I’ll repeat what I’ve said before about publicly funded elections: they’re a great idea if you want Hillary Clinton vs. Jeb Bush in the next election. Otherwise, not so much.
Like it or not, an unknown candidate is always at a huge disadvantage compared to a famous candidate, or a famous politician’s family members. For the sake of argument, Mike Lee MIGHT be a great candidate for the Republicans, and Jon Mememdez MIGHT be a strong candidate for the Democrats. But if either ran for President, he’d be a virtual unknown. He’d have to spend millions of dollars just to get name recognition. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton already HAVE 100% name recognition.
ANY law that restricts what Lee or Menendez can spend would give incumbents and/or well-known candidates a near insurmountable advantage.
Now, IF you want to take money out of politics, there IS a way that would work, but you won’t like it. The answer is, there should be LESS democracy, not more. The party leadership should go back to the old “smoke-filled rooms” and pick the candidates themselves. After that, the people would vote formte candidates chosen by the party hierarchy.
You are right in that Jon Mememdez has zero name recognition. But I think what is really hurting his electoral chances is that he doesn’t actually exist. Do you mean Robert Menendez?
But really, Obama upset Clinton early in the primaries due to the strength of his organization, at least to my recollection. Obama didn’t start really rolling in the cash until he had won a couple of early contests. You’re right that name recognition is a significant challenge for any challenger, but I disagree with the implication that money is what makes up the difference.
You used a good example of a lesser-known challenger upsetting a well-known incumbent and you probably didn’t realize it: Mike Lee defeated Robert Bennett in the Utah senatorial primary in a huge upset. Bennett had raised $3.6 million, and Mike Lee had raised $153,000. Under your theory, it sure sounds like Mike Lee could never have won that election because he didn’t have enough money to beat Bennett’s name recognition.
First of all, what would it have to do with lobbying, and what’s even wrong with lobbying?
Second, yes, it’s generally legal. We already have public financing of presidential elections, with matching funds and an agreement to limit spending by the candidate. I know there are some other concerns that have snared some other public financing schemes in court, but I don’t know the details.
Anything can be legislated if the voters really want it. The fact that voters sit around and vote for whoever they see the most in TV ads is their fault.
Well, you can’t restrict the spending of candidates, because it violates the First Amendment. Even if you try to choke them of incoming funds, which is sort of constitutional, you can’t stop rich candidates from spending their own money.
My solution is to require TV and radio stations to give free air time to candidates as one of the public services they are required to provide as a condition of using the publicly owned airwaves. No tax money required.
The law that imposed those donor limits, btw, also put a cap on spending. That was overturned by the SCOTUS as a violation of the First Amendment, while limits on donations were not (with a caveat that they could be if they were set too low someday).
(Technical issue - corporations may not donate, only PACs they sponsor using funds donated from employees, shareholders, etc. Same goes for all other groups, including labor unions.)
Would it work to allow private money but tax the campaigns fund-raising very progressively? I’m imagining a negative rate (ie matching funds) at the low end topping out at say 75%+ at the high end. This program would even out the money disparity between rich and poor candidates, non-candidates who raise almost no money wouldn’t be an issue, it could be self funding or even a revenue stream depending on the rates, and would not be in direct conflict with the first amendment.
The problem I see is that campaigns would divide into dozens of mini-PACs in order to avoid the higher tax. A second proposal would be to tax on the individual donation level so that regardless of the total amount coming in, a small donation of $50 might be matched to make it a $75 contribution, while in order to have an effective donation of $300,000 you would need to donate 1 million.
I think it would be found to be in direct conflict with the First Amendment.
You’re just taking away some of the money and the ability to use it to speak, rather than all of it.
No, just as PACs that donate cannot divide up that way to avoid donation limits, it would be easy to make that illegal by simply lumping all affiliated campaigns together.
Since on the federal level donations from individuals are capped at $2,600, there’s no need to try to limit them donation-by-donation. (PAC donations are capped at $5,000 btw).
The way it works in France (and I believe Germany) is that it is required to get x% of the votes to receive public funding, so it’s reimbursement rather than funding.
