You’re missing the point of CFR, Dewey, which is not to limit your access to an audience, but to guarantee you the same level of access your opponent has regardless of which of you has more money or wealthier backers. As Lind put it, “The argument against strict public regulation of money in politics is based on a false analogy between free spending and free speech protected under the First Amendment. The analogy is false, because limits on campaign finance do not address the content of speech – only its volume, as it were. It is not an infringement on free speech to say that, in a large public auditorium, Douglas will not be allowed to use a microphone unless Lincoln can as well.”
Furthermore, setting discretionary limits or caps on such speech would be akin to requiring the more articulate advocate in a debate to defend their position with a mouthful of marbles.
Not really. The more skilled candidate can still present a more convincing argument, because he’ll be able to make better use of the same resources. IMO the microphone analogy is dead on.
It would, rather, be akin to allowing the articulate debater no more and no less time in the debate than his or her less-articulate opponent. Which is the rule debates use anyway.
Exactly.
Certain rights, but not all. APs don’t serve to protect rights to free speech, freedom of assembly etc.
Why not limits the rights to Liberty to only natural persons?
Why does an agreement between folks (an AP) need to have a right to lobby the legislature or contribute to elecion campaigns? The rights of the individuals who own and are part of the corporation have not had their rights to participate in the government abridged at all. They are free to write letters, have meetings with and otherwise communicate their wishes to their legislatures as well as asking others to do the same.
The AP would be free to ask natural persons to communicate their wishes to the legislature.
All that is different is that artificial persons would no longer be allowed to lobby our legislatures and would no longer be allowed to contribute money to election campaigns.
Radical difference to be sure, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with denying rights ot a fiction.
All in the name of fighting rational ignorance.
Unfortunately, almost no court in the land agrees with this interpretation, at least insofar as they argue that the free speech the amendment talks about is defined fairly narrowly.
That said, I’m more and more of the mind that its just true that you cannot stop money from influencing politics in a big way, and trying creates more absurdities than it solves.
What do you say to the claim that it has already been done, successfully, in France and Germany?
Doubletalk. Your chosen method of leveling the field is by limiting my ability to reach the broadest possible audience.
Michael Lind is an idiot. This is tantamount to requiring the NRA to provide space on its leaflets for rebuttals from Handgun Control, Inc, a measure which also wouldn’t address the content of speech, only its volume, and a measure which certainly would be violative of the first amendment.
Or rather, like requiring a third party to provide space to both the NRA and HCI.
Yes, they do. Indeed, in the instance of political organizations, they exist precisely as vehicles for those rights.
This is a poorly-worded question, but I gather you’re asking why rights aren’t only granted to natural persons. The answer is, they are. Indeed, every right that can be asserted by an artificial person can be traced back to the protection of the underlying rights of its members. Artificial persons are allowed to assert certain rights as a means of protecting the rights of its members.
Because organized advocacy is effective advocacy. A bunch of scattershot voices can’t make a difference. Group those voices into a chorus and they can.
You act as if artificial persons have conciousness separate and apart from their members. They don’t. When they do something, it is their membership who is actually doing it. The legal vehicle is just there for administrative convenience: it’s easier to say “the NRA” proposes something rather than listing all its members individually as proponents of an idea.
Which raises a whole host of other questions. But Lind’s example is silly. No one’s denied a microphone under the current system. The New York Times will run an ad for anyone willing to pay their rates. The presence of a Bush ad on NBC does not restrict Kerry’s ability to run ads of his own.
Lind is essentially suggesting that government ration out free speech, and that notion is fundamentally incompatible with American notions of individual rights.
Sure, and gay men are free to marry women just like straight men, and you can buy a Ford in any color as long as it’s black. The fact is that some people are more able than others to pay those rates, which means the more money you have, the louder your voice is.
None of these actually apply. If you’re going for snarky, try quoting something that actually matches the fact pattern at hand. I recommend Anatole France’s bit about bridges.
The fact that I can reach a wide audience does not mean you cannot do the same. My ability to speak does not limit yours.
Yeah, I was trying to remember how that one went. It seems my point made it across anyway. 
No, but it does dimish mine in comparison. IMO that’s enough of a danger to democracy to justify limiting the volume of your speech.
No, it really doesn’t, particularly in this day and age of multiple news outlets.
Oh, for christ’s sake, alarmist much? Please do explain how simply allowing people to seek audiences unfettered by the whims of government bureaucrats is a “danger to democracy.”
The existence of Bush’s ads do not reduce Kerry’s ability to get his message across. Neither of the two parties’s ability to communicate are diminished by the other’s spending.
I’ll tell you what a real threat to democracy is, and that’s the incumbency advantage. Eugene McCarthy’s insurgent campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1968 was essentially funded by five millionaires; no others were willing to risk LBJ’s wrath. McCarthy’s campaign effectively caused LBJ to decline to run for another term. And George McGovern’s campaign in 1972 for the nomination was funded in no small part by philanthropist Stuart Mott. Both were outsiders, and both would have failed out of the gate but for the contributions of large donors. Left to the mercy of a government bureaucrat telling them when and where and how much they could speak, they’d have been doomed.
