Chinese and Taiwanese investors, and that the cause of the fires is still under investigation. No group has claimed responsibility.
Nevertheless, military-run Myawaddy TV stated that protesters, whom the junta is labelling “criminals,” had set four factories and a fertiliser plant ablaze and stopped fire engines from reaching them. Additionally, the Chinese embassy said many Chinese staff were injured and trapped in the arson attacks, with Beijing-based CGTN later claiming people armed with iron bars, axes, and petrol attacked 10 factories in Hlaingthaya. In response, protest leader Ei Thinzar Maung has insisted on Facebook that only two factories were found burnt.
Military trucks swiftly rolled into the streets at around 1p.m. when soldiers opened fire on gatherings of peaceful protesters. The shooting continued all day and raged on into the night, residents said. Witnesses observed that troops used the nearby Aung Zeya bridge as a vantage point to fire on fleeing protesters, injuring dozens in the neighbouring Insein Township with sustained bursts of gunfire and rubber bullets.
Retreating protesters carried injured people where they could. Footage from the Democratic Voice of Burma showed some attempting to revive dying victims. Billows of black smoke covered much of the district as police set fire to roadblocks constructed by protesters.
A Hlaingthaya protester told the Irrawaddy newspaper, “These shootings are totally unacceptable. They are not dispersing the protests. They are just murdering the people with violence.”
Video on social media showed that protesters demonstrated considerable courage, reconvening throughout the day. Mostly wearing hard hats and gas masks, protesters sprayed fire extinguishers as they fled, in order to smother tear gas and create a screen between them and police.
Atrocities also occurred elsewhere in Yangon. In Tamwe Township, police dragged the wounded body of a junior medical student lying in a pool of blood while kicking and beating a woman trying to save him. Hours-long shooting was also reported in South Dagon Township, where around 50 were injured and three confirmed dead, including a 15-year-old girl who was shot in the head and abdomen.
Martial law was later imposed on numerous Yangon townships where protests had been the largest: Hlaingthaya and Shwepyitha on Sunday night, and South Dagon, North Dagon, Dagon Seikkan, and North Okkalapa on Monday morning. More direct military control of security, instead of police, was also declared in several parts of Mandalay.
The announcement, broadcast on state-owned MRTV, said the junta was enhancing security to restore “law and order,” entrusting Yangon’s regional commander with administrative and judicial powers in the area under his command. Moreover, in an apparent bid to suppress news of Sunday’s turmoil, telecoms service providers were ordered to block all mobile data nationwide, two sources told Reuters, leaving all mobile internet inaccessible.
The bloodshed followed a week of heightened state repression. After the violence unleashed on March 3, authorities have relentlessly terrorised neighbourhoods in Yangon, conducting mass arbitrary arrests and nighttime police raids, during which they have beaten civilians with impunity, fired gunshots at buildings, set off stun grenades, and damaged cars and shopfronts.
In particular, these actions have targeted sections of workers who have played pivotal roles in the widespread strikes and work stoppages known as the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), such as doctors, civil servants, and railway workers. Thailand-based monitoring group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners confirmed that at least 2,150 people had been detained by Saturday, the vast majority of them workers associated with the CDM.
An onslaught of soldiers and police on Saturday killed 13 protesters, meaning the weekend toll is as many as 72 dead. Five were shot dead in Mandalay, two in the central town of Pyay, and a truck driver in Chauk, Magway Region died after being shot in the chest.
In Yangon, where five were killed and dozens more injured, soldiers occupied hospitals and prevented families from collecting their relatives’ bodies. The killings did not stop the mostly young demonstrators who crowded into a downtown commercial area intersection past the official 8 p.m. curfew to hold a mass candlelight vigil. Similar after-dark rallies were held in Mandalay.
Saturday’s protests were called online to commemorate victims of the 1988 uprising against military rule, which was crushed by the armed forces in a brutal crackdown that killed an estimated 3,000 people. It has become clearer after last week that the military is fully prepared to ramp up repression even further and oversee a crackdown on the scale of the 1988 massacre.
The junta’s use of violence has greatly intensified since February 20, when security personnel attacked striking shipyard workers in Mandalay, deliberately firing live rounds on protesters for the first time.
The mounting pressure caused by the nationwide strike movement—which has persisted for six weeks and paralysed major sectors of the economy—is also driving the military to adopt more drastic political measures.
The hillbilly and the billionaire
Judd Legum Mar 16
Peter Thiel (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)
Right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel has donated $10 million to a super PAC formed to support Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance, who is considering a run for U.S. Senate in Ohio. Thiel's massive donation illustrates the impotence of the nation's campaign finance system.
Vance became a bestselling author with Hillbilly Elegy, which was adapted into a movie on Netflix. Vance is a conservative but his book became popular with readers on the left and right as an unofficial guide to Trump's appeal among working-class whites. Vance describes his modest upbringing in Middletown, Ohio and his mother's roots in Kentucky. The New York Times described the book "as a cultural anthropology of the white underclass that has flocked to the Republican presidential nominee’s candidacy."
