VOA慢速英语2012 THIS IS AMERICA - 'Super PACs' and More: Politics, Money and Language

THIS IS AMERICA - 'Super PACs' and More: Politics, Money and Language

STEVE EMBER: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: And I'm Shirley Griffith. This week on our program, we talk about politics, money and language.
(MUSIC)
STEVE EMBER: Two years ago this month, the United States Supreme¹ Court decided² a campaign finance case known as "Citizens United."
The court said the government may continue to limit direct donations to political candidates by corporations and unions. However, the justices said the government may not limit spending on independent efforts to support or oppose candidates.
The court said these limits violate the Constitution's right of free speech. The majority ruled that corporations have the same rights to free speech in political campaigns as individuals do. The vote was five to four.
The case resulted from a lawsuit³ against the Federal Election Commission by a conservative group called Citizens United. The ruling has cleared the way for unrestricted donations to groups known as "super PACs," or political action committees. These super PACs are supposed to work independently of campaigns, though some include former aides to the candidates they support.
The effects of "Citizens United" can be seen in the race for the Republican presidential nomination⁵. Super PACs have been spending millions of dollars on television advertising⁶. The Supreme Court found nothing wrong with requirements to identify who is paying for political ads. But, given the timing⁷ of reports, voters might not know who the donors⁸ were until after they vote in a primary.
Newt Gingrich is an example of a candidate who supported the "Citizens United" decision, them became a victim of it.
The next primary is this Saturday in South Carolina. Since nineteen eighty no Republican presidential candidate has won the nomination without winning South Carolina.
FEMALE VOICE: "Ever notice how some people make a lot of mistakes?"
NEWT GINGRICH: "It was probably a mistake."
Mr. Gingrich became the target of attack ads before the recent Iowa caucuses⁹. The former speaker of the House of Representatives had been leading in public opinion polls in that state. However, he finished fourth in the voting. Ads paid for by allies of Mitt⁴ Romney are widely seen as having played a big part.
New York City Councilman Charles Barron, a Democrat¹⁰, says the situation is ironic¹¹.
CHARLES BARRON: "And it couldn't have happened to a better person than Newt Gingrich [laughs], because this was a person who supported corporate¹² elites¹³ having their way and contributing as much as they want to campaigns. Now it turned around to bite him."
And now a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC aims to bite the Romney campaign with a half-hour film called "When Mitt Romney Came to Town." The group, Winning Our Future, presents him as a "corporate raider" when he led Bain Capital, an investment company. It says he profited while people lost their jobs in the companies he bought and sold.
MITT ROMNEY: "Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people."
CROWD: [Laughter]
MITT ROMNEY: "Where do you think it goes?"
CROWD: "Into their pockets!"
MITT ROMNEY: "Whose pockets? Whose pockets?"
ANNOUNCER: "A story of greed, playing the system for a quick buck¹⁴, a group of corporate raiders led by Mitt Romney, more ruthless than Wall Street."
STEVE EMBER: On Friday, Newt Gingrich said the film contained mistakes and he called on Winning Our Future to either remove them or not run the film.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The New York City Council has passed a resolution that calls for amending¹⁵ the United States Constitution. The proposed amendment¹⁶ would declare that corporations do not have the same rights as people. It would declare that money is not a constitutionally protected form of speech. Los Angeles, the nation's second largest city, has passed a similar resolution. So have other cities including Albany, New York; Boulder¹⁷, Colorado; and South Miami, Florida.
STEVE EMBER: Eric Ulrich is a Republican member of the New York City Council. He voted against the resolution targeting corporate political spending.
ERIC ULRICH: "Because it's just as important, even if you don't agree with it, as the influence labor¹⁸ organizations and other groups may have. You have to create an equal playing field and zeroing out one group simply because we don't agree with them just to help another -- that's not fair, that's not American."
Some people think the solution is to have public financing of campaigns. Jonah Minkoff-Zern represents the group Public Citizen.
JONAH MINKOFF-ZERN: "Our voice and our vote doesn't matter the same way that someone who has so many resources to devote to a campaign, whether it's a wealthy individual or a mega-corporation."
Last week, the Supreme Court made another ruling related to the issue of money and political influence. It dismissed an appeal seeking to expand the ability of foreigners to contribute to American political campaigns.
The justices upheld a federal court judgment¹⁹ in support of a ban on foreign contributions from all but immigrants who live permanently²⁰ in the United States. A three-judge court ruled that Congress was acting²¹ within its powers when it banned most foreigners from donating to campaigns.
The Supreme Court upheld the ruling by the three-judge panel without further comment.
(MUSIC)
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The United States has a long process for choosing candidates to run for president every four years.