On the whole, I’ll settle on the side of freedom, thankyouverymuch. If I want to spend $50,000 on political advertising – be it issue ads or direct endorsements – I should be allowed to.
I had that assumed for the purposes of this discussion that being a vehicle for and protecting rights were different things. It seemed implied and needless to mention the function that these orgs are serving today.
It is very true that these organizations purpose is express the concerns of their members.
These legal constructs are not so much designed to protect the rights of the individual members (specifically in regards to free speech issues) as they are designed to be a means of exercising of these rights.
That’s not exactly what I was asking. I haphazardly tried to make a distinctions between certain rights. APs should certainly have the rights to own property, enter into binding contracts, initiate legal proceedings to arbitrate grievances and such. The other types of rights involve things like the right to vote.
Lobbying legislatures and contributing to election campaigns are more or less moral imperatives for an electorate of a free nation. However, just as APs are not permitted the right to vote, neither should they be allowed the rights to lobby our legislatures nor contribute to election campaigns.
Just as the members of these APs are not entitled to an additional vote by virtue of the creation of an AP neither should they be given an additional direct voice to our legislatures nor election campaigns.
I’m not advocating doing away with special interest groups like Up With Staring Frogs (or MoveOn or the Swift Boat Vets). On the contrary, I’m very much in favor of such groups existing and thriving. I’m only in favor of restricting their ability to have direct input on our legislatures and election campaigns.
Which voices get heard depends on the context of the competition for a hearing. If the environment in which these voices speak changes, the nature of the competition to be heard will change.
All involved (APs, members of the electorate, elected officials) still have a vested interest that voices be heard. Voices will be heard even if APs are no longer allowed to speak directly to our legislatures. The electorate will still speak to its legislatures. Legislators will still seek to hear the voices of those they represent.
So even though it’s a truism that scattershot voices are less likely to effect change than chorused voices, removing APs right to directly petition our legislatures does not prevent the formations of choruses amongst the electorate. Nor does disallowing APs to contribute to election campaigns prevent the formation of choruses amongst the electorate.
It does however, make it at least somewhat less likely that the views of special interests will receive attention from our legislators in amounts proportional to the amount of contributions made rather than in amounts proportional to the worth of their suggested policy or relative importance to the electorate.
I appreciate this. It seems to be a basic given.
What I was meaning when I said “The AP would be free to ask natural persons to communicate their wishes to the legislature,” was that the NRA (for example) would still be free and encouraged to organize and enlist the efforts of its members, seek new recruits and make its cases in public forums.
They could even hire professional staff to oversee and coordinate research, suggested legislation, letter writing campaigns, marches, sit-ins, TV ads, radio talk shows, books pamphlets, etc. They could even still endorse candidates.
The only differences would be that they would no longer have their own professional lobbyists meeting with legislators and they would no longer be allowed to contribute to election campaigns.
Further, though, the official views of an organization often are not identical to those of all of its members. This is especially so in cases where the organization is not of an inherently political nature or where the organization involves more than a handful of issues.
Take for example the views of the GOP versus the views of a randomly selected Republican. What are the odds that the Republican will 100% endorse every single aspect of GOP policy and actions?
While artificial persons are vehicles for the exercise of the rights of their members, the aps themselves are not identical to their membership (if the NRA takes out a loan, Mr. Heston’s gun collection’s not held in collateral). Neither are aps’ expressions necessarily identical to the expressions of their members.
Therefore, in certain contexts, as matter of simplicity, it seems convenient and useful to discuss the actions of an ap as though they are something distinct from the actions of its members.
When the only viewpoints we hear or notice are those that are backed by enough money to rise above the rest, that’s dangerous. True democracy requires equal access to different viewpoints - not just in the sense that I could go online and look up Nader or Badnarik’s web site if I felt like it, but also in the sense that if I’m blasted with ads from Bush and Kerry all day, I should also be blasted with ads from Nader and Badnarik.
Don’t you think that’s because Bush and Kerry both have millions of dollars to amplify their voice? I think this is an example in my favor, really - we hear Bush and Kerry’s messages, but we don’t hear any of the other parties, because they don’t have millions to spend.
How do you figure that? Why would it doom them if their voice were just as loud as the incumbent’s?
If I want to put profanity or nudity in my Super Bowl halftime show, or broadcast slander or copyrighted material, should I be allowed to? After all, I can chant “freedom of speech” just as often as you can. Are you willing to denounce all limits on freedom of speech, or just the ones that would change our political campaigns?
You must feel really, really bad about something to wish this upon yourself.
Actually, it’s part of my master plan to convince everyone to buy a TiVo.
There may be many news outlets, but some are better frequented than others and, in the case of TV, there is primetime. Those with the greater war-chests will have access to the better outlets.
In European countries with national TV/newspapers is it the norm for candidates to be ensured equal airtime/printspace? - I don’t know if this is the case but it must be possible as it must be in the US, if a little more difficult.
I think this should be the basis for electioneering, with private endorsements allowed but labelled as being unconnected with a candidate.
As to the OP, I agree with the assertion that money thrown at a candidate, who is standing for a whole range of issues, means very little and, IMO and as an ideal to aim for, should be dissuaded.