Gotta prove sedition. gotta prove an election is being bought. In order to do that you, first have to prove that a particular buyer has more influence than anyone else. If you can make the case that Sheldon Adelson has more influence than Barack Obama, then you can plausibly accuse Adelson of buying an election. Not really, but I’ll grant it for arguments’ sake. However, Barack Obama clearly has a ton more influence on the election than any third party spender, and more money.
Let’s compare Sheldon Adelson to Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbagh has loyal followers who hang on his every word. Sheldon Adelson does not. Rush Limbaugh reaches millions year around. Sheldon Adelson buys 30-second ads around election time. Can you seriously prove that Adelson’s influence is outsized compared to those he is competing with to get his message out?
Except the disfavoured speakers in this instance were corporations, which are not natural born citizens. They’re legal fictions.
Two wrongs fallacy. Not to mention, I’ve already mentioned support of different measures to increase the democratic legitimacy of elections other than campaign reform in this very thread, which you have rejected. I doubt your sincerity in claiming to support democracy against special interests.
Both nonsense and impossible.
Just nonsense.
It’s fundamentally different. As you pointed out, informed voters have many sources of information where they can correct misconceptions. So, they can simply pursue these other sources if there are no corporate electioneering communications present.
Since some corporations were exempt, you still had the same problem. The law either applies to all corporations or it applies to none.
There’s no two wrongs fallacy. Both are fine, IMO, and to most reformers, one is fine while the other is not. So there’s no more than one wrong. The democratic legitimacy of elections shouldn’t be in question. No matter how much corporations spend persuading the public, the public decides. If you believe the public is brainwashed, that’s a different kind of problem.
They can and do peruse them with corporate electioneering communications present.
And are we back to just saying corporations don’t have free speech rights? Is it okay now for individuals to spend as much as they want?
Limiting speech is almost always unconstitutional, including the way that the BCRA did. Okay?
No, I address it.
Yes, and for the millionth time, this is not even close enough to being an allowable exception. It is the opposite, in fact - your logic is exactly what the First Amendment was written to forbid.
Buying elections is impossible. The winner is whoever gets the most votes.
You are equating speech about politics to sedition. This is why I say you are exactly who the founders feared when they wrote the First Amendment.
Again, it’s exactly what happened and you know it.
Yes. So what? It is not your place to say that’s what they have to do. The people may also vote based only on TV ads, if they want to, and you can’t do a damn thing about it. If you think that’s bad, tough. The voters decide how and why to vote, not you. Stay out of their business.
Since this subject keeps coming up, about speech restrictions, look up strict scrutiny guys. Speech restrictions must:
It must be justified by a compelling governmental interest. While the Courts have never brightly defined how to determine if an interest is compelling, the concept generally refers to something necessary or crucial, as opposed to something merely preferred. Examples include national security, preserving the lives of multiple individuals, and not violating explicit constitutional protections.
The law or policy must be narrowly tailored to achieve that goal or interest. If the government action encompasses too much (overbroad) or fails to address essential aspects of the compelling interest, then the rule is not considered narrowly tailored.
The law or policy must be the least restrictive means for achieving that interest, that is, there cannot be a less restrictive way to effectively achieve the compelling government interest. The test will be met even if there is another method that is equally the least restrictive. Some legal scholars consider this "least restrictive means" requirement part of being narrowly tailored, though the Court generally evaluates it separately.
And tortured reasoning won’t cut it. Strict scrutiny is almost always death for a law. When in doubt, SCOTUS strikes it down. THe government’s case has to be airtight. And the case for BCRA simply was not, nor can it be made so.
If the goal is to make things “fair” shouldn’t we also ban speech by celebrities? After all, they get more than their “fair” share of influence when they endorse a candidate. And the candidate may give the celebrity favors in return. So why are we tolerating a “celebritocracy” along with a plutocracy? The voters are just too stupid to think objectively about celebrities, after all, so we need to fix out democracy. Ban celebrity speech about politics!
I demand it. Anyone who thinks that it’s necessary, and constitutional, to control the influence of certain sources that have “too much” influence on democracy must adopt my proposal or else they are hypocrites who are whores for the celebritocracy.
In order to accept Lance and Adaher’s notion that unlimited political contributions are NOT a clear and present danger to democracy, we need to accept a central notion, and it’s a REALLY difficult notion to accept: that multiimillionaires, billionaires and corporations write half a million dollar checks without some specific notions of what they intend to get for those checks, and that the politicians who get them are not the least concerned with who is writing them and have no intention of repaying them once they get into office.
You also have to believe that the prospect of wealthy donors determining who gets elected with their huge checks is not a direct threat to the democratic process. (And no, I do not care whether a politician who is in thrall to plutocrats has a D or an R after his name.)
Lance and Adaher state that they do not believe that these huge donations make much of a difference in who gets elected, so you would also have to share in their belief that advertising does not work, at least, in elections.
They say that limiting political contributions is a violation of the First Amendment so profound that you might as well ban speech of all sorts, by all sorts of people. And that corporations are people. They do not say corporations are the very best sort of people, but you kinda get the idea that they might think that.
Lance and adaher have pretty much admitted to all these beliefs, though they have yet to offer anything like convincing proof of them. I personally find their professed beliefs so nonsensical that I flatly reject them. It seems to me that they have made a number of extraordinary claims here, the sort of claims that require extraordinary proof. They both use the First Amendment as a sort of shield, to hide the naked ridiculousness of their beliefs.
I hope, gentle readers, that you will see the ridiculousness of their assertions, and not fall for them for an instant. Just apply common sense to their assertions, and they will be revealed in all their naked ridiculousness.
