So…which response are we supposed to argue against? :
- It’s not happening.
- It’s happening, but it’s no big deal.
- You do it too!
- All of the above
- I want to talk about cats and pie
You can choose for yourself…I don’t think you are supposed to argue for or against anything you don’t really want to. 
You forgot the always popular “It’s not technically illegal. So therefore it’s okay.”
Well, it’s ‘always popular’ (on a board such as this dedicated to truth) because it’s freaking legal, flat out. There is no ‘technically’ about it. Not sure why you are trying to imply differently, but we aren’t even talking about skating on the thin ice on this one, even if you and others are trying to imply, wink wink nudge nudge that hanky panky is afoot. Or something.
You, noble XT, are opposed to all lobbying slime, while your “liberal” GD sparring partner only opposes right-wing slime. Yaaay, you!
Hmmm. One way was the campaign finance laws whose overturning by a 5-4 SCOTUS decision loosed the floodgates of Koch money. Time was when $20 and $50 contributions from ordinary citizens played the role that the Koch millions play now. Or, to you, were the $20 contributions just “slimy stuff” like the Koch money?
I’m perfectly fine with all the campaign donations going to causes and candidates I like … but we need to outlaw all the campaign donations going to causes and candidates I hate … what’s destroying our democracy is people who disagree with me !!!
It was struck down on 1st Amendment grounds, so that doesn’t seem to be a way to toss the bathwater out and keep the baby either. I didn’t have any issues with the Campaign Finance Reform (“McCain-Feingold”) FWIW…not sure why you thought I did, but hell you seem to make a lot of assumptions about what my positions are. You probably think I support the Republicans in the OP and the Koch bros who want to overturn Obamacare.
I do think all lobbying is slimy, and I’m astonished that people don’t seem to know how our system works and the history of lobbying, how lobby groups work or that what’s in the OP isn’t even that unusual…or, seemingly, know what is or isn’t legal.
I’m not so sure. Lobbying and campaign contributions depend on the polite fiction that there is no quid pro quo going on. Piercing that veil and saying, in effect, “I will give you money if you do X” is indistinguishable from bribery. Especially when “X” is something that benefits the donor financially.
Assuming the offer of campaign funds does not come with strings, it’s legal. If the funding is - as CNN reports - a direct offer in exhange for support of a specific policy, it’s freaking illegal, flat out. I take no position on whether CNN’s reporting is true in this case.
Speaking as someone who is fully in support of pubic financing of campaigns, what veil does anyone believe exists? Is it piercing some veil to walk into a bar and realize, “OH my God! Adults are consuming mind-altering chemicals!!”
Of course people are giving money to people they want to see in office so that they can enact certain policies. The public policy response to the inherent risk of corruption in this arrangement is that until recently, the donations have been capped (such that no one person or lobby is likely to provide a disproportionate amount of the funds needed to run a campaign) and that the donations are subject to disclosure requirements so that the public can draw its own conclusions whether a candidate is misrepresenting his true interests to the public. (For example, imagine if we learned that Bernie Sanders’ top contributors were actually the tobacco industry, pharma, and Wall Street – people would have some serious questions for him!)
The new laws regarding independent expenditures are very, very worrisome retreats from such good government/sunshine policies, but the shock expressed here seems to be more in line with, “OMG conservative fundraisers want conservative politicians to fulfill their conservative campaign promises!?!? END OF THE WORLD!!!”
I can only wonder how many of the participants in this thread have sympathy or support for the idea of holding Democratic candidates to a single-payer litmus test: if they don’t support that policy, we are going to support real progressives with all means at our disposal to support instead of you. Is that also evidence of the end of the world?
I don’t think anyone believes the veil actually exist. That’s the meaning of the phrase “polite fiction”.
Unfortunately, reading your cite, the politician didn’t list those payments as campaign contributions. Also, there may be a technical difference between :
a. “If you accept this money, you are agreeing to do X”
b. “This money is sitting here. If you happen to do X, you get it”.
It’s a fine line but apparently it is legal. The problem is that I do not see how you can even pretend you have a democracy if in practice some people get to cast a single vote, and some people get to give $400 million dollars, of which can all be spent on propaganda (outright lies) to manipulate people.
If you listen to what many conservatives actually say, a lot of time the phrases they use are exactly things that would happen to benefit rich people, who they are usually not.
I don’t know enough about law, but this doesn’t seem like a match to me. I don’t see how what this fund and the Koch bros are trying to do violates any of this from your link:
Reading through the OPs link (it’s not from CNN, so didn’t read their article yet), I don’t see any of that relating to what you linked to here. I have to say, since they have been completely open about this (it’s on the Guardian after all :p), that it seems unlikely that anything illegal is going on here, unless you think that this network and the Koch’s are stupid enough to come right out and do some illegal shit this publicly. :dubious: However, as I said, I don’t claim to be a legal expert…how do you think what you linked to demonstrates that what is happening (as reported by CNN) is potentially illegal?
McCormick didn’t disclose the money as a campaign contribution, but that was irrelevant since SCOTUS said the Hobbs Act was violated whether or not it was a legitimate contribution. The problem with the conviction was that the prosecution had not established a quid pro quo, and the lower court reasoned that wasn’t necessary if the contributions were “illegitimate.” McCormick would still have been convicted even though the monies were a campaign contribution, had the prosecution established more than a temporal nexus.
Sorry for the hijack, but a 5-4 decision is a 5-4 decision. In fact it’s a 5-4 decision of a court with at least 4 rabid right-wingers. But no matter who the 9 Justices, it’s fair to say that almost as many Justices, knowing far more about the Constitution than you or I, opposed the decision as supported it.
If you had written “Sad decision but we’ll have to live with it for decades,” I might find myself in agreement. But instead you overrule the Four because the majority intoned “1st Amendment.” If I found that the minority opinion also mentioned an Amendment, would that affect your view?
Um…isn’t that how the supreme court works? Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t 5 to 4 mean it was struck down? If a conservative said about a piece of legislature that they didn’t agree with from the past ‘but a 5-4 decision is a 5-4 decision. In fact, it’s a 5-4 decision of a court with at least 4 rabid’ left-wingers, would they have a valid point? 
As for the last, I’d be interested, but, frankly, it’s a done deal until it goes to another USSC on appeal or whatever. I haven’t always agreed with (or frankly even understood in some cases) past court decisions or stances, but a majority is a majority. In this case, if you are saying you don’t agree with the decision I would agree with that…but that’s based on my limited understanding of the law and only a superficial understanding McCain-Feingold. Plus my distaste for lobbyist groups and money going to politicians with only the broadest of checks, of course.
It isn’t even a fiction, polite or otherwise. Politicians ask for votes and money so they can win the election and do A, B, and C. Where is the fiction? Nobody is dressing it up in any misleading way.
Getting a million votes requires that a politician has to promise to represent the interests of a million people. But a politician only has to promise to represent the interests of one person to get a million dollars.
A system where political power is held by the people who collected the most votes is a democracy. A system where political power is held by the people who collected the most money is not.
You are saying that dead presidents don’t get to vote?
So I must preface this with a reminder that I’m in favor of public financing, but if one person is going to provide a million dollars to support a candidate, 99.5% of the promised funds will NEVER go to the candidate’s campaign. Instead, they will be independent expenditures which cannot be coordinated with the candidate. Furthermore, campaign cash isn’t like the electoral college: votes still determine the winner.
So what do you think about Democrats establishing a litmus test for being pro-choice, pro-single payer, etc? Is that also corrupting?