Ohio has a rich history of Republican political corruption. From Cincinnati’s Boss Cox on up to Robert Taft Jr’s Coin-gate. And more recently we had Ex-Speaker Rosenberg’s Pay Day Lender Scandal and now Larry Householder outdoes them all with the largest 600-million-dollar public graft case in history, First Energy.
In 2010, Citizen’s United destroyed the hopeful reform of the McCain Feingold Act and injected a lethal amount of dark money into the American political process. This is the Supreme Court decision that says that Corporations are People and Money is Speech. This has made our elections vulnerable not only to corporate interests which disregard the wellbeing of the general public (example, trampling Home Rule regulation of litter, gun violence and remember SMOKING?), but also Foreign influences and worse yet, money laundering in our elections.
Update : In 2024 all utilities companies in Ohio are required to disgorge $400 million in unearned fees that the Ohio Public Utitlities Commission has allowed them to pocket.
- Its time to make the Ohio Public Utilities Commission and elected office and end the corrupt appointments by crony politicians.
- The First Energy Scandal drags on with 2 highly suspicious suicides and $100 million settlements to be disgorged.
Any meaningful reform will require Disclosure and Transparency:
- Make Lobbyists Report who is paying them and How Much.
- Require 501C nonprofits and all other outside groups spending $10,000 or more on election-related activities to disclose within 24 hours, any donor who has given more than $10,000 to the organization.
How can we call money speech? I have no respect for anyone who has to hide what they really desire by speaking in anonymity and secrecy, often lying, through phony shell corporations and want to call it 1st Amendment speech!
Corporations are not people.
Money is not speech.
Greed is not good.