(Also, the amount you can spend on your campaign is capped athough higher than the reimbursement you can get, political adds on TV and radio are banned, except for free broadcast time on public channels, TV and radios, public and private, must give an equal coverage to all candidates…)
According to the opponents of Citizens United, who believed government bureaucrats should be able to regulate books, movies and just about any form of speech they determine to be “electoral communications” designed to advocate for or against a political candidate, things like a Sierra Club ad criticizing a Senator up for election should be regulated.
Personally I agree with the ACLU that Citizens United was a huge defeat for the book burners of America that we should all celebrate.
Obviously others disagree, but I don’t see how we can argue that sanctioning unions for criticizing a Governor isn’t using the First Amendment as toilet paper.
You might as well argue that allowing water boarding isn’t pissing all over the Geneva Convention.
Anyway, if people are going to argue for banning “donations” they better make it clear what “donations” are?
By the logic of those who oppose Citizens United, any time someone says something nice about a candidate for office on this forum (or something bad about his opponents), that’s a donation.
So be sure to keep track of when you post something about a candidate, and how much you spend on your ISP, and report it to the Federal Election Commission.
As others point out, public financing was even used in Presidential elections in the United tate. Problems are solvable.
I think wolfpup’s posts were the most intelligent and to-the-point in the thread. However, opinions differ …
To paraphrase Sec’y Rumsfeld, we elect with the voters we have, not the voters we wish we had.
Stated differently, it is rather perverse to persist(*) with a failing system, just because it might be theoretically possible to function.
(* - Yes, I realize most people who agree with Mr.Strongarm do so because they prefer elections to be controlled by rich vested interests rather than common people.)
The voters are going to vote. They are making choices. Whoever gets the most votes is elected to office.
How is that failure?
The common people have total and absolute control over elections. They vote. Money can’t vote.
I’m so tired of this nonsense. The voters are responsible for their actions. Money doesn’t control what they do. If you think the voters should be considered just a bunch of idiots who do whatever they are told on TV, then it’s you who doesn’t respect democracy or the voters, not me.
What a stunningly naive outlook. By that logic, Washington lobbyists and election campaigns – both of which cost billions – are a complete waste of money. PACs are a complete waste of money. High-priced PR campaigns and the entire advertising business are all a complete waste of money. The Koch brothers are fools for spending millions to shape the political landscape to the goals of their own self-interest. None of that stuff has any impact on voters. Is that what you really believe?
Voters are indeed free to vote for whatever they want, but what they want is ultimately shaped by what they think they “know”. And that is precisely why all those billions of dollars in advocacy spending does matter. It’s why the poor and the middle class are strangely content to vote again and again against their own best interests, why Americans put up with an outrageously expensive health care system that costs two and a half times as much per capita as the rest of the industrialized world and offers neither a discernible benefit nor universal coverage. It’s why oil companies get tax breaks while average citizens don’t, why most Americans have been convinced that climate change isn’t a problem and environmental regulation is bad for business. It’s why health insurers get away with murder and drug companies get away with extortion. It’s ultimately why the US is unique in the world in the degree to which corporate interests override the public interest in the legislative agenda.
Of course spending that money helps with an outcome. So what? That doesn’t mean it is responsible for the outcome.
What you are doing, like so many people in this issue, is mistake influence with power. Money, and the speech it buys, can have influence. But only the voters have power. They are responsible for how they use it. The voters are perfectly capable of voting for whoever they want, instead of whoever they see the most in TV ads. If they choose to vote for whoever has the most money behind him or her, that’s their CHOICE. Who are you to say the voters chose wrong?
And here is where you, typical of people on your side of this debate, start with the incredibly arrogant idea that people are gullible, easily manipulated, etc.
If the people are that dumb, why even let them vote at all? Just start a dictatorship, since you know better than they do.
Like people on your side, you also never include yourself among the gullible. Somehow you are above it all, and everyone else is an idiot. That’s part of the arrogance.
