You probably just stay out of the threads where I’m unreasonable. 
(Thanks though.)
+1 to what John said.
But what does accountability look like to you in this fashion? Anonymous speech is also protected at the individual level as it should be. I see no reason why that shouldn’t extend to groups of individuals as well.
I think the law on anonymous speech has a great deal more texture than that, actually.
Under federal law, you have to disclose your name for contributions to a candidate over $250 (IIRC), and donations over $1,000 for ads close to an election. Many states have even tighter disclosure laws. Delaware requires disclosure of all $100+ donors for a four-year period whenever a group spends more than $500 in a communication that mentions a candidate within a month or two of an election. That strikes me as quite broad, maybe even too broad from a policy perspective, but it was just found constitutional by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and I do not expect the Supreme Court to take certiorari.
What is generally unregulated right now is issue ads outside that period right before an election. I think there is room for some regulation of that space in terms of disclosure. It would still have to be tied to mention of a candidate, I think. And I also think the threshold would have to be pretty high–high enough that there’s some inference of quid pro quo, certainly at least $1000 and maybe higher.
Yes it certainly does. I don’t necessarily think it should though. Consider the thought experiment - I can self publish my thoughts on virtually any issue at any time, with no restrictions (ignoring certain illegal acts, etc.) and no disclosure necessary. I can gather with another person, and we can do the same thing together. Why can’t I gather with 10 or 1,000 people to do the same? We can all chip in and pay for our message to be published. What if I had 5 million people that all wanted to chip in and publish our unified message? At what point is the disclosure required? I would argue it should never be as a matter of principle. This is about general issue advocacy.
With regard to direct contributions to candidates, or candidate advocacy, I can’t think of a principled reason why this same logic wouldn’t also apply. There is certainly nothing preventing me, the week before the election, publishing information that Donald Trump is actually a space alien that likes the company of donkeys and that people should vote for someone else. I can gather with another person and do the same… etc.
As the law on disclosure stands now, it doesn’t matter if you’re a solo speaker or you band together with others. If you want to make an electioneering communication that spends over a certain threshold then you must disclose. So I’m not so sure this is a case of doing something different for a group that we wouldn’t do for an individual.
The trigger isn’t the group, in the case of anonymity, it is the spending threshold. And the spending threshold is justified by the reason for the disclosure: to prevent political corruption and to avoid unnecessarily tilting the electoral process toward candidates with views favoring the wealthy.
While I do think disclosure implicates free speech interests, it isn’t in the same galaxy as censorship in terms of the interests at stake. Which means these countervailing interests (corruption and equality of political opportunity) are better able to justify restriction on anonymity than they are censorship.
I think you’re falling into a logical fallacy (I’m not sure if it has a name), which is the “it’s hard to precisely draw the line… therefore there can be no line” fallacy. I mean, we all agree that premeditated murder is wrong, but killing in self defense is OK. Where do we draw the line? At some point in there is going to be a case where it’s really really really hard to tell whether it’s self defense or not, and we’re never going to be able to specify ahead of time a rubric that clearly and objectively defines which is which.
Similarly, I definitely and passionately believe (a) that you as an individual have the right to anonymously self-publish a leaflet concerning your opinions about any matter of the day and leave it around town (assuming you don’t violate litter laws and so forth). I also firmly believe that (b) our democracy would be made functionally worse if for-profit corporations could anonymously give as much money as they wanted directly to any political candidate with no limits or restrictions, and (c) there is neither a “natural right” nor a constitutional right that guarantees that for-profit corporations can do said donating.
Now I agree that it’s hard to really precisely draw a line somewhere between those two extremes. But the fact that it’s hard to draw the line doesn’t mean that we should just abandon all attempts to do so.
(And of course you may disagree with my points (b) and (c). But I’m saying that if you do, you should disagree with them on their own sake, not just argue that I can’t even try to enforce them because doing so is somehow at odds with my support of (a). )
I agree with Richard. And this middle ground actually used to be the Republican position before they got handed the Citizens United embarrassment of riches.
That was in response to my asking “Have you not noticed the inexorable drifting of American politics further and further to the right as the years and the decades go by?” Absurd, is it? Would any Republican today put forward a health care reform plan like the one that Richard Nixon did in 1971? We know the answer, because what is arguably a lesser, more modest plan today has been called “socialist” and “government takeover of health care” and most Republican presidential candidates are scrounging support by promising to repeal it – even though primarily what it does is hand the insurance companies a major bonus by bringing them more customers. The public option would have created real competition, and how far did that get? And do you seriously imagine even in your wildest dreams that something like Medicare – which really is a government-run system – could ever possibly be enacted today? Or Medicaid? Hell, Medicaid expansion was rejected by every single Republican-controlled state even when it was gifted to them on a silver platter with the feds covering most of the cost. Because it has something to do with the evil government and it benefits the poor – that’s all they need to know.