But while many readers found Vance's personal stories informative, his policy prescriptions are formulaic and familiar. Vance, who went to Yale Law School and runs his own venture capital firm, believes that the solution to the problems afflicting the poor in Appalachia is hard work. According to Vance, there are "far too many people awash in genuine desire to change only to lose their mettle when they realized just how difficult change actually is."
Vance also engages in stereotypes about people receiving welfare that have existed for decades. The problem with the working poor, Vance claims, is that they spend their money on "giant TVs and iPads," instead of planning for the future. "There is no government that can fix these problems for us," Vance concludes.
This anti-government philosophy is likely one explanation for Thiel's large contribution in support of Vance's candidacy, which is not even official. Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and a member of the Facebook Board of Directors, historically engaged in politics as a libertarian. In 2009 essay for the Cato Institute, Thiel complained "there are no truly free places left in our world" and advocated "new technologies" that could "create a new space for freedom." He suggested constructing floating cities in the ocean, escaping to space, or creating online communities "not bounded by historical nation-states."
In the same essay, Thiel said that "[s]ince 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron."
Although he did spend some time investing in floating cities, Thiel remained engaged in politics. In 2016, Thiel endorsed Trump on the final night of Republican National Convention and donated $1.25 million to Trump's campaign. He embraced Trump's brand of nationalism, including his trade war with China. It's unclear how any of this is consistent with Thiel's libertarian philosophy, although some have speculated his attraction to Trump was based on Thiel's interest in "transgressive ideas."
Thiel has a right to his views, even if they contradict each other. But his $10 million donation to Protect Ohio Values, the super PAC supporting Vance, is evidence that the campaign finance system is completely broken. Money will always influence politics. But the campaign finance system is supposed to provide some guardrails. Instead, billionaires like Thiel are able to spend virtually unlimited sums in support of a candidate. It doesn't have to be this way.
What Citizen's United did not change
In 2010, the Supreme Court, in its decision in Citizens United v. FEC, struck down limits on independent political expenditures by corporations, labor unions and other groups. But such unlimited spending is only permissible if it is actually independent of a candidate. The Brennan Center's Wendy R. Weiser explained the court's reasoning:
The Supreme Court has long held that outside campaign expenditures coordinated with a candidate can be "treated as contributions," because "[t]he ultimate effect is the same as if the [spender] had contributed the dollar amount [of the expenditure] to the candidate." Citizens United did nothing to change that. When the Supreme Court struck down limits on how much outside groups could spend in federal elections, it did so on the assumption that these groups would operate independently of candidates. The Court reasoned that the absence of "prearrangement and coordination" would "undermine[] the value of the expenditure to the candidate" and alleviate the danger of quid pro quo corruption or its appearance.
As a practical matter though, there has been no enforcement of the rule that counts coordinated expenditures as direct contributions subject to limits. So candidates are personally fundraising for "independent" super PACs that are organized to support their campaign. And super PACs are run by former aides of the candidate, produce B-roll footage for the campaign, and run ads featuring the candidate. The result is that individual limits on campaign expenditures are "virtually meaningless."
That's why most major candidates for President have a super PAC, usually run by a longtime associate, operating on their behalf. Thiel has no issue donating $10 million to a Super PAC because he knows it will have nearly the same impact as a direct contribution to Vance's future campaign.
A modest proposal
The For The People Act, also known as HR 1, includes provisions that would curb coordination between campaigns and super PACs. First, the bill specifies that "any expenditure...which is made in cooperation, consultation, or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, an authorized committee of a candidate, a political committee of a political party, or agents of the candidate or committee." This would, at the very least, prevent candidates from making appearances in ads for a Super PAC supporting their campaign. It also makes clear that a Super PAC that republishes material produced by a campaign is making a direct contribution to the campaign.
It also creates a new category of a "coordinated spender." All expenditures by such an entity would be considered coordinated with the candidate. This category includes entities established by:
Any person who, during the 4-year period ending on the date on which the person makes the payment, has been employed or retained as a political, campaign media, or fundraising adviser or consultant for the candidate or committee or for any other entity directly or indirectly controlled by the candidate or committee, or has held a formal position with the candidate or committee (including a position as an employee of the office of the candidate at any time the candidate held any Federal, State, or local public office during the 4-year period).
It would also apply to super PACs run by immediate family members. This would prevent the common practice of longtime aides moving from a Congressional office or other entity controlled by the candidate to run an "independent" Super PAC.
None of these provisions would eliminate the influence of money in politics. But they would provide some modest limitations on coordination between super PACs and candidates, making contributions to super PACs somewhat less valuable.
Spanish left deputy Pablo Iglesias resigns from government to run for office in Madrid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckdyo53_opE
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