By John O’Brien

Legal Newsline

A ballot initiative designed to keep corporations from spending on elections in Montana is a little too ambitious, the state Supreme Court has found.

The new proposals included in Ballot Issue 4 violate the rules for wording such initiatives, the court ruled. State Attorney General Austin Knudsen made that argument to the justices over a vote that would have corporations labeled by the State as “artificial persons.”

The initiative would have said the people of Montana never intended to allow artificial persons to take part in election activity. But it contained other measures, the court ruled, that would leave voters taking on too much – rejecting the idea they were so closely related that voters were deciding essentially a single topic.

“Although BI-4 does not combine unrelated amendments in an attempt to secure support from different groups, it would force voters who support abolishing corporate spending ‘on elections or ballot issues’ to also support, more broadly: 1) limiting the rights of other entities defined as “artificial persons,” such as unincorporated associations and cooperatives; and 2) potentially limiting the powers of such organizations to engage in activities other than election and ballot issue activities in significant but unspecified other ways,” Justice Jim Rice wrote.

Voters must be allowed to express their opinion on each proposed amendment, Rice continued. It’s a loss for Transparent Election Initiative, a group dedicated to fighting against the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which held that corporate spending on political issues is protected under the First Amendment.

The initiative was called its “Montana Plan” – a first-of-its-kind effort to keep “secret-donor money” out of the state’s elections. It didn’t overturn Citizens United, TEI said, it makes it irrelevant.

“It redefines Montana’s corporations as entities that no longer have the power to spend in politics,” the group said. “And if an entity wasn’t given the power to do something by its creator, whether it has a right to do that thing is irrelevant.”

Groups like the Montana Mining Association and the Montana Chamber of Commerce resisted the initiative. MMA said states cannot use semantics to get around the First Amendment and BI-4 was not tailored to a governmental interest.

The Montana Chamber noted BI-4 if passed would be the longest section in the Montana Constitution by triple.

“BI-4 extends it extreme speech restrictions beyond business corporations and nonprofits by including even ‘unincorporated associations,’” the chamber wrote.

“An ‘unincorporated association’ includes just about any association of two or more people – everything from churches and grassroots protest movements to informal social media groups and living-room discussion groups.

“Even so, BI-4 subjects them to absolute prohibitions on political speech, which implicates their rights to free association and free speech.”

This report was produced by Legal Newsline and distributed by The Center Square as part of a content-sharing agreement. 

By Roger Koopman

Newsflash!  Now that Rubio and Trump have decided to “run” Venezuela for awhile, that country’s deposed dictator will doubtless have a lot of time on his hands during his sleepovers in a New York City prison.  The word on the street is that NYC’s just-elected socialist mayor is negotiating bail for Maduro, and planning to put him on the city’s payroll as his personal consultant.  

And why not?  For a bright young socialist like Mamdani, the 26-year track records of Maduro and fellow Marxist/socialist Hugo Chavez have much to be admired.  Using the increasingly concentrated power of the state, they literally transformed their country, through confiscation, corruption, oppression and control.  Ideologically speaking, this is not far removed from Mamdani’s transformational vision for New York when he declares, “we are replacing the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”  Warmth indeed.  Such “warmth” has massacred and enslaved the human race for thousands of years.

But the point is, Maduro’s hands-on experience with enforcing the socialist/collectivist paradigm could come in handy for the charismatic Mamdani, apprenticing under the “master” as it were, while seeking his own version of the People’s Paradise. Consider Chavez’s and Maduro’s achievements, reflecting the final stage of every collectivist political system:

*    Government land confiscation and nationalization of thousands of private businesses and industries, replacing the owners and managers with political cronies who ran these companies into the ground.   Despite massive government subsidies, once-healthy businesses closed everywhere, leading to record unemployment.

*    Previously the richest country in Latin America, Venezuela’s living standards plummeted 74% in the last 10 years alone (2013-2023.)  By 2020 the economy had shrunk 61% in per capita terms, and the nation’s GDP had dropped over 80%.

*   Squandering huge revenues from the oil boom, the government continued to raise taxes and create double-digit deficit spending.  It then printed truckloads of worthless currency, creating hyperinflation so bad that consumer prices were rising 50% a month.  Today, almost 90% of the population is living in poverty.  This, even after receiving $1.9 billion in US foreign air – probably most of which was skimmed off by the socialist elites and never reached those it was intended to help.

*   In the words of one economist, “The regimes of Chavez and Maduro decimated the country through relentless class warfare and government intervention in the economy.”  In a country of 30 million, close to 8 million have now voted with their feet and become refugees in foreign lands, leaving their homes, communities, friends and families behind.  That includes over 20,000 doctors who simply could no longer function under the heel of their socialist regulators.

Such is the legacy of collectivism and socialism wherever it is found.  It requires the increasing concentration of governmental power, and the steady usurpation of personal freedoms.  Power inevitably corrupts – discouraging achievement and incentivizing theft.  At the end of the day, socialism is nothing less than organized crime, that impoverishes the people and enriches the political elite.  Winston Churchill put it perfectly:

“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.”

In my view, the biggest concern about the election of avowed socialists like Zohran Mamdani is not that The Big Apple will turn into a Venezuelan-style socialist hell-hole tomorrow.   What concerns me are the people who are believing The Socialist Lie of getting something for nothing, courtesy of a government that produces nothing.  The only costs are your freedom and self-respect, a trade-off they seem willing to make.  Afterall.  A little starvation and oppression never hurt anybody, right?  Just ask a Venezuelan.

It’s quite evident that these angry, envious, entitlement-oriented Americans have never been taught the difference between the blessings of a dynamic free society and the dreary, stifling existence of spread-the-misery socialism.  The fundamental opposites of collectivism and freedom.

Will our schools once again teach that?  Will our pulpits once again preach it?  Or are we destined to live out Thomas Jefferson’s warning, “A nation that expects to be ignorant and free… expects what never was and never will be.” 

Roger Koopman is president of Montana Conservative Alliance. He served four years in the Montana House of Representatives and eight years as a Montana Public Service commissioner. He operated a Bozeman small business for 37 years.