I think what’s happening here is that 2sense likes the idea of regulating political spending on speech, but doesn’t really disagree with Lance and I that there are no workable ideas to actually do it yet. Am I right in that analysis?
I’m actually with 2sense, just so long as proposals are legal. Elections can and are manipulated, but I think that the ways they are manipulated the worst are actually very addressable under our Constitution. The problem is that people are getting most of their info about the issue from politicians and ex-politicians, and of course their complaints will primarily center around what gets them defeated, not what actually adds integrity to the election process.
Ironically, this reinforces what 2sense has been saying, because the reason we all talk about campaign spending is because that’s what politicians and the media talk about, and that’s in their self-interest. Politicians don’t like being defeated and the media likes to be an information gateway. They don’t like people going around them. And since the political class and the media dominate politics in this country, they are able to make people think that spending on campaigns is the biggest problem. Only little voices like mine and a few advocacy groups are shining a light on the most serious abuses of the process. The people with the biggest megaphone tell us what the problems with our system are. And that reinforces Lance’s argument, because any reform that further strengthens the political class and media over average people is going to limit the boundaries of debate even more.
-There is no constitutional way to regulate spending on speech. It is the same as regulating speech itself.
-Regulation of speech is fundamentally wrong and bad for democracy. It rests on the idea that the people are too stupid to handle speech or judge it for themselves. In other words, that the people aren’t capable of self-government. You might as well call for the end to the right to vote if you think so little of the intelligence of the people. It’s an insult to democracy itself. I find any talk of regulation based on “manipulation” or “the people need to hear X” to be repugnant. The people decide what to hear, what information to seek, what to ignore, what to believe. Not the government.
I’m glad you’re pointing out that 2sense and the like will ultimately defeat their own efforts.
Yes, it does mean just that. It means the government stays out of it and lets the people decide. If the people don’t live up to your standards, too bad. That’s democracy.
My logic is unquestionable. We don’t give power to government that we wouldn’t want the government to use. That’s the whole basis of our written constitution!
I’m dizzy from that circular argument.
No, YOU move on. You can’t regulate speech, even if you try to get at it through money.
Duh. But some IS. By your logic, the government could declare that speech to be corrupting. And that’s ridiculous. Reductio ad absurdum.
Yes, it’s semantics. Whenever I type corrupt, you can read “corrupting.” Okay?
Because donations to candidates aren’t speech. So what’s your point in citing limits on them?
I think we’d have a better democracy if we shut YOU up. So if I get a law passed to do so, what could your objection to it possibly be? Defend yourelf. Hurry - your speech rights expire soon.
You don’t get to make the distinction between narrow and broad. The very act of doing so is abuse of power. Just like you can’t decide what speech is good or bad, or which speakers.
There you go.
I acknowledge them, and reject them.
Fair enough. So how would you amend the Constitution to make your views legal? I’d be curious to see your proposed amendment.
Another cop out. And worse not only are you evading my points but you are using them as an opportunity to espouse doctrine. That looks less like arguing to me and more like witnessing.
The thread is long and tangled but from my perspective the 2 main points of contention are that the right to free speech is not absolute and can be rightfully limited (such as when I bring my “Freedom Van 2014!!!” to your neighborhood to harangue you until I get hauled away in handcuffs) and that donating huge sums of money to a candidate for reelection and spending those same sums (or more) yourself for the same purpose are both valid reasons for people to question how much influence you have with that politician. I believe that might serve as a basis for the discussion to move forward.
Just my 2sense
PS - You wouldn’t like my constitutional solution. I’d just gut judicial review. But that’s a whole 'nother argument.
No, it’s not a copout. You simply don’t believe in democracy and can’t come out and admit it.
This shows that you know NOTHING about free speech doctrine.
Noise is not speech. The noise ordinance controls noise, in any form. The fact that it may involve speech is irrelevant. It is not a limit on speech, it is a limit on noise. Please stop with this nonsense, you’re embarassing yourself. Go educate yourself instead.
The first is. The second isn’t, because the second is speech. The ONLY reason you want to regulate the money in the second case is the speech it brings. And you can’t do that.
Oh, dear God.
So judges wouldn’t be allowed to uphold the Constitution, and would no longer take an oath to do so? You’d wipe out all decisions invoking the Bill of Rights to protect individuals in the last 250 years? You’d make Congress and the President the sole determiners of what their own powers are with no appeal from a citizen?
On the contrary I am in favor of campaign finance reform precisely because I believe the country should become more democratic. I don’t fear the judgement of the common people. It’s the shape of the public conversation that concerns me. Garbage in, garbage out.
