So, after eight pages of arguing, you don’t know what we are arguing about?
I’m not sure you do either. Just name the problem to be solved if it’s that simple. Maybe I’m missing the obvious.
So you’re not allowed to talk?
Enough with this nonsense. Everyone has the right to as much speech as they can get. Speech is not power. The voters are 100% free to ignore any speech. If the choose to listen, thats their fault. The voters are 100% free to go find out anything about any candidate they don’t hear about in expensive TV ads too. If they don’t, that’s their fault.
Nobody proposes that people aren’t allowed to talk. The problem is that TV ads work and you can indeed buy most elections if you have enough money. If you can buy someone an election you also buy their votes once they’re elected. Sure, in theory, people can do their own research. But they don’t and never will, so ads can and do buy elections.
So do we as a republic, just shrug our shoulders and say “it sucks, but since James Madison didn’t foresee television, there isn’t anything we can do” or do we put a ceiling on the amount of influence that money has over government?
I’ll tell you one thing, if you propose something that involves rolling back the First Amendment, I won’t even consider it. That’s off the table.
No, you cannot.
You have to get the most votes to get elected. Paying people to vote is illegal.
Spending money on speech is not buying an election. The voters still decide.
The bottom line is that you don’t like the decisions the voters usually make, and you want the government to try to mess with it.
That’s not support for democracy. Not at all.
It appears that the Kochs have convinced you that your freedom of speech somehow depends on them being able to buy elections.
If the people could be trusted not to be swayed by millions of dollars of negative campaign ads, it wouldn’t be an issue. But they can’t, so it is.
Or it appears that Soros has convinced people that the Koch bros shouldn’t be able to influence elections in the same way that Soros has been doing?
Or the MSNBC entertainers have convinced people that their biased political reporting is OK but other groups should not be allowed political free speech?
Since when did guys like Soros paid scientists to poison the well to get research that was used later by the politicians that they financed to stop new rules that would affect their bottom line?
Again, it would not be much of a problem if it was just about the political speech on TV, what is needed, for starters, is to have transparency on what the funding is going to and to prevent situations like when Dick Cheney leaked dubious information to the press that in turn was used then by the Bush administration to convince many that we should invade Iraq.
And there it is.
You don’t trust the people to make the “right” decision that you would make.
You want to intervene, by controlling what they see and hear, in the hopes of changing their decision.
You couldn’t have less respect for democracy or freedom of speech.
Go away. Leave democracy alone. The people don’t need you to tell them what to think or how to vote or tell them they can’t be trusted to think like you.
When you do not want to deal with the fact that the Kochs and others are financing the scientists that are producing bad science that leads the people do terrible decisions it is you the one that needs to stop telling others to go away.
- Thomas Jefferson. Letter To Colonel Charles Yancey. - Monticello, January 6, 1816.
And while it is good to know that there are still outlets that do report what people like the Kocks are doing, the problem is with the ones that will continue to depend just on their right wing bubble of information.
What you need to do is stop thinking you are smarter than everyone else and should make their decisions for them.
I know it’s hard. You’re smart, I’m smart, and we are surrounded by idiots. But that’s democracy. You have to work within it, not against it. You can’t suppress speech.
Your Jefferson quote supports ME. Completely! Did you even read it?
In a previous discussion it was clear that the ones that are smarter than I am (the scientists) agree with what I said.
“eventually politics has to yield to science” as a science reported told NPR recently about the politicians like Christie that showed no clue with the Ebola issue. It is also applicable on what it is clear to be one of the main issues of the Koch brothers.
Did you read mine? It added a conditional to what Jefferson told us, you are only defending the use of just one point of view, and as shown already it is not based on good information, it is indeed the opposite of civilization. Now go and stop just depending on the right wing bubble of information.
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I’m in favor of transparency.
That’s not the point. You don’t get to impose your views on others.
So? Your conditional is yours, not Jefferson’s. You can’t just go quoting Jefferson and then altering his quotes to suit you. No surprise that you think that, but you can’t.
Jefferson feared people like you.
As for transparency and disclosure, I always laugh when people using their freedom speech call for that on an anonymous message board.
So why you keep ignoring the blatant move that the Kochs did by financing scientists that delivered what they wanted? False information that was called the work of modern “Galileos” by Inhofe and many Republicans and with those “scientific” papers in hand they shoot down bipartisan plans to control emissions years ago? (and it was shown after to be shoddy science too.)
The point here is that the Kochs did indeed impose their views in a huge racket and the only thing you can do is ignore it.
Again, nothing that I have done or propose can hold a candle on what the Kochs did, your wilful ignorance (and the one from many Republicans nowadays) is the problem. Just like Jefferson told us.
GIGO, you know my position on what we should do about global warming and even I’m not fooled by the Kochs’ handpicked scientists. The system works.
Nope, more people that are deceived does vote against their real interests, again it is not only propaganda that they expend to change opinions, but they really do fund scientists (poison the well ahead of the main push) and politicians that then do what they want.
Check the fine documentary (for free) made by Frontline called Climate of Doubt.
The efforts from the Kochs and others have pushed a climate of doubt that affects all politicians.
And in reality, even if you claim that you are aware of what is going on, you are still carrying the water of the politicians that are in the pockets of the powerful. Never forget that the implication of realizing what is going on implies then the repudiation in the open of what the politicians and their funders are doing for the system to ultimately work.