So, despite our best efforts at reform, things have not gotten any worse? Welcome to Cold Comfort Farm.
How do things work for our Neighbor to the North? Is Consolidated Canadian, Inc. allowed to spend money to advocate for political causes? What about the United Canadian Lumberjack Union? can they advocate for political causes?
No court will ever accept that reasoning though. MOney is not speech. But if money is used to spread speech, then it’s speech. If paid speech isn’t speech then even this discussion board can be regulated by the FEC since it costs money to operate.
The actual dissent in Citizens United doesn’t justify campaign finance laws based on what liberals want: corporations aren’t people, money isn’t speech. Rather, it defends campaign finance laws only when limited to certain “time, place, and manner” restrictions.
The only way to “overturn” Citizens United is to send up a different type of campaign finance reform law and have a more liberal court uphold it.
We already have large numbers of exceptions to the first ammendment, child pronography, lible etc… In cases in which the public good is served by restricting speech we do so. The question is whether prevention of political corruption is enough of a public good to restrict the speech of spending money to buying influence. I think it is.
It may be the case that money=speech, but it is also the case that money=money and money is fungible. Buying campaign ads so the candidate doesn’t have to is effectively equivalent to simply writing that candidate a check. As far as the PACs being independent of the campaign, that has been shown to be laughable, and makes a much sense as saying that you didn’t give the candidate a car, you simple bought a car, parked it in the candidates driveway gave him the keys and told him he could borrow it whenever he needed it for the next 10 years.
What meaningful difference do you draw when you say that money is not speech but if money is used to spread speech, then it’s speech? What is the “IT’S” in the bolded part above?
Let us bear in mind that the First Amendment is already limited, “fire in a crowded theater,” etc.; no constitutional right is absolute and the case law on all of them is complex.
That leads to absurdities. Freedom of the press is guaranteed, but if you forbid people to spend money on ink and paper, then, according to your logic, you’re just “regulating money”, nothing to do with the press or freedom.
That’s not a particularly good example. We recognize that the first amendment is primarily a protection of political speech. Yelling fire in a crowded theater isn’t political speech anyway.
The standard is strict scrutiny. A compelling government interest must be at stake. The only compelling government interest in restricting political speech is to prevent corruption. That’s why candidates have been able to spend unlimited amounts of their own money since the 1976 Buckley decision. A candidate cannot corrupt himself with his own money. Courts have consistently rejected “fairness” as a compelling government interest no matter what the court’s makeup.
True. So to meet the strict scrutiny standard, a law has to be narrowly tailored to address this specific problem. It probably wouldn’t get past a conservative court, but a court with a 5-4 liberal split would approve it.
Many PACs are aligned with a candidate. Heck, lots of them are created by the candidate or a candidate’s trusted aides. But some actually are independent. Citizens United was independent and thus the best candidate to sue. You’d have to write a law that better addressed the “coordination” issue.
And you’ll never be able to stop individuals from spending their own money in unlimited fashion. A 9-0 liberal court wouldn’t let that stand.
People disagree on what is a limit. To me, Citizens United allows a flood of money, akin to bribery, that stains the democratic process of one person = one vote.
There’s already unlimited money in politics. It’s called Fox News, the NY Times, Hollywood, the Daily Show, Michael Moore, various groups that lobby and advertise such as the NRA, ACLU, Sierra Club, NAACP, ADL, NARAL…
But obviously Shelden Adelson must be stopped.