Freedom of the press by definition requires money to take advantage of, so it’s pretty clear that the 1st amendment did in fact equate money with speech, when that money is used to purchase access to means of mass communication.
Of course, that’s what the Udall amendment is designed to repeal.
Yes, interesting that even in a Republican Party primary, the voters sided with the anti-Wall Street guy. Takeaway: the Democrats can run against Wall Street and win. The question is, can they beat up the people whom they regular beg for money in the interests of retaining office? Because really, what’s the point of running for office if you can’t get really large bribes, safely and legally?
If what you’re claiming is true, then why did it take the courts two hundred years to discover this? Somehow we were able to struggle along, thinking we had free speech, prior to 1976.
As I asked you before, are you claiming there was no free speech and no free press in America prior to 1976?
No, Congress just didn’t try to infringe on it before in regards to campaign finance. Congress constantly tries to push the envelope, to expand its power.
Prior to Watergate, independent spending was unnecessary, because any person could just write a check of any size to any candidate. After Watergate, some campaign finance reforms were passed, and one of those reforms was to limit how much a candidate could spend of their own money.
The Supreme Court has been consistent that campaign finance laws that are used to prevent corruption are justified. There is no such justification for preventing say, Michael Bloomberg from spending his own money. He can’t corrupt himself.
There is a nice history and write-up on wikipedia:
None of the Koch brothers, or Soros, or unions, etc. is new. This has been going on forever. I liked the note that Lincoln bought a newspaper to help with his run for President, and Jackson leveraged a chain of partisan papers.
Which means that in the end, the only way to “get money out of politics” is to institute media controls.
But his money can corrupt the system if limiting outside spending gives wealthy candidates a prohibitive advantage. This isn’t hypothetical. One of the main characteristics parties look for in searching for good candidates is personal wealth. And that’s not even considering that nonwealthy potential candidates might be handed sinecures to bolster their future electability.
I think this is true and I share your aversion to that level of government intrusion. Better to just prevent media empires and massive private fortunes in the first place. Luckily campaign finance reform has a more modest goal: to “get the money out of elections”.
The vast majority of candidates aren’t wealthy enough to fund their campaigns. That takes $100 million or more, so that you don’t miss a million or ten, and there just aren’t that many people running for office.
Besides, being able to self-fund is a GOOD advantage, since it means you can’t be bought and you don’t owe anyone anything.
The electoral system isn’t supposed to be fair and the Supreme Court will never support regulations whose purpose is just to “level the playing field”, because there’s no way to do that. Incumbents have all the advantages, so any attempt to level the playing field is designed to harm challengers. SCOTUS sees right through it.
When a big corporation endorses a candidate and heavily promotes that candidate with favorable coverage in their corporate newspapers, that drowns out all but the biggest ad campaigns.
Yes, so only the wealthy should govern. We get that you believe that.
Hence, a constitutional convention. Congress won’t do it for us, the Five Fuckwits on the Supreme Court would never allow it if they did. We are waaaaaay ahead of you.
Campaign finance reform isn’t just for the presidency. In 2012 the average winner spent $1.6 in the House and $10.4 in the Senate.
Having a preponderance of wealthy people in Congress is not good in the sense that having an unrepresentative sample of people leaves them less able to well represent the populace. The wealthy don’t have the same concerns as most of us. They are living in a different America.
Only for voters who read those newspapers. Look, Fox News has a huge effect on american politics but they don’t reach nonconservatives because the rest of the country knows damn well how unbalanced they are.
No. I just don’t see a problem with self-funding of campaigns. There is no corruption issue, you just don’t think it’s “fair”, even though self-funded candidates have a poor record of success anyway.
Okay, I’ll give up some of the 1st amendment, and in exchange at that constitutional convention we’ll reduce the powers of the federal government, which would further reduce corruption since there would be less to buy.
Why you almost sound like Lance now, claiming that voters can think for themselves!
For what it’s worth, I also think voters think for themselves and that ad campaigns can be effective and sometimes they can’t be. Amount of money spent doesn’t always correlate with the victor, and the studies that show it does count races where the incumbent outspends the challenger by 20-1 or more. If you look at actual competitive races, money doesn’t seem to matter as much.
If you go even further and look at aggregate spending by parties, you’ll find zero relationship between amount spent and success.
http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/ptytots.php?cycle=2012
As you can see in the chart, the Republicans actually outraised the Democrats in every cycle up until 2010. The Democrats celebrated their first time outraising the Republicans by losing big.
So the Tillman Act of 1907 and the Federal Corrupt Practices Act of 1910 were imaginary?
No, they just didn’t go very far, and even they drew serious court challenges.
The more recent laws were much more comprehensive, and some parts of those laws were unconstitutional. And it’s not as if Buckley was decided by a conservative majority. Brennan, one of the most liberal justices in history, signed on to this opinion:
**the concept that government may restrict the speech of some [in] order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment. **
Now if we’re talking about an amendment to the Constitution, of course precedent doesn’t apply. But if we’re arguing about a CAMPAIGN surrounding such an amendment, this kind of stuff is going to be very persuasive to the public. The amendment does actually restrict 1st amendment freedoms, and it doesn’t just apply to rich people, but to everyone. If you contribute to a union, or an advocacy group like the NRA or the Sierra Club or Moveon, your voice is no longer welcome.
The other thing you have to consider when thinking about how a campaign over this amendment will play out is the role of liberal free speech groups like the ACLU. I imagine partisan Democrats will just support this amendment because they see it as beneficial to Democrats, and rationalize from there. But liberals with no particular party loyalty, the Glenn Greenwald types, are going to be hearing ads from the ACLU, from the Sierra Club, from Moveon, all of whom would lose their right to spend independently. And a lot of independents will be seeing NRA ads, and of course that’s beside the massive spending the Chamber of Commerce will engage in to reduce public support for this amendment.
The public is actually pretty sophisticated. A massive spending campaign against GMO labelling in California resulted in that ballot initiative’s defeat. It was a tough argument to make, but they made it successfully. This one is much easier.
Can you point to some “money is not speech” precedents way back then? You know, in those terms - stating that spending money on politics is not equivalent to speech?
:mad: Dammit, it’s public service! You don’t do it for the money! You do it for the pussy!