Money is not speech. The campaign commercials ordinance controls money, in any form. The fact that it may involve speech is irrelevant. It is not a limit on speech, it is a limit on money. Please stop with this nonsense, you’re embarrassing yourself.
So you don’t believe that an offer to spend millions of dollars on their reelection might tempt an American politician? Are they such paragons of virtue in your mind that despite being offered something they desperately want (and constantly spend time working for) that they will primly turn away? Just say no!?!
Citizens have an appeal. It’s called voting. It means the unelected judges stay out of it and let the people decide. If the people don’t live up to your standards, too bad. That’s democracy.
There was once a time when politicians could collect large amounts of money from individuals. They never complained about how much money they had to raise back then. Today, they can only collect small donations, so they spend a lot of their time fundraising. Politicians hate fundraising. So they complain about it and make it seem like it’s morally awful. They hate 3rd party spending even more, because when it’s for them they can’t control it, and when it’s against them, it poses a mortal threat to their jobs. So when politicians talk about reform, they naturally focus on these issues. Problem is, they are self-interested.
You’re worried about people like Adelson having too big a megaphone. But if you remove him from the process it doesn’t make you better off, it makes the politicians and the media better off. The politicians have their fame and the power of the office to advertise their candidacy, and the media gets to play kingmaker because they “buy ink by the barrel”. Third party spending represents an outside voice that competes with these powerful entities. Naturally, they want those outside voices silenced because they “interfere” in elections. But a lot of those outside voices, like candidates, represent a lot of small donors. Until something better comes along, those independent spenders are more likely to represent you than the candidates and they sure as hell represent you more than the media does.
BTW, I don’t know if Lance agrees with me or not, I’d be interested in finding out: A part of BCRA that survived was the ban on unlimited soft money donations to political parties. I think that was a very positive change, personally.
So you want to shape the news the public gets, and you call that an exercise in democracy?
Except that the Supreme court has ruled that it is, and has ruled against large taxes on newsprint on first amendment grounds.
Taxes and restrictions on money have been used to thwart free speech since there have been taxes. The Stamp Act that led to the revolution was a tax on newsprint and stamps - one of the reasons it inflamed the colonies is that it was seen as a way for Britain to limit speech. India has used a heavy newsprint tax in the past to control speech as well.
See, all you have to do is tax the communications medium to the point where the average person can’t afford to speak publicly. Then you grant tax exemptions for those organizations operating in the ‘public interest’ - that being defined as whatever the ruling powers deem to be advantageous to their cause. Voila - you’ve ‘shaped the debate’ by suppressing the speech of your political rivals.
I think it would be very hard to come up with a system more corrupting than the current one. Now, instead of being beholden to rich individuals, politicians are beholden to large organizations and ‘bundlers’. See: Obama’s latest ambassador appointments, who are incompetents whose sole redeeming value is that they raised a lot of money for Obama.
Today, instead of direct payoffs the trade is in political favors and guarantees of lucrative jobs, speaking fees, and other perks used to get around laws against influence peddling. The revolving door between Washington and big business is bigger than it’s ever been. The influence of lobbyists has never been greater.
Of course, the people are voting using the knowledge that the ruling powers have graciously allowed to be doled out to them. Democracy!
But that’s false. You DO fear the judgement of the common people. You can’t separate that from the public conversation. You want to control that conversation because you don’t trust the people to handle it. You can’t escape that.
We’re not going over this again. You don’t care about the money, you care about the speech it brings. If money isn’t speech, why do you keep talking about speech? Why do you think you can “shape the public conversation” by controlling money?
An “offer?” Now you’ve added something completely new! We haven’t discussed someone going to a politician and “offering” to spend money on his behalf on speech. That would most likely be coordination, which is already illegal.
We are discussing simply spending money on speech, independent of a candidate.
Please don’t invent new scenarios all of a sudden.
The incredible irony of you saying that! Think about that for a minute. Hard.
(You’re still wrong though - if our rights depend on getting a majority at the ballot box, they aren’t rights. Sure doesn’t help minorities one bit).
So you think constant fundraising by representatives in office is not morally awful? Yes, you expect people to shade things their way but just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you.
I think the media elites will find themselves having less and less success being gatekeepers of information. I mean potentially. So long as we don’t lose such necessities as net neutrality. And incumbency is a power all its own, to be sure, but a lot of that advantage could be removed with electoral reform.
I don’t want the media to represent people. I want representatives to do so. I want a politician to spend her time in office knowing that the best way to ensure votes at election time is not to suck the corporate teet but to do what is best for the people that put his arse there.
The people do decide elections, when they are informed of the records of the candidates. And no one is better at revealing the dark side of candidates than the 3rd party spenders. Right now, a few Democratic candidates are running ads back home that give the impression that they are tough and holding the President to account on the rocky ACA rollout. They are going to fix that law, and they voted for a bill that made sure you could keep your health insurance!
