That I was arguing against any and all possible laws pertaining to political spending of any kind; that I was arguing for a “slippery slope” as opposed to the literal truth of a statement; and that I was arguing that there is no legitimate purpose to spending limits.
So it’s not a “logic fail”, then. That was my actual point. Spending limits could, in fact, be used to stifle political activity, such as rallies. You believe that they wouldn’t be, and that there’s value in having more restrictions on political spending, but that’s irrevelant to my actual claim.
The value of any particular regulation, what limits should be set at, and so forth, are different conversations.
Free speech is protected by the Constitution. Money isn’t. There is nothing in the Constitution that guarantees billionaires the right to buy elections and politicians … which is EXACTLY what those who say that money is speech, or is ESSENTIAL for free speech, are advocating. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the central problem we’re dealing with is the use of money to buy POLITICIANS’ votes. This is the big, nasty, intractable 800-pound gorilla in the room. “What does the Constitution say?” “What does McCutcheon imply?” are almost completely beside the point. Our government has been PURCHASED by the corporate oligarchy. Our votes make NO difference, until we end the PAC money legalized bribery scheme. THAT’S the true stake here.
And the people who are arguing that money IS speech, that we have to leave the present structure in place, are in fact saying, “Fuck democracy, we need to keep the oligarchy in place.”
Translation: (Jazz hands) “Pay no attention to the 800-pound gorilla in the room. This is not the gorilla you are looking for. Look, I said 'Orwellian!” No gorilla here!"
No, that part of your argument is something that has to be addressed seperately. If your argument is that we must regulate campaign ads in spite of the 1st amendment for the good of the country, then we can have that debate. But since that is a debateable point, I decided to focus on your Orwellian argument that speech that requires money to transmit or publish is not protected speech.
The cynic in me wants to say because we at least need to pretend that money is not an overwhelming influence in an election.
I don’t know that I have anything to add except your question reminds me of the furor over Dan Le Batard’s Hall of Fame vote. Some background: the Baseball Hall of Fame is voted on by the Baseball Writers of America. Dan Le Batard who had a vote decided to let fans pick his votes. The sports world was rife with “How could he do that!” and “What about the sanctity of the vote?”
But let’s put this into context. These people who skewered DLB over this - including BBWA who took away his vote - think that it is perfectly acceptable to not vote for a player because “No one has ever gotten a unanimous election.” or “No one should ever get in on the first ballot.” or other stupid-ass reasons and BBWA voters have freely admitted that those criteria influence their vote but you see, that’s OK. So when someone tells you that they are voting for Candidate A because they have the cuter pet, that’s OK because this is America but heaven forbid you sell your vote.
The evidence is all around you, and it’s been called many names: corporatocracy or oligarchy instead of democracy, or references to the ownership of both parties of Congress (most unabashedly the Republicans) by special interests, and the consistently skewed pro-business inclination of Congress. The problem is that those opposed to limits on political spending refuse to acknowledge cause and effect.
As for Buckley v Valeo, yes it was a victory for the anti-regulation side, but there have been a long series of legislative initiatives before and after to control political spending, some of which have passed, and many of which have at least in part survived court challenges. The most significant of the post-Buckley legislation was the bipartisan McCain-Feingold, and the Citizens United decision has been widely cited as one of the most egregiously regressive rulings in modern jurisprudence. The battle is far from over and continues on many fronts. The ultimate arbiter in the long term IMHO is not going to be this excessively right-leaning court, but the fact that you can’t escape the consequences I mentioned above.
I don’t know if that’s true, or, if it is, whether it would survive a court challenge. It’s clear in any case that the rules pertain to “ownership” and it would violate the intent of such regulation. Murdoch founded a number of different outlets including the infamous Fox News, and has been forced to do a lot of selling in the course of his long career due to cross-ownership rules.
I’m not exactly sure what this is about, nor am I aware of any “book burners” on the Supreme Court, but I’m going to guess this is the “books and movies” argument that’s been used in support of Citizens United and against political spending laws. Basically the anti-regulation arguments seem to come in two flavors – the one that says “you’ll never be able to silence the wealthy, who will always have more influence, so why bother trying?” and the one you raised, which says “if the evil government can put limits on political spending, it will be able to ban books and movies”.
It shouldn’t really be that hard to craft carefully circumscribed legislation that distinguishes between paid-for flagrant electioneering and simply media that has a point of view. I know conservatives aren’t big on nuance, but nuance is a part of the real world. There has been a mini-tsunami of books and a few movies directed against various candidates in recent years, mostly against Democrats, and in my view – and I’m sure the view of SCOTUS – most are well outside the intent of campaign finance laws. I haven’t seen the stupid “Hillary” movie that was the subject of Citizens United nor do I know much about how it was financed and released, but I suspect that the court was probably right in saying that it shouldn’t be banned. The problem is that, as they have done several times, they went far beyond what the original case was about and made an asinine blanket ruling on a much larger issue that no one had asked them about.