Yes, they don’t actually KNOW their own best interests, stupid as they are. YOU know what’s good for them better than they do. :rolleyes:
Every one of your arguments could be used to justify restrictions on speech even WITHOUT money behind it. Think about that for a minute. If the people are so gullible, shouldn’t we ban FOX News and all those other media outlets (which actually do spend billions as well) feeding them lies? You’d like that too, wouldn’t you?
Have you ever seen interviews on political topics with average people in the street? I rest my case. There may not be much you can do about people who are dumb or disinterested, but there are definitely things you can do about people who are misinformed because they’re being lied to. I gave specific examples and I notice that you conveniently ignore the examples of self-serving corporatism trumping the public interest and simply counter with ideological rhetoric. I can add more, too – some of it expressible in a single number: the World Bank ranks the US as having the highest Gini coefficient of all first-world nations, meaning it has the highest income inequality in the industrialized world. All these well-informed voters who you claim positively cannot be bamboozled have been casting votes that are making them poorer, yet by some amazing good luck the rich are getting fantastically richer. Gee, I wonder how that could have happened?
A dictatorship? I advocate for the exact opposite – an actual democracy, rather than rule by corporatism. I don’t presume to “know what’s best”. I presume that the people know what’s best for them, given only reasonable access to balanced information untainted by a constant outpouring of PR and propaganda produced by those with the means to generate it and overwhelmingly weighted in their favor.
The ideal condition of a well-informed public may be elusive, but Citizens United was egregiously in the wrong direction (see my other comments below). The principle of regulatory limits over campaign spending is well established all over the industrialized world and is hardly new in the US, either. Thomas Jefferson declared his hope to “crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” The Tillman Act of 1907 sought to create elections “free from the power of money.” Citizens United set back almost everything, and didn’t just stack the deck in favor of the 1% but pretty much gave it to them.
That’s actually rather silly circular logic. Citizens United was precisely to resolve that differentiation. CU was a group that wanted to run a cable movie blasting Hillary Clinton in violation of McCain-Feingold, and there was near-certainty that CU would win that particular argument, so that the answers to some of those kinds of questions in the appropriate circumstances would be that it’s permissible under McCain-Feingold.
The travesty was in how John Roberts eventually manipulated the case into a much broader decision that was neither intended nor justified; by the time he rescheduled the case for reargument it had become a completely new argument about granting an outright free-for-all for corporations to spend money in any amount any time they want to promote their political agendas.
By that logic, we shouldn’t let people vote at all.
Yes, I ignored your incredibly arrogant posts about how only you know what’s true and only you can judge it.
No.
By your logic, we shouldn’t allow free speech at all.
Bullshit.
You think the voters are stupid. You want to control what they see and hear. You think just like a dictator.
What ridiculous double-talk. Do you read your own posts?
Yeah yeah yeah.
This isn’t “campaign spending.” It’s spending on speech. Just as spending by campaigns can’t be regulated - because we have freedom of speech - nor can anyone else’s. If you don’t like it, tough.
And Thomas Jefferson would never has stood for using limits on speech to try to fight corporations, or anyone else. He’d be appalled that you used his name.
It’s not circular logic. CU did resolve it. It said all speech is free and you cannot declare speech to be a donation just because it happens to benefit a candidate.
Oh well. He was still right.
I know people like you can’t handle free speech and free thought. Too bad. You may not limit speech. You may not limit the ability of anyone or anything to spend money or use any other resources on speech. Period. It’s hard to uphold the basic rights and functions of a democracy sometimes, but you have to do it. Deal with it.
If the NRA puts an in the New York Times criticizing a Senator up for election is that “campaign spending”?
If the Sierra Club bashes a Gubernatorial candidate in a radio ad is that campaign spending?
If I put out an infomercial telling everyone why Rand Paul shouldn’t be President after he declares his candidacy is that “campaign spending”?
Finally tell me why fining people for any of those things isn’t a violation of the First Amendment.
Also, it’s extremely foolish to claim that CU was certain to win when 4 justices supported the right of the government to ban movies criticizing political candidates.