That is a legitimate concern. But you have to analyze it in the context of other possible ways of dealing with campaign finance. I think we can both agree that when Sheldon Adelson could just write a $1 million check to the RNC, that this was a bigger problem, correct? It was a direct donation to a political party. By having to advertise independently, the bribery is no longer direct. Maybe it still exists, but it’s better than the direct approach. Okay, so we’ve dealt with the direct bribery, how do you deal with the indirect bribery? Therein lies the problem. In order to restrict independent political speech, you have to do it in a way that applies to everyone equally. Once you start putting in exceptions, you have the favored/disfavored problem and the law gets struck down. So let’s make this simple: write me a simple, amendment-length law that deals with the problem and doesn’t give the government broad censorship powers over whatever it pleases.
It is important, about as important as a baseball team having the biggest payroll. IT’s just not decisive on its own. You cannot buy an election anymore than you can buy a pennant. Or you can, sometimes, if everything goes your way.
Contributions are not the problem, it’s the speech itself. SCOTUS has upheld contribution limits again and again. The problem is that reformers have moved the goalposts, defining speech in favor of a candidate as a contribution. So I’m making a contribution right here, albeit a small one.
Well, if we’re talking about burden of proof, it’s actually more on your side. Citizens United was an unpopular decision, and I believe people can in good faith dispute that decision. However, you want to go way beyond even the liberal jurisprudence on campaign finance reform. There has never been a law limiting individual independent advocacy. Soros, Adelson, and whoever have been able to donate unlimited amounts their whole lives, as long as those donations aren’t to candidate campaigns or political parties. Given the precedent of Buckley v. Valeo in 1976, which struck down limits on individuals’ ability to finance their own campaigns, it is very, very unlikely that a limit on individual expenditure would hold up in court.
If you want to keep the discussion strictly about corporate political speech, then we can have a pretty contentious argument in which both sides have a lot of merit. But if you’re talking about individual limits as well, you’d have to change the way the 1st amendment has been interpreted since the campaign finance era began 100 years ago. So as far as that part of the debate goes, the burden’s all on you.
This isn’t about contributions to candidates. I hope you finally get that.
No you don’t. You can believe that if you want to. I don’t mind at all. It’s often true. Not nearly as often as you think, but of course it is. Straw man number one.
There’s your problem right there.
For the millionth time: money doesn’t determine who is elected. The voters do.
Until you accept this undeniable fact, you will not get anywhere.
Straw man number two. Of course they make a difference. (Careful with that donation word again - we’re talking about speech and spending on speech and donations to groups that only spend it on speech). Duh.
Straw man number three. Corporations are not people and I’ve never said they are. That’s silly.
False. I’ve repeatedly said the exact opposite, as I’m doing again here. Don’t misrepresent my beliefs. Stop reading what you want to read and start actually listening to what I’m saying.
Yep. Lifelong, active one.
Also a member of the ACLU, which supported the Citizen’s United decision and filed an amicus brief in support of it. You gonna deny that inconvenient truth too? You gonna ignore or distort or completely misrepresent their beliefs too?
I actually like it when posters do that, it makes the job of debating even easier, I think. Especially when even the STRAW MAN is right. That’s when you know you’re in bad shape, when you can’t even beat the straw man.
That’s the thing I don’t get, why do they treat it as a litmus test of what it means to be a Democrat? I’m not a Democrat, I’m a libertarian, but last I checked, the opinion of the ACLU was taken very seriously by Democrats. Is it implausible that many Democrats would side with the ACLU in this debate?
Of course, I cite the ACLU at the risk of implying that support for the ACLU, or every decision it makes, is a litmus test too. It is not. I cite it because I hope it makes them stop and think, instead of reacting so much.
Yet, the majority of people think unlimited expenditure on electioneering communications does call the democratic legitimacy of elections into question.
Then they can do without the electioneering communications.
Christ, you keep talking as if we’re actively violating the first amendment. Protip: speech does not violate the first amendment. We’re not members of Congress.
Electoral college votes, to be pedantic.
No, as you pointed out, voters have unfettered access to sources of political speech outside of electioneering communications.
Not even. It was a time restriction on the movie being shown. Since the movie wasn’t an advert, I do think it’s blocking was an overly broad application of the law.
For a purported ex-member of the ACLU, you seem absolutely terrified of speech. Let’s hope the voters decide an amendment is in order.
Not so. The amendment covers all for profit corporations. That would include the NY Times, Miramax, book publishers, etc. this grants Congress the power to limit any and all electioneering, which would include things like the Rachel Maddow show. That doesn’t mean Congress WILL censor those things, but those products, being from for profit corporations, would lose 1st amendment protections.
Yes, we’re all aware that there is one election every four years that involves electing electors to the electoral college instead of directly for a candidate like the thousands of other elections.
Yep. So let’s not hear any more of this nonsense about the voters not having access to as much speech as they want.
A time restriction on political speech violates the First Amendment.
A political advertisement is political speech and also may not be restricted.
You simply cannot limit political speech except in very very narrow and specific circumstances, perhaps, which you haven’t even come close to.
No.
Really? That’s as fucking absurd as anything you’ve said. No, that’s you who is terrified of speech. YOU.
I wonder if you’re an ACLU member. I wonder if you’ve read the ACLU’s amicus brief.
I’m quite confident this country will never feel the need to take back any freedoms in the Bill of Rights, especially First Amendment ones.
He does have a point that the public is against us. Not that it matters for purposes of our discussion, but it is something we have to consider.
But here’s why it won’t matter in the long run: writing an amendment is impossible. Let’s say SJ Res 33 became the amendment of choice to reverse Citizens United. The attacks on that one write themselves: first, there is no media exception, so pretty much the entire media would mobilize against it until it was changed. But once you add a press exception, anyone can use it and the amendment is effectively nullified.
Just be nice to it.