The first voting of this election season took place on January third in Iowa at local political meetings known as caucuses. Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, finished just eight votes ahead of former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.
Iowa traditionally holds the first caucuses, while New Hampshire holds the first primary election. In primaries in other states, voters who are registered with a political party can only vote for candidates from that party. But in some states, including New Hampshire, people can vote in primaries even if they are not registered with a party.
Professor Candice Nelson at American University in Washington is an expert on elections.
CANDICE NELSON: "The purpose of the primary season is to enable candidates to introduce themselves to the voters, to let the voters get to know the candidates, to think about the candidates over the course of three or four months."
STEVE EMBER: Many of the people who attend campaign rallies and other events do not just want to shake hands with a candidate. They want answers on issues. Phil Elliott is a political reporter with the Associated Press.
PHIL ELLIOTT: "They go to these events. They pack the coffee shops. They wait for hours to meet the candidates and ask them very serious and substantive²² questions."
The traditional period of three or four months when states hold primaries and caucuses has been shrinking in recent presidential elections. States have been setting earlier and earlier dates in hopes of gaining greater visibility and power in deciding a party's nominee²³.
Some people think all fifty states should hold their primaries or caucuses on the same day -- a so-called national primary.
Mark Rom is a political scientist at Georgetown University in Washington.
MARK ROM: "The main advantage of a national primary is that the voters, the votes from individuals across the nation, would count equally toward choosing the presidential candidates. That would be a good thing. The bad thing about a national primary is it would give special advantages to those who have raised the most money, and those who have the highest popularity when the race starts."
During the primary season, people are choosing a candidate but really they are voting for delegates for that candidate. The idea is that the candidate with the most delegates becomes the party's nominee. But the nominee is not officially chosen until the delegates gather for the party's national convention.
The conventions takes place about two months before the general election in early November. The Republican National Convention will take place in the Tampa Bay area in Florida at the end of August. The Democratic National Convention is in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the first week of September.
(MUSIC)
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Twenty-eleven is over, but some of the words that came to define the past year of political protests around the world may live on. Grant Barrett is host of the public radio program "A Way with Words" and vice²⁴ president of the American Dialect Society. That group chose "occupy" as its Word of the Year.
GRANT BARRETT: "And this was used in phrases like Occupy Wall Street or Occupy San Francisco, or frankly²⁵ 'occupy' just about any place. And this was a word coined by an organization in Canada called Adbusters, which started a campaign last summer to get people in October to protest in the streets, to protest the unfair distribution of wealth and the unfair distribution of power, and 'occupy' really has had a lot of legs, as they say -- a lot of life."
Grant Barrett says it can work with lots of other words.
GRANT BARRETT: "And so, in that way, 'occupy' has become what we call a combining form. So it can be combined with verbs and nouns and adjectives in order to create new phrases and new expressions that filter throughout the whole movement."
Activists²⁶ in the Occupy movement call themselves the "ninety-nine percenters."
(SOUND : "We are the ninety-nine percent")
GRANT BARRETT: " And there is one percent of the population -- the 'one-percenters' -- who seem to have all the money and all the power and all the control."
The Occupy movement has borrowed methods and terms from protests of the past. Mr. Barrett points to the use of the so-called human megaphone.
(SOUND)
GRANT BARRETT: "In order not to violate laws about electronic amplification²⁷, what they would do is a speaker would say something. They would say, 'I would like to tell you my opinion,' and the whole crowd repeats exactly what the speaker just said to make sure that everyone else who is farther away can hear it."
The protesters have also used non-verbal communication. Crossing your arms in front of your chest is called a "hard block" and means "firm opposition²⁸." Occupiers have also used "twinkling" similar to a hand motion that deaf people use to signal applause.
GRANT BARRETT: "It looks kind of like if you hold our hands up in the air and you face your palms outward and you kind of waggle your hands a little bit, you kind of shake them, that's 'twinkling.' And this is really interesting from a language point of view. It's borrowed from American Sign Language, because that is the way you applaud in ASL. It's interesting stuff!"
Another widely used term in twenty-eleven was Arab Spring.
GRANT BARRETT: "In this two-word phrase we have encapsulated, we've made shorthand for, a lot of really important history."
(MUSIC)
STEVE EMBER: We had reporting by Peter Fedynsky, Jeffrey Young and Adam Phillips, and help from Brianna Blake. I'm Steve Ember.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: And I'm Shirley Griffith. You can download texts and MP3s of our programs, get English teaching activities and subscribe²⁹ to our podcasts at voanews.cn. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.

