“A law setting limits on money spent for campaigns for federal offices or for advocacy of a particular law or federal policy shall not be construed (merey in virtue of that fact) as an abridgment of free speech.”
Som’n like that.
OTOH I do want to note that I think a big part of the present problem isn’t the Citizens United decision itself, but the lack of actual enforcement of the relevant laws. Candidates are not supposed to be coordinated with their PACs, but they clearly are coordinated in a sense I don’t believe the SC intended to be allowable.
Frylock, ISTM what you propose is to abridge free speech, but declare by fiat that this abridgement isn’t an abridgement. I suppose if it passed it would be constitutional by definition, but it’s a tortuous end-around, a strategy that could be employed to gut the Constitution of any coherence, force or meaning with regard to, well, anything. “A law prohibiting the practice of Catholicism shall not be construed as a prohibition of the free exercise of religion.” How is that different?
No, it hasn’t. Try picking up a prostitute, and if you’re arrested, offering the “hey, I used money, so this is protected by the first amendment” defense. What is generally accepted is that restricting an expenditure in support of advancing a particular exercise of free speech is, well, a restriction of free speech.
The right to free expression is not absolute, but restrictions tend to be on forms of speech, not on the speaker. None of us are permitted to lie under oath or slander as a result of the first amendment.
Where the CU law tripped was that it attempted to restrict political expression and only for certain groups. Political opinions are not a form of expression that has ever been restricted for that reason alone. It’s the very essence of what the first amendment looks to protect. And as can be read in the plain English of the first amendment, there is no distinction possible with regard to the type of speaker making the expression. CU was decided appropriately, if we don’t ignore the actual words of the amendment. “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” The words “except for corporations” are conspicuously missing here.
It is abridging free speech, but wasn’t meant to be an end-run in self-denial, but rather, was meant to delineate an exception to the more general rule. “Shall not be construed” language is all over the law, I thought, for just this kind of purpose.
That would be a similar type of proposal. But why are you asking about it? Nothing in my own proposal would imply I’d propose we amend the constitution to make the practice of Catholicism unprotected.
Are we being asked to accept an injustice because that injustice is enshrined in the Constitution, somehow? It is a sacred injustice, one not to be corrected by radical heretics? Are civil rights property rights, effectively, the man who has more property deserves more civil rights, more political power? IIRC, that was the opinion of our Founding Fuckups, by and large, that only men of property and business should be offered a voice in our government.
The Koch Brothers have a thousand times the political power of any of us here. Probably more. Is there some reason I am bound to respect that arrangement, is it somehow my patriotic duty? Have they bought it, and paid for it, and if I “abridge” their rights, I am stealing?
Did white people, by and large, “lose” political power due to the civil rights crusade? Yes, yes they did, but they should not have had that advantage to begin with, the effort is corrective. Now, if you want to play with the semantics, you might say white folks rights were “abridged”. In that they are lessened. But not denied, not erased, simply more in line with their fellow citizens.
I don’t want to deny the Koch Brothers their rights, I want to curtail their privileges. Not the same thing, at all. As for the Constitution and its sacred tenets, I would have preferred the Framers had spent more time listening to Tom Paine than that little bitch Al Hamilton.
Elucidator did not say that it is a privilege to advocate for a political position. He said it is a privilige to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to further a political position.
Even if you (understandably) hate what political campaigning has become, you ought to ask yourself: If candidates for office CAN’T spend a lot of money, who benefits?
I know, some of you WANT to say “the people benefit” or “democracy benefits.” But I beg to differ. I see a few clear winners from legislation to prevent candidates from spending money.
INCUMBENTS. An incumbent Senator or Congressman has no trouble getting on TV or into the newspapers whenever he wants, and he has the franking privilege as well. A Democrat who hopes to unseat Texas Senator John Cornyn has a very tough task ahead of him already- but he has NO chance if he can’t spend the money needed to achieve name recognition.
CELEBRITIES. You want a lot more Steve Largents, Al Frankens, Sonny Bonos and Bill Bradleys in Congress? Removing money from the campaign process would insure that you’d get them. An unknown candidate HAS to spend a lot of money to win name recognition. celebs already have it. But are more celebs in politics really what you want?
POLITICAL DYNASTIES. Take money out of the equation, and a famous name becomes more valuable than ever. You want a Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton race in 2016? Take money out of the equation, and that’s probably what you’ll get. I think there are already too many Bushes and Kennedys and Bayhs and Tafts and Rockefellers and Cuomos in politics. But if the OP’s proposed amendment passed, we’d see a lot more of them.
I think we need a constitutional amendment limiting the amount of money someone charged with a crime can spend on his defense. What type of justice do we have when a person has the “privilege” to spend $100M on his own defense?
Seven million, six hundred twenty three thousand dollars and fifty-four cents. At that precise point, in turns from a right into a privilege.
C’mon, John, you know that isn’t a fair question.
ETA: Followed by an even worse analogy. Why, yes, those are exactly alike except in those respects where they are not remotely similar. Which is mostly.
No, we are being asked to accept that personal liberties, if we rightly permit them to everyone, can have consequences we don’t personally like. The question becomes whether that limitation of liberties (in this case, “everyone has the same free speech rights–except those guys over there”) produces a greater benefit, certainly a subjective assessment.
For me, this one is just a complete non-starter. I would not begin to give the government the power to decide who gets to exercise the right to fee expression. And your “injustice” in this instance is another man’s “fair outcome.” Why do you get to decide who gets to speak? I don’t think I should get to decide who gets to express their political opinions. Neither should you, and neither should the government.
Would you accept an amendment that restricted the free expression of a minority group if a majority of people agreed that was what’s best for the country? Of course, not. But how is that different except that you don’t agree with the premise there, but you do here? And that’s the brilliant point of the first amendment, NOBODY gets to decide whose ideas are worthy of expression. It’s a great rule. “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” And, yes, that means we all must deal with the consequences of living in a free society, which often produces effects we find unappealing.
I am contemplating a parallel: employment. There was a time when “liberty of contract” hypothecated that J.P. Bigbucks, President of Plutocratic Enterprises Unltd. and Joe Bluecollar, one of his employees, were negotiating a pay scale for Joe on a level playing field. In point of fact, money and what it would buy tipped the scales so far in favor of J.P. that some external solution was called for. It was found in collective bargaining, laws permitting it and compelling it in those circumstances where a majority of employees chose to go that route, and the banning of strikebreaking practices, employment of goon squads, etc.
I see a parallel here. Corporations, PACs, etc. ,may certainly utilize political speech as a mode of influencing elections. But there also needs to be a mechanism to ensure that the scale is not tilted too far in favor of him who has the bucks, to the end that free discourse about our political future may flourish and not be the servant of a few large and wealthy corporate entities.
I’m not defining that mechanism in this post, simply saying that by analogy there does need to be one, that there should be a balance between ideas backed by capital and those which are not in exactly the same way as there needed to be one between capital and labor.
And for god’s sake let’s not allow this to be hijacked into abuses of unions and that entire spn. The point is the parallel between political speech now and employment 100 years ago, not what may or may not have gone wrong since.
It’s called the internet. Not that I agree that by analogy there needs to be one. Rights are rights. People can form unions or they can decide not to. They can form PACs or they can decide not to.
But you guys arguing against free speech need to enter the 21st century. The revolution won’t be televised. It’s happening online.
Good questions. That they are good questions, however, does not imply that there is no difference between speech and spending money on political campaigns.