Still waiting on that cite.
I agree there’s little that can be done about it at this point. IMO candidates for federal office are in danger of becoming little more than surrogates for moneyed interests. The GOP primary is an obvious example of how the RNC is becoming less important in the process. I’d normally say that’s a good thing for democracy–if real democracy was taking its place rather than billionaire political gadflies.
Soon, businesses will just de facto “own” congressional seats as the two sides carve up the market (like in business, it’s much cheaper to collude than compete). Give the electorate a good show and faux Coke/Pepsi style choices in “candidates” who are better described as “employees”.
You’ll have to wait for a couple more SCOTUS appointments.
BrainGlutton, as a general reminder: when you start a thread, please add something to it beyond a link and a lengthy quote. We don’t require that OPs pose a question or post a detailed argument, but more original content is strongly encouraged.
Acknowledged and noted.
Of course he doesn’t. He’s also in favour of voter suppression.
Which body of government wrote the campaign fianance laws? That would be Congress. Who rewrote the campaign fianance laws? That would again be Congress. Who is known to pass bills into law without actually reading them? Again, Congress.
The SCOTUS didn’t overturn all campaign fianance laws. The SCOTUS ruled that several sections of the law that Congress wrote were unConstitutional. Congress can pass new campaign fianance laws at any time.
Contact your Senators and Congressman and demand new, “constitutionally-correct”, campaign fianance laws. You can also contact the Majority leaders of both Houses of Congress and demand that the new bill be allowed to be voted on by Congress.
Blaming the SCOTUS for an unConstitutionally written bill is simply an act of desperation.
What is Congresses current approval rating? 8%? EVERYONE has a really low opinion of Congress.
And YES, you can simply look up the relevant Constitutionality in a book. It’s called the Constitution, BoR, and previous SCOTUS rulings. Congress is mostly comprised of lawyers. All members of Congress have access to Constitutional lawyers.
If Congress did it’s job of writing bills properly, the SCOTUS wouldn’t have to correct their errors.
So you admit that under current law, there is a constitutional right for Super PACS to spend as much as they wish on political advertising?
Uh-oh, he’s got you there!
ADMIT IT! ADMIT IT!
No, really, this is junior high civics here. Turn off Fox for just a moment, take a breath of air, and collect your thoughts. No one said congress couldn’t make laws. No one said that the amendment process doesn’t exist.
The desperation you seem to see is actually exasperation at the dismal levels of awareness of the basics and sadness at the gullibility of some people to buy the party line.
You keep chanting that scotus doesn’t make laws. You say they only pass on the constitutionality of a law. Guess what, sunshine? That power comes from … wait for it … a judge-made law. OMG WTF PDQ! Say it isn’t so!
Yes, yes it is. Judges make law all the time. No, no one is suggesting (no one without a similar lack of understanding of how our government works) that they write a statute out of whole cloth and mail it to congress. CU was bad law, and there are plenty of vehicles for bringing its holding before the court–which should overturn it.
The NY Times has an interesting article on campaign spending which discusses the other end of the problem: Not only is more money being spent than evin previous elections, because of the comparative lack of true swing states it’s also being spent in fewer places:
The article goes on to note that Super PACs spent a combined $5 million just in Las Vegas ad-buys during the past eight weeks. Extrapolate that to another 24 weeks, and consider that Nevada in total has 1.4 million registered voters. At this point, why not just have each candidate hand out $10 bills to prospective swing voters?
Well, now you’ve let the cat out of the bag, haven’t you? Couldn’t just shut up about it, oh, no…
Cuz that would be illegal. But definitely efficient.
But wait. If all money equals speech, and since you can’t have any restrictions on speech (except for a hypothetical yelling fire in a crowded theatre, but that’s only a footnote and doesn’t count anyway), then clearly direct donations to people or candidates should be allowable! YOU CAN’T STOP THE SIGNAL!
Money does not equal speech. That’s a strawman that has been invented by people who are opposed to the first amendment.
Speech equals speech. Often (almost always, except in cases of expressing yourself vocally in the street, and even then you’d probably want to BUY yourself a loudspeaker) you need to spend money in order to express yourself.
It’s worth noting that CU overruled all of the SCOTUS’ 1990 decision in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and part of their 2003 ruling in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission. The second in fact had directly upheld McCain-Feingold, so in 2003 the SCOTUS thought it was constitutional. By 2010, they didn’t. I wonder what changed their minds…
Where were you guys last time around when Obama out-spent McCain? Did Obama do some terrible thing bu doing that?
This argument is of course, nonsense.
Obama outspent McCain under the old, pre Citizens United rules. This means that individuals and corporations were limited in what they could spend on him.
Now, one billionaire can decide to give as much money as a hundred million voters.
It used to be that more money was got by more contributors (and bundlers and so on). Now, instead of needing many people to get more money, all you need is one.
So, Rand, now that you know your argument is silly, please don’t use it again, okay?