Narrative-first, evidence-driven

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What they did

In 2010, the Supreme Court said corporations and unions can spend unlimited money on independent political ads.

A few months later, the courts said groups that only do “independent” spending can raise unlimited money too. That is the birth of the super PAC.

Later, aggregate contribution caps were removed.

Important detail: the Court did not remove disclosure rules. Transparency was supposed to be the safety valve. The donor-opacity problem is mostly downstream: 501(c)(4) disclosure gaps + weak enforcement, not the Court’s explicit removal of disclosure rules.

The theory was simple:

If spending is independent and disclosed, it cannot corrupt.

That is the design.

Why it worked (mechanism)

Two things changed:

1. The cap on scale disappeared.
2. Enforcement did not scale with it.

When you remove the ceiling but do not reinforce the floor, money will test gravity.

Money looks for:

• leverage
• speed
• opacity
• weak referees

It found all four.

The Court assumed disclosure would do the work. Disclosure without enforcement is just paperwork.

What actually moved

The scale shift is not controversial.

• Dark money: ~$5M (2006) -> $1.9B (2024)
• Total outside spending: $144M (2008) -> $4.2B (2024)
• Billionaires alone: $2.6B in 2024 (~20% of total)

That is not noise. That is a structural change.

Meanwhile:

• FEC fines dropped.
• Enforcement staff shrank.
• Deadlocks surged.
• The agency lost quorum in 2025.

In other words:

The referee did not get stronger when the game got bigger.

Does the money move policy?

Here is where we stay honest.

The clearest causal evidence is at the state level: once corporate independent-spending bans were lifted, affected states tended to adopt more corporate-friendly tax and tort policies.

That is directional.

But money does not win every fight.

Pharma lost in 2022 despite massive spending. That matters. It complicates the story.

The academic consensus is cautious:

There is strong evidence of access and correlation. There is weaker evidence of clean, provable, “this dollar caused that vote” causation.

So we say that clearly.

Guardrails - what failed

The system had four guardrails.

1. Disclosure - under-enforced.
2. Coordination ban - barely enforced.
3. FEC structure - 3-3 split means paralysis.
4. Legislative response - repeated failure.

Complexity and deadlock are a kind of loophole. They make cheating cheap.

The key insight is not ideological, it is mechanical:

If cheating is cheap and enforcement is slow, scale wins.

Where it really broke

Elite influence existed before 2010. That is documented.

Citizens United did not invent the tilt.

What it did was remove a constraint in a system already tilted and then the enforcement mechanism failed.

Once that happened, scale outran transparency.

You do not see a smoking gun. You see an environment shift.

Bills get shaped before they are written. Regulators feel pressure before they vote. The incentive structure changes quietly.

That is harder to measure. But the money growth is not.

Market / public verdict

Polls show broad discomfort with unlimited campaign money.

Reform has gone nowhere.

The system protects the structure that funds it.

What fixing it would take

Four paths exist. None are easy.

• DISCLOSE Act - require dark money groups to disclose donors above a threshold. Has died in the Senate repeatedly. Needs 60 votes, or filibuster reform first.
• Constitutional amendment - reverse Citizens United directly. Requires two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of states. No ratification path exists under current composition.
• FEC structural reform - change the 3-3 partisan split or the 4-vote enforcement threshold. Requires an act of Congress. No current momentum.
• IRS enforcement - enforce the “primarily social purpose” standard for 501(c)(4)s. No new law required. Has been politically avoided by both parties.

The easiest fix is an administrative decision. The fact it has not happened tells you how much resistance there is.

North Star verdict

This case is not “money always wins.”

It is this:

Guardrails without enforcement are ornamental.

The E4E loop depends on referees who can actually call fouls.

If $1.9B can move without transparency and the enforcement body deadlocks by design, the guardrails are structurally compromised.

Not perfectly broken. But weakened enough that scale starts shaping outcomes upstream.

That is the lesson.

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