"Unlimited Koch Cash Comes to New York"

"On Thursday, Judge Paul Crotty, who sits on the federal district court in Manhattan, reluctantly allowed unlimited contributions to independent political groups in New York State. 'Reluctantly,' in fact, doesn’t begin to describe how clenched the judge’s teeth were in writing this remarkable opinion, which eloquently describes the dangers of the very act he was allowing.

The state has a $150,000 annual limit on the political contributions of individuals. (Which, by the way, is already way too high.) Judge Crotty, who was New York City’s chief lawyer under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, felt he had no choice but to strike down the limit as applied to independent groups, because the United States Supreme Court has already decided the matter in favor of big donors.

He wrote that he was bound to follow the high court’s directives 'no matter how misguided the court [referring to himself] may think it to be.' And he explained in detail why the Supreme Court’s rulings, in both the Citizens United case and more recent McCutcheon case, were so imprudent."

David Firestone reports on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times April 25, 2014.