LIke I said before, I acknowledge your concerns, but you can’t get around the basic fact that you want to severely limit the 1st amendment to address those concerns. Do you also support limiting 4th amendment protections to fight terrorism? 2sense, in other threads, at least acknowledges the constitutional concerns, and I think that’s the first step to discussing this issue seriously. Otherwise we’re just back and forth on “It’s speech!” “No it’s not!”
The thing is, Buckley v. Valeo was a victory in the same way the ACA decision was regarded as a victory. Most of the campaign finance law stood. THe part that went down was pretty minor. There was little discussion of Buckley after that until Citizens United, when campaign finance reformers realized, “Oh crap! They won’t let us regulate independent expenditures!” I’m pretty sure the ACA decision will also have such far reaching consequences, since it established a couple of pretty important constitutional limitations on federal programs which don’t seem important now, but will when Democrats next get ideas into their head about “doing something” about a national problem.
The court doesn’t really ask for much. All they want, or more accurately, all Kennedy seems to want, and since he’s the swing vote he matters, is for speakers to all be treated equally. The Democratic Party does not have special rights that Americans For Prosperity does not. If the Democratic Party’s ads advocating election or defeat of a candidate are permissible, so are Americans for Prosperity’s. Treat all speakers equally, and most of Kennedy’s objection to BCRA melts away and it’s 5-4 the other way.
I think it depends on how these things are done. If Murdoch owns Fox News, he probably can’t buy MSNBC. But if he puts MSNBC and CNN out of business, then that’s perfectly legal.
That’s why you have to tailor an amendment, or the jurisprudence, to preclude such uses of Congressional power. If you establish that “money is not speech, even if it pays for speech”, then paid for speech is not protected, period, unless Congress graciously allows it to be protected. It’s not so much that Congress would ban books, so much as you are conceding that they have that power but will never use it. Which turns the Bill of Rights on its head.
A book advocating the election or defeat of a candidate is electioneering, and it is very expensive electioneering. Right now, it seems to me that campaign finance advocates ignore it because books just aren’t that effective at persuading people the way 30-second ads are. But I’m not reassured. What if in the future e-books are all the rage and political books have millions of readers and the Kochs publish a hit piece on a Democratic incumbent a month before an election? Would campaign finance advocates still refrain? How about the internet? We see political ads all over youtube now? Are those exempt from regulation, or is Congress merely allowing those ads? Knowing the extent of Congress’ powers is important in this case.
How about this? 60 days before an election, no one may run more than X amount of TV ads. Not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not the President, not third parties. Limit spending in that 60 day period to $20 million per organization or whatever you want, and you’ve got a fair, constitutional law that treats everyone equally.
The problem is the secret ballot. You could be ripping someone off by not voting for the way they paid you to.
So get rid of the secret ballot first, just to keep things honest.
I hope that doesn’t sound like good sense to any one.
Since 4 of the Justices on the Supreme Court disagreed with you and thought it should be sanctioned you just completely destroyed your earlier argument that it should be “easy” to distinguish between media with an opinion and “electioneering”.
But anyway, how can anyone seriously argue that sanctioning the Sierra Club for passing out flyers criticizing a politician isn’t an egregious violation of the First Amendment and free speech.
Beyon that, I nearly pissed myself laughing at the suggestion that I’m a conservative.
Please explain why you consider the ACLU and the unions who celebrated the Citizens United decisions to be “conservatives”.
I’m much less bothered than you are about governments having theoretical powers that they decline to use, or that the Bill of Rights is the only meaningful guarantee of liberty. The reality is that if one were to list the things that agencies like the NSA, FBI, IRS, etc. etc. could do legally (or arguably legally) to harass you and deprive you of effective liberties right now, it would be a very long and frightening list. I just simply don’t share the typical American extreme distrust of government; the real key to liberty is a fully functional system of democracy, exactly the thing that special-interest propagandizing undermines.
Just a random small example to illustrate the point and make it a bit more tangible: the DMCA and its aftermath has given the movie and record industry pretty much carte blanche to threaten lawsuits against children and grandmothers for allegedly downloading even one song, and extorting penalties from them even without proof. In other countries, the legal structure – one that was shaped by a lower lever of commercial influence – is much more protective of the citizenry and places a much greater onus on industry to justify their intended actions in court. Meanwhile, while the entertainment industry threatens grandmothers with hellfire and damnation, some other company is polluting the air with impunity or dumping toxic waste into these same people’s streams and drinking water. It seems to me that many people spend far too much time worrying about government tyranny and then get kicked in the nuts by the ruling oligarchy of private enterprise.
