September 16, 2010: President Obama on Thursday night revived his attack on a Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend unlimited sums to influence elections: Free-spending businesses, he said, are making an “insidious power grab” even as most of the attention in this election year is on grassroots populism. Mr. Obama made his comments at a fundraiser in Stamford, Conn., for Richard Blumenthal, the state’s Democratic attorney general who is seeking the Senate seat long held by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Democrat who is retiring. Mr. Blumenthal, once far ahead in polls, is now in a close race with Linda McMahon, a Republican and former World Wrestling Entertainment executive. While Mrs. McMahon has spent freely from her personal fortune, Mr. Obama suggested that if elected she would join other Republicans in the Senate in blocking legislation that would require corporations and other special interests to disclose their donors when they spend independently on behalf of candidates or issues. The legislation, which Democrats proposed after the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling last January in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, fell to Republicans’ filibuster last July despite Mr. Obama’s public protests. “They want to keep the public in the dark,” Mr. Obama told the Democratic donors. “Right now, all across the country, special interests are planning and running millions of dollars of attack ads against Democratic candidates,” he said. “They want to take Congress back and return to the days where lobbyists wrote the laws,” Mr. Obama added. “It is the most insidious power grab since the monopolies of the Gilded Age. That’s happening right now. So there’s a lot of talk about populist anger and grassroots. But that’s not what’s driving a lot of these elections.” FULL STORY HERE:

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