And contrary to the claims being made here, I believe I did answer the questions that were asked. The big picture, broadly speaking, is this. There are many countries that have strong and specific rules and limits on the influence of money in politics across many different domains. There are some countries that don’t, but instead have sociopolitical systems that for a variety of reasons are relatively immune to the corrupting influence of money in politics. And then there are many countries that have both. My argument is that the US is unique in that it has neither.
Which is to say, the US has a political system that is spectacularly vulnerable to being owned and controlled by big money, a socioeconomic system that grants limitless omnipotent power to the almighty dollar, and very few laws to control either. Keep ignoring this basic fact, and the situation described in the first paragraph will just continue to get worse, and the Kochs and the Adelsons will continue to consolidate even more power. That’s the real tragedy of recent rulings like Citizens United.
I forgot to add in the above “[countries that] have sociopolitical systems that for a variety of reasons – such as those mentioned here – are relatively immune to the corrupting influence of money in politics.”
I think that would be a weaker argument, but that’s not what I’m advancing. I think as a matter of principle individuals or groups of individuals should be able to engage in issue advocacy or candidate support, and if they want to form a group so that they can do so anonymously, they should be able to. It’s not that it would be hard to craft rules to prevent it - I don’t think it should be prevented.
I could see how disclosing the organization that was formed would be useful. In those cases you get groups like “People who are awesome and want awesome things”. This is how I understand the current state of issue advocacy is. I’m saying, I think that should also hold for candidate specific advocacy or even direct candidate support. I’m generally against campaign contribution limits, at all (domestic).
So yes I disagree with (b).
As for (c), I don’t think there is a natural or constitutional right of corporations to do so, but of people. And people can act together in a manner that takes the form of a corporation. In the end, it’s still people.
Richard brings up the counter arguments that the appearance of corruption among other bad outcomes is sufficient to tilt the law in favor of certain limits. It’s a good argument. I’m not sure how to defeat it.
Indeed it is absurd:
Since 1980, the percentage of GDP the U.S. spends on social programs has risen by 50%. In 1980, Canada spent a higher percentage of GDP on social programs than we did; now the reverse is true.
In that same timespan, we have also seen the following progressive changes:
[ul]
[li]The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) made sweeping changes to the rights enjoyed by millions of Americans, in a vast array of ways I can’t even begin to detail.[/li][li]Women have made huge gains in educational attainment, passing men, and have dramatically narrowed the gap in pay.[/li][li]Speaking of women’s pay, the Lily Ledbetter Act outlawed blatant pay discrimination.[/li][li]The Moral Majority was founded one year earlier, in 1979. If you went back and told them that in 36 years, gays would be serving openly in the military, and getting legally married in all 50 states, do you think they’d have bought into your claim that this was all part of a steady move to the right? LOL[/li][li]Automobile mileage requirements (CAFE standards) have increased more than 50%.[/li][li]The green energy infrastructure President Carter advocated but which was ridiculed or ignored at the time has now become a significant reality.[/li][li]Sexual harassment at the workplace has been dramatically curtailed by what Trump would call “modern political correctness”.[/li][/ul]
I’m sure I could think of more, given time, but that’s a good start to show why your claim is indeed absurd.
Do you disagree with the examples I gave – of the Republican views on health care 45 years ago versus the views on the ACA today? Of the absurd impossibility of ever passing anything like Medicare today if it were not already established and widely beloved?
If so, then how do you account for the supposed discrepancy between my examples and your examples of alleged progressiveness?
To me, it’s self-evident. Most or all of your examples are the result of significant, often sweeping, social changes. Those changes were largely global and happened, not because of any enlightened government policies, but often in spite of them. Things like a broad public consensus on the rights of women and gays. Republicans have been dragged kicking and screaming into more or less having to accept gay rights but there’s no way any of them is happy about it, and on issues in which no such socially-driven sea change has happened, like abortion, they are more intransigent than ever. Other changes, like CAFE standards, are simply reflections of technological advances. Meanwhile, the gap between the rich and poor is larger than anywhere else in the entire industrialized world, and growing.
Here’s a good perspective on how wrong you are about this.
Hendrik Hertzberg recently wrote in the New Yorker about a book called “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks” by a couple of well respected political observers that are hard to dismiss – as he puts it, “Thomas E. Mann, a luminary of the ever so slightly left-of-center Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein, an ornament of the somewhat more firmly right-of-center American Enterprise Institute.” Which includes this quote (bolding mine):
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.