1 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

2 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

3 lawsuit   

n.诉讼，控诉

参考例句：

• They threatened him with a lawsuit.他们以诉讼威逼他。
• He was perpetually involving himself in this long lawsuit.他使自己无休止地卷入这场长时间的诉讼。

4 mitt   

n.棒球手套，拳击手套，无指手套；vt.铐住，握手

参考例句：

• I gave him a baseball mitt for his birthday.为祝贺他的生日，我送给他一只棒球手套。
• Tom squeezed a mitt and a glove into the bag.汤姆把棒球手套和手套都塞进袋子里。

5 nomination   

n.提名，任命，提名权

参考例句：

• John is favourite to get the nomination for club president.约翰最有希望被提名为俱乐部主席。
• Few people pronounced for his nomination.很少人表示赞成他的提名。

6 advertising   

n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的

参考例句：

• Can you give me any advice on getting into advertising? 你能指点我如何涉足广告业吗?
• The advertising campaign is aimed primarily at young people. 这个广告宣传运动主要是针对年轻人的。

7 timing   

n.时间安排，时间选择

参考例句：

• The timing of the meeting is not convenient.会议的时间安排不合适。
• The timing of our statement is very opportune.我们发表声明选择的时机很恰当。

8 donors   

n.捐赠者( donor的名词复数 )；献血者；捐血者；器官捐献者

参考例句：

• Please email us to be removed from our active list of blood donors. 假如你想把自己的名字从献血联系人名单中删去，请给我们发电子邮件。
• About half this amount comes from individual donors and bequests. 这笔钱大约有一半来自个人捐赠及遗赠。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 caucuses   

n.（政党决定政策或推举竞选人的）核心成员( caucus的名词复数 )；决策干部；决策委员会；秘密会议

参考例句：

• Republican caucuses will happen in about 410 towns across Maine. 共和党团会议选举将在缅因州的约410个城镇进行。 来自互联网

10 democrat   

n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员

参考例句：

• The Democrat and the Public criticized each other.民主党人和共和党人互相攻击。
• About two years later,he was defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter.大约两年后，他被民主党人杰米卡特击败。

11 ironic   

adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的

参考例句：

• That is a summary and ironic end.那是一个具有概括性和讽刺意味的结局。
• People used to call me Mr Popularity at high school,but they were being ironic.人们中学时常把我称作“万人迷先生”，但他们是在挖苦我。

12 corporate   

adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的

参考例句：

• This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
• His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。

13 elites   

精华( elite的名词复数 )； 精锐； 上层集团； （统称）掌权人物

参考例句：

• The elites are by their nature a factor contributing to underdevelopment. 这些上层人物天生是助长欠发达的因素。
• Elites always detest gifted and nimble outsiders. 社会名流对天赋聪明、多才多艺的局外人一向嫌恶。

14 buck   

n.雄鹿，雄兔；v.马离地跳跃

参考例句：

• The boy bent curiously to the skeleton of the buck.这个男孩好奇地弯下身去看鹿的骸骨。
• The female deer attracts the buck with high-pitched sounds.雌鹿以尖声吸引雄鹿。

15 amending   

改良，修改，修订( amend的现在分词 )； 改良，修改，修订( amend的第三人称单数 )( amends的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Amending acts in 1933,1934, and 1935 attempted to help honest debtors rehabilitate themselves. 一九三三年，一九三四年和一九三五年通过的修正案是为了帮助诚实的债务人恢复自己的地位。
• Two ways were used about the error-amending of contour curve. 采用两种方法对凸轮轮廓曲线进行了修正。

16 amendment   

n.改正，修正，改善，修正案

参考例句：

• The amendment was rejected by 207 voters to 143.这项修正案以207票对143票被否决。
• The Opposition has tabled an amendment to the bill.反对党已经就该议案提交了一项修正条款。

17 boulder   

n.巨砾；卵石，圆石

参考例句：

• We all heaved together and removed the boulder.大家一齐用劲，把大石头搬开了。
• He stepped clear of the boulder.他从大石头后面走了出来。

18 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

19 judgment   

n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见

参考例句：

• The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
• He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。

20 permanently   

adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地

参考例句：

• The accident left him permanently scarred.那次事故给他留下了永久的伤疤。
• The ship is now permanently moored on the Thames in London.该船现在永久地停泊在伦敦泰晤士河边。

21 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

22 substantive   

adj.表示实在的；本质的、实质性的；独立的；n.实词，实名词；独立存在的实体

参考例句：

• They plan to meet again in Rome very soon to begin substantive negotiations.他们计划不久在罗马再次会晤以开始实质性的谈判。
• A president needs substantive advice,but he also requires emotional succor. 一个总统需要实质性的建议，但也需要感情上的支持。

23 nominee   

n.被提名者；被任命者；被推荐者

参考例句：

• His nominee for vice president was elected only after a second ballot.他提名的副总统在两轮投票后才当选。
• Mr.Francisco is standing as the official nominee for the post of District Secretary.弗朗西斯科先生是行政书记职位的正式提名人。

24 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

25 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

26 activists   

n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His research work was attacked by animal rights activists . 他的研究受到了动物权益维护者的抨击。
• Party activists with lower middle class pedigrees are numerous. 党的激进分子中有很多出身于中产阶级下层。 来自《简明英汉词典》

27 amplification   

n.扩大，发挥

参考例句：

• The voice of despair may be weak and need amplification.绝望的呼声可能很微弱，需要扩大。
• Some of them require further amplification.其中有些内容需进一步详细阐明。

28 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

29 subscribe   

vi.(to)订阅，订购；同意；vt.捐助，赞助

参考例句：

• I heartily subscribe to that sentiment.我十分赞同那个观点。
• The magazine is trying to get more readers to subscribe.该杂志正大力发展新订户。