Something like that would be a good start. But it’s only part of the problem. Another aspect is the ongoing and insidious influence of special interests on public opinion in general, aside from election-cycle issues. I think it would be a great idea to require any issue advocacy ad, regardless of when it ran, to disclose who paid for it, and to have reasonable limits on that spending, too. Right now there is a ridiculous situation where billionaire ideologues like the Kochs funnel much of their money through so-called donor organizations which are basically money-laundering schemes that give money to partisan think tanks and astroturf advocacy organizations with no possibility of that money being traced. This sort of activity should be criminal. As it stands, it’s led to a huge warping of public views on everything from economic policy to climate change that, by some amazing coincidence, has led a big percentage of the general public to hold views on these issues that are factually absurd but that exactly reflect the wishes and goals of the industry that disseminated them.
JHCOS, do you even know what that term means? Orwellian to constrain the activities of massive organizations that seek to manipulate the government (which is supposed to be the people)?
As I see it, the solution is quite simple: campaign expenditures should be subject to a heavy tax, which should go into a general fund for supporting campaign ads. If you spend money on ads, it should equate to donating money to your opposition. That would level the playing field slightly.
Is your position that the Sierra Club is trying to “manipulate the government” when they put out a radio ad attacking a Congressman for denying Global Warming or are they exercising their constitutional right to free speech and to advocate for or against an elected representative.
To me it’s clearly the latter and suggesting that they should be sanctioned is noxious.
The word refers to the misuse of terms. “Money is speech” is Orwellian because campaign finance reformers don’t care about the money unless it’s being used to spread a message to the masses. So it is actually the speech, and the speech alone, that is the subject of their ire.
Why are candidates and political parties privileged in this way? That’s an equal protection violation. You can’t claim that political parties and candidates for office have special 1st amendment rights that the rest of us do not have.
As I see it, such a dichotomy would not exist. All political messaging – including ads that run in the “off-season” advocating for or against a policy would be subject to such a tax, and funding for a counter-message would be available to just about anyone.
Right now, in the US, we have an enormous amount of info-noise, which is resulting in a severely polluted media environment. This free-speech-unbounded right has created a situation in which clear communication, through the static and invective, is a bar too high.
What kind of constraint would be reasonable? Clearly, the government itself is not qualified to directly impose limits on speech, being itself the actual subject matter. There would have to be some sort of independent panel or panels (like juries, perhaps) to address the issue of accuracy, and perhaps even tone. (Would depicting your opponent as Darth Vader really be reasonable in the context of public political discourse?)
I am just throwing stuff out there. Because we genuinely do have a problem, and it is getting worse. More freedom does not appear to be the appropriate way to address it, because that is what we have been doing and it is getting worse. I do not pretend to be qualified to compose the solution, but nobody else seems to be either. We cannot just sweep options aside because they are unpalatable, or things will just keep getting worse.
Anytime you start whining about people having too much freedom you’ve lost the argument.
That said, are you seriously arguing that you think the government should have the right to sanction groups like the Sierra Club for publicly criticizing sitting politicians?
Hardly. Freedom to behave in a reckless and/or irresponsible manner becomes the opposite of freedom. It is not so very far from the issue of you driving your car at 50 mph on my residential street (15mph speed limit). Whose freedom should we respect, that of the resident or that of the guy who likes to drive fast?
I would like to obtain information without having to parse through bias, bitterness and bullshit, while you feel that your right to subject me to those things takes precedence. I am not convinced that your right ought to outweigh mine (though the law seems to say that it does).
The word I used was “constrain”. That is not the same as “sanction”. But if the Sierra Club is presenting misleading information or pouring out emotionally charged bile, well, shame on them, just the same as shame on the Tea-shirts for, well, just about anything. No one should have the open-ended right to pollute the public conversation.
Ah, so there is a difference between “constraining” speech you object to and “punishing” speech you object to.
I’m actually laughing out loud as I write this.
I love the idea that you think giving government bureaucrats the power to punish people for presenting “misleading” information or " emotionally charged bile" won’t lead to potential abuse.
Of course there are countries where it’s considered “emotionally charged bile” to argue that Jews are human beings who should not be treated as animals and barely one hundred years ago, without a single exception every single Ivy League President believed in Eugenics and thought people who tried to argue that “the negro” was not inherently intellectually inferior to the white man were presenting “misleading” information.
Sorry, but most thinking people aren’t so foolish as to believe that such laws can’t be turned against them.
Thankfully, we have the First Amendment on our side to make sure modern day book burners are spanked whenever the attempt to take away our freedom because we refuse to let them decide for us what people should and shouldn’t be allowed to say.