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We host our first guest on the podcast, Montanan Jeff Mangan. Jeff runs a grassroots effort to change the way Montana – and other states – treat corporations. After the SCOTUS ruled in the Citizens United case that laws limiting corporate spending on election campaigns violate the First Amendment right to free speech, dark money has increased to the point where wealthy corporations and interest groups can pretty much buy elections, especially in small states. Jeff’s group would amend the State Constitution to restrict this spending once again by repealing corporate personhood. Join us to hear about Jeff’s work and find out how you can help – and start similar efforts in other states. Show notes below.

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Show Notes:

From the Transparent Election website: The Transparent Election Initiative is committed to ending the influence of corporate and dark money in our politics through the groundbreaking The Montana Plan. We believe that elections should be decided by voters, not by the size of corporate checkbooks.

Our approach leverages each state’s authority to define corporate powers, creating a pathway to campaign finance reform that doesn’t rely on restricting speech but instead focuses on not granting political spending powers to corporations in the first place.

Website: https://transparentelection.org/

Disrupt Dark Money Blog: https://disruptdarkmoney.feather.blog/

EVENTS: https://disruptdarkmoney.feather.blog/events

CONTRIBUTE – https://tei.nationbuilder.com/tei_web

X/Twitter: @transparent406

Facebook: facebook.com/transparentelection

Instagram: instagram.com/transparentelection

Bluesky: transpelectinit.bsky.social

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TransparentElectionInitiative

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/transparent-election-initiative/

Theme music: Partners In Crime by Alexander Nakarada

https://creatorchords.com Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/free-music/ Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Chris Matthews hit Bernie Sanders pretty hard the other night on Hardball for his new Goldman Sachs ad, which points out that the firm recently paid fines for banking law violations that helped damage the economy in 2008. The ad goes on to remind Americans that none of the people responsible faced criminal prosecution – though actual humans acted to break the law. These individual Wall Street bankers, the ad notes, get away with this because they contribute to political campaigns and pay huge speaking fees to politicians. The ad does not mention Hillary Clinton at all – but because Clinton has a relationship with Goldman Sachs that includes both campaign contributions and speaking fees, Matthews characterized this as a slam on the Secretary.

Sanders has a reputation as a clean campaigner and has said several times that he won’t go negative in his race against Hillary Clinton. After showing several clips of Sanders saying he’s never used a negative ad and won’t start now Mathews showed the spot and then spent several minutes making a claim that Sanders has changed strategy and “gone negative.” Continue reading →

Foggy Bottom Line

Politics, Economics, and other Silly Things

FBL Hosts our First Podcast Guest: Jeff Mangan of TransparentElection.org

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