Jefferson would have been “appalled” that I quoted him?
Do you know what “logic” is? In this context it’s the thought process that has led all first-world democracies to protect the democratic process by limiting the influence of powerful moneyed interests in the political process. Even the US, with such laws as the Tillman Act or McCain-Feingold. The lack of logic – or at least, the gross distortion of long-established democratic principles toward ideological ends, is what the CU decision represents.
Roberts wasn’t “right” according to four strongly dissenting justices.
Let me see if I can make my point a little bit clearer. Freedom is a zero-sum game, and there is no such thing as absolute freedom. Civilized societies have recognized since their beginning that everyone’s actions may affect another and that the just balance of freedom requires just laws. Anarchy isn’t freedom, it’s the unfettered dominance of the powerful. When it comes to free speech, speech isn’t free when only one side controls the podium, holds the microphone, controls the volume, and makes all the rules.
I have no problem with the concept of being rich. If you want to buy a huge yacht or a private jet go ahead – it doesn’t affect the average citizen. But if you want to buy their Congressman it does affect them. I do have a problem with something like the Citizens United ruling that formally institutionalizes the principle of putting democratic rule up for sale to the highest bidder.
You keep ignoring specific examples. Here’s another. I was just watching CNN to catch up on some news and on my screen appeared some forlorn looking woman who announced that her problem was that her health care costs had suddenly gone through the roof, her deductible had hugely increased, and her health network had been reduced. She blamed Obamacare and urged me to do something about it by calling my legislators. The ad, in keeping what few laws still remain, was credited to Americans for Prosperity – basically the Koch brothers’ personal political agency. Read the link. Do I really need to say any more?
Well, yes, actually, I think that can be taken as a typical example of what I’m talking about. The US health care system costs at least 2.5 times as much as the OECD average – it’s just completely off the chart relative to per-capita costs of all other advanced nations. Yet some 45 million Americans are uninsured, and the ones who are pay through the nose for it in egregious gouging, extortionate provider costs, and huge out-of-pocket expenses while receiving at best the same and often lesser care than citizens of other first-world nations, who generally live longer, have better quality of life in old age, experience lower infant mortality. And they generally never pay a dime out of pocket, never have to worry about claims denials, and never deal with paperwork. To top it off, the major cause of personal bankruptcy in the US is health care costs, and most of those people thought they were insured.
Do you think Americans voted for the most costly and least efficacious health care system in the world after an informed analysis of objective facts? Do you think they said, “yeah, give me the one that gouges me, might leave me uninsured or with denied claims and might leave me dead, costs me a fortune out of pocket, leaves me with a ton of paperwork, and might bankrupt me. That sounds good to me!” But over the years, in dribs and drabs, that’s exactly what they voted for. And they did it because anything other than the system that makes health insurers rich and allows providers to gouge without limit has been declared “socialism”, and “the end of America as we know it”. It’s perfectly obvious. It’s all on TV.
The insurers tried that with Medicare, too, but that was long ago and in one of history’s rare shining moments they failed. But now they have AHIP, they have their game plan, and they won’t make the same mistake again.
The ACA is a tiny step in trying to remediate some of the worse and most egregious travesties of the private health insurance system, and the billionaire Koch brothers are employing their attack dogs to try to quash even that tiny bit of progress.
No wonder the US has the largest gap between the rich and poor in the first world.
Your strawman arguments were already dealt with in my previous response. Citizens United was supposed to make those distinctions – some might be permissible, some might not, depending on the basic question of whether they constituted “journalism or entertainment vs. electioneering”.
You’re kidding, right? The US and all other first-world democracies have always recognized the fundamental distinction between free speech and the necessity of limiting the power of money to directly usurp the democratic process. This is not new. What is new is the brazen judicial activism in Citizens United which completely swept those principles aside.
Foolish? Hardly. As already noted, five clearly did not. Moreover, in *Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life *in 2007, the usual five – the four hardline conservatives and the libertarian Kennedy – prevailed against the minority 5-4 in overturning limits on advocacy ads. It was pretty clear how they were thinking.