I can see why they’d want that narrative to go unchallenged. Thanks to independent advocacy ads, the voters will be told how they caved on that “keep your insurance” law as soon as the President offered an administrative fix that wasn’t nearly as strong. How they’ve actually taken no action to fix the law, only offering some votes on GOP-sponsored bills occasionally for political cover. And how when push comes to shove, they will never abandon their party on the issue, regardless of opinion back home.
Now whether or not you support the health care law, I think the voters should know where there reps actually stand on the issue. ANd it goes that way for Republicans too. If a Republican representing a district or state that is pro-ACA is constantly voting to gut or repeal the law, but says he just wants to make it better, he should be called to account for that. But an underfunded or incompetent challenger might not do it. So moveon.org, or the AFL-CIO might have to step into the breach.
Nice try. There’s nothing natural about the current shape of the public conversation. Its formed by mores and traditions and, yes, the laws of our nation. Those arguing to maintain the status quo, including ** lance strongarm** and yourself, are exactly as much guilty of “shaping” as I am in arguing against it. If you want to dress that up as a big bad authoritarian shitsnack well then, we can all take a big ole bite.
yum yum! three men and a cup!
Moving on. trust me, nothing to see here I’m surprised to see anyone else still checking the thread. I certainly don’t expect you to have followed the conversations. Unfortunately all three of the remaining quotes of mine you posted are taken out of context. The first quote is not really an argument that money can’t be speech but rather an exercise where I attempt to point out to lance strongarm that he is making a similar argument against my proposal to set up in his neighborhood with my loudspeaker equipped campaign van and attempt to electioneer (loudly) all night that he rejects when it’s applied to paying for campaign commercials. In the 2nd quote I am not really praising our politicians for being above corruption but rather gently chiding lance strongarm for seeming to think so. And the third is really OT but again is me throwing his earlier words back at him.
What I can’t seem to escape is your penchant for distorting reality. I have never suggested attempting to control the political dialogue of the nation. Wanting to see regular people have more input is not control. And it’s entirely democratic.
That’s right, we’re not. I’m not backtracking. I was attempting to get you to realize how silly your position is if I can throw your own argument back at you so easily. If you can’t separate money from speech when it comes to campaign advertising then why is it OK to separate noise from speech when it comes to my campaign van? If anything, the affinity is even closer. The noise literally is my speech.
You’re right. I apologize. It was foolish of me to do so. Sorry.
So, lets try again. You seem to be opposed to me giving a politician $60 million. Why is that? Why don’t you support my right to give as much of my money as I want to politicians? (And obviously I’m going to go over that argument with an eye toward why it shouldn’t also apply to me just spending the cash myself on campaign commercials to reelect that politician.)
And there’s nothing stopping you, or the rest of the voters, from doing just that. Just vote for one who does what’s best for the people.
Now, here’s where you say that they can’t because they don’t have a choice, because all the candidates suck from the teet. Well, that’s bullshit, because if the people so desperately want a candidate who doesn’t, such candidates would run for office more often, and win. Yet whenever they do, the voters REJECT them.
And no, such candidates don’t “need” money to run either. Anyone can run. Any voter can learn about the candidates without expensive ads run by the candidate - through the media, or directly by looking at their websites, talking to volunteers who campaign for him/her, or watching or going to a campaign event or debate. And they can vote in the primaries to choose which candidates are on the ballot, so that’s not a restriction either.
The bottom line is that voters consistently CHOOSE whoever spends the most money. That is entirely their choice. It’s democracy.
Of course you want to control the political dialogue of the nation. You want some speakers to have less of a voice and others to have more.
The two are entirely different.
When you complain about noise, it has nothing to do with the fact that it is speech. You’d complain about a barking dog, honking horn, or loud music just as much as speech from a megaphone.
With money spent on speech, the opposite is true - the ONLY reason you care is the speech behind it. You want to silence that speech, because of its political content. You wouldn’t care if they spent it on ice cream or beer or whatever.
No problem - but you actually brought up a good distinction. The act of spending money on speech in coordination with a candidate IS corrupting. It’s evading donation limits by making a sort of in-kind donation of TV ads. And as I noted, this is already illegal. Alot of people simply make no distinction between that situation and spending on one’s own speech independent of the candidates. I think understanding that difference can make progress in this debate.
Because giving money to a politician isn’t speech, or the exercise of any right (though it’s more complicated than that, when you dig deeper, but never mind). It doesn’t limit your ability to exercise fundamental political rights, such as…speaking on behalf of a candidate using your own speech, and perhaps your own money.