Anything that costs money is a limited resource. Access to broadcasts – journalists’ and commentators’ broadcasts – typically costs the pols nothing, but access to ad-time does.
Sure, and republicans never complain about union money, Soros money, Hollywood money and on and on.
It’s ridiculous to paint this as a partisan issue. Both sides do it because they really don’t have a choice. Consequently, politicians spend way too much time and effort raising huge sums of money. Meanwhile, everyone pretends that all that cash comes with no strings attached.
The problem rises to the level of absurdity for members of the House who, because of the short, two-year terms, are constantly fundraising for the next run.
Then how would they stay in politics?
One can, without hypocrisy, call for disarmament while still fighting with the weapon one wants banned, if one is at war and the other side is using it.
No, we don’t let the FF tie our hands. Don’t like the constitution, change it. But don’t ignore it.
Can I spend $100M on a movie that promotes capitalism? What about environmental conservation or Climate Change?
I guess you’d have to rely on all the other things in the world that are NOT poster boards. You could start with the internet and work your way down.
Well, it’s not a symmetrical picture; only one side has even a segment of its base that wants the campaign-financing system changed.
I have two problem with that analysis:
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You could buy elections in the Founding Fathers’ time. Leaving aside that anyone could write a blank check directly to any candidate, it’s long been said that you don’t get into a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. How is the press not buying elections when it has access to the printing press and the average citizen does not? Yet the founders still saw fit to include freedom of the press in the 1st amendment, despite the inequality that this creates.
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I don’t really buy the “they can publish papers and magazines to their hearts content” argument as being made in good faith. When Citizens United was first decided, I heard plenty of “If they want to spend millions on elections, they need to do it themselves! Individuals have rights, not corporations!” Well, now they do it themselves and liberals are saying they shouldn’t be allowed to. So I guess individuals do not have unlimited rights to advocate. If the Kochs find any means of influencing elections that is actually effective, liberals will say that is “unfair” and seek to restrict it. It’s extremely hard to believe that your beef is just with the public airwaves. And BTW, if you’re going to regulate the public airwaves it has to be done in an equal way. You can’t have a privileged class that can buy ads while others cannot. In other words, if you say the Kochs can’t buy ads, then political parties and candidates can’t do it either. If you want to make the public airwaves an ad-free zone, you can probably do that legally right now. Anthony Kennedy’s beef in Citizens United was the division of advocates into “favored” and “disfavored”. If no one can do political advocacy on the public airwaves, that problem goes away.
Sucks to be on the losing side in a democracy. What else can I say?
I do agree with this, BUT, Democrats are calling for restricting things that benefit Republicans more than Democrats.
If they were serious, they’d support banning ALL public airwaves advertising for or against candidates. The reason Democrats will never support that is because it would reduce voter turnout by a huge margin compared to what it is today.
I don’t think anyone wants to ban all advertising. They want to ban unlimited advertising.
And before anyone mewls about* speech equaling money*, your speech is already limited when there is a good reason. You can’t yell, “Fire” in that crowded theater. Because the risk of death overcomes your free speech. And the risk of the US becoming an oligarchy where only the rich have a say, overwhelms spending limitless amounts on elections.
Or at least that’s my opinion. And I’ve yet to hear an argument against it that doesn’t boil down to, “FREEDOM!!111”
Okay. What are the rules and how do you make them fair to all? You can’t have candidate A able to outspend advocate B. Candidates are not privileged citizens.
It takes more than a good reason. If all it took was a good reason, we’d have no rights at all. The nature of rights is that the government needs an overwhelming reason to restrict a right. Speech restrictions are not like littering laws. There has to be a compelling interest involved, and you have to make it fair. If Barack Obama spending $900 million isn’t a threat to democracy, than the Kochs spending $900 million isn’t a threat to democracy.
There’s also the actual impact to consider. Bill O’Reilly reaches 2.83 million viewers every day. The Kochs will never match that level of influence even with $900 million. 30-second ads sprinkled throughout the television lineup, ads that most people tune out, or skip, or channel flip, or get up for Cheetos, is not going to match the influence that a TV talking head with a full hour of prime time TV is going to receive. If the Kochs’ have an undue influence on elections, then so does Bill O’Reilly and his competitors.
That it sucks even worse to be on the losing side in a plutocracy, which is what we’ve got now, and almost everybody is on the losing side, as is always the case in plutocracies.
No, we want to ban any advertising that costs money. See post #58.
If you want to restrict a basic right in a free country, you have to demonsrate a compelling interest. That starts with actually proving that there is a problem to be solved.
Saying that the richest country in the world with the most well to do middle class in the world is suffering under plutocracy doesn’t really meet any standard of evidence that would hold up in court.
There are no free ads on the public airwaves. So you would ban all political advertising, right?
How about the internet? In an age where the newest hit music videos get 100 million views, that’s 100 million eyeballs on a campaign ad. Are we to regulate Youtube now?
Man, there’s nothing that’s so self evident that some people don’t think it’s a problem. I guess if “people going bankrupt or dying because of medical bills” couldn’t do it, I guess “a wealthy superminority openly buying elections” wouldn’t either.
In my opinion, the ban (or limit) should be on advertising, not content like O’Reilly’s show.
You are subjected to advertising. You choose to listen to Billo. Or Rush. Or the NYT. Or Politico.
I’m talking about saturation bombing the airwaves, mailings and robocalls. If someone chooses to listen to FOX, they should be able to as much as they should like. My problem is with unsolicited advertising.
Self evident? Perhaps. I agree there’s a problem, but if you want to get courts to rule your way you actually have to define the problem. “People going bankrupt and dying because of medical bills” occurs because most people don’t want any of the health care reforms that have so far been proposed. THat’s known as democracy. A society where wise men decide what is best for us isn’t democracy. A society where selfish people make selfish decisions is a democracy. So it’s not evidence of anything, and arguably the passage of ACA refutes that claim anyway.
Now the second one is where the problem could be. So now you just have to demonstrate that the wealthy are buying elections. If they are, then their alignment to political parties would seem to change like every two years.
Okay, that’s fine, but you can’t have favored advertisers and disfavored advertisers. If the airwaves are open to political advertising by candidates, it’s open to those who don’t like the candidates.
What decade are you living in? The U.S. doesn’t have the wealthiest middle class anymore.. Sure, the median income is high, but more and more of that is concentrated at the top.
What is median again? As opposed to mean? Median is not an average. Median is the income of the middle person. So if our country’s income distribution looked like this:
1,000,000;500,000;50,000;25,000;10,000
then the mean, or average income would be $317,000. The median, however, is whatever the middle number is, which is $50,000.
So yes, we do have the richest middle class, especially when you account for aftertax income.
However, your cite concentrates on wealth, and there we aren’t the richest middle class. As the article says, that has a lot to do with easy availability of credit. Our net worths are lower because we have a culture that likes to spend, spend, spend. But how much money we MAKE per year is the highest in the world except for Luxembourg and perhaps Norway.