Actually, there is a very clear boundary between a corporation and a partnership. Most of those participating in a corporation are investors, whose sole motivation is amoral: capital increase. Law typically insulates them from the effects of corporate function. A partnership is comprised of parties who have a real/moral stake in what they advocate. It seems obvious to me that the freedom of speech aspect of calls for different treatment. Of course, if the participants are a mix of individuals and businesses, the issue becomes more difficult.
The changes you list are of a purely social nature. In essence, broadly inconsequential. Offset these things against the massive tide of deregulation and you end up with a huge right-ward shift. Compare “right-to-work” with “marriage-equality”, you will find that one is enormously important, affecting millions of people, while the other results in little more than some hurt feelings.
Which is to say, the right-ward shift makes a huge difference to a lot of people, while the “progressive” gains are almost entirely superficial.
Like most of the corporations in question, Citizens United was a non-profit corporation. So your amoral investor theory is inapplicable.
The 50 percent increase in percent of GDP spent on social programs since 1980, which led us to pass Canada, is inconsequential? As someone whose kids are on Medicaid and who got food stamps (SNAP) for a couple years in the late '00s, I beg to differ. And I feel pretty sure if we brought Barry Goldwater back from the dead he’d not think it was a more right wing society now than when he was alive.
Ronald Reagan warned that Medicare would lead to a day when we’d tell our grandchildren what freedom used to be like. Now Republicans don’t dare touch the program. Medicaid was and is voluntary for states to join. Barry Goldwater’s Arizona was the last state to join up, and not even the reddest state in the country has withdrawn from it (though my state of Missouri has absurdly stringent income standards for non-pregnant adults).
The CAFE standards are not a reflection of those advances, but rather push them forward. Same goes for the government incentives toward green technology. EPA standards for all kinds of pollutants are stricter than they’ve ever been.
Gay marriage was legal in some U.S. states before it was legal almost anywhere in the world. And it is now legal in all states even though major countries like Germany still do not allow it.
Inequality is getting bad, just as it did in the Roaring 20s. But Democrats are on it, and even many Republicans now admit it is a problem rather than crying “class warfare” whenever it is brought up.
You are just like a lot of progressives I know (including my own mother): doom and gloom, always the glass half full and everything circling the drain. Conspiracies abound, freedom is a mirage or about to be yanked away at any moment. It is no picnic, being in a center-left coalition with such people, let me tell you. I feel like those of us who are the more grounded members of the coalition have to constantly manage you, tend to you, talk you down, etc. It is exhausting, and frankly irritating. But we need each other and so are stuck with each other. 
I pit your compliment. No, not really.
But bringing in the “right” to vote was not very smart of him, since a) there is no right to vote, it is actually bestowed by citizenship with qualifications. A right is something we have that the government cannot legally take away, whether we are a citizen or not. Corporations don’t have the right to vote because a corporation cannot show up at a polling place. As a general rule, we recognize corporate rights to be any right a corporation can actually exercise.
Is Richard Parker trying to claim that we only “grant” the BBC the right to speak in the US? Does that mean we can bar the BBC from broadcasting here by simple statute?
They are/were a 501(c)(4). I am not sure that is the same as a corporation.
I am not privy to these stats, nor to the methodology by which they were derived. If it pushed us past Canada, I would be inclined to infer that Canada has some structural fundamentals that allow them to avoid some of that expense.
Ah, yes, the freedom to be bankrupted by medical expenses. Some “freedoms” are literally the opposite of being free.
Incentives toward “green technology” must be viewed through the lens of massive subsidies bestowed upon non-green technology. I am not up on the overall picture, but it would surprise me to discover that oil and coal industries are truly suffering at the hands of alternative energy. There might be a way to craft the statistics to present that argument, but they could without doubt be rearranged to depict the counter-argument.
Pedantic nonsense to the nth degree. There’s certainly a “right to vote” in the commonly used sense of the term. To claim otherwise is just bizarre.
I don’t think this is true. Do you have a cite that most of those participating in a corporation are investors? My understanding was that in pure numbers of corporations, most were small businesses and of that number, a large majority fraction were non-employer businesses - those with no employees.
You know that LLCs can be members of partnerships, right?
This seems overly dismissive of the rights of gays to marry. It’s a pretty big deal. Marriage is a civil right, where “right to work” is a limitation on the extent unions can compel membership and dues. One is enormously important, but you have them reversed.
This misunderstands what rights are. We use the term “right” in regards to voting, but not everyone has the right to vote. Everyone does have the rights in the Bill of Rights however. Non-citizens are protected by the Bill of Rights just like everyone else. But non-citizens cannot vote.