Money can influence an election but it can’t outright buy one. You still need to get people to vote.
And I have to question is taking money from Karl Rove is worth it. Sure you get the money. But you also become the candidate who took Karl Rove’s money.
Now obviously there are people who have no problem with Karl Rove. But you don’t have to spend any money on these people - they’ve given themselves to you already. (Just as there are people on the other side who would never vote for any candidate Rove would consider giving money to.)
The purpose of money is to influence the swing voters in the middle - the people who might vote for Obama or for his Republican opponent. And among these swing voters, I suspect the toxicity of Rove’s reputation might outweigh any benfits a candidate could get from his money.
Strawman. One needn’t postulate that money is equivalent to speech in order to defend a person’s right to spend money in order to exercise his right to free speech.
I take a bus to a protest and I pay fare, will you defend that? I buy up all the airtime and advertising space to say my opponent is a socialist, is that also a free speech use of money? Even if he/she doesn’t have any airtime left that I haven’t bought? How about if my opponent isn’t a socialist? Is my money still worth defending calling my opponent a socialist? After all, it’s my opinion that his programs amount to socialism. How about if I call him a murderer of his critics? Still want to defend that as money being used to exercise his right to free speech?
How about if at speaking events, people I have hired stomp on the faces of people who might disagree with me? I get their resignations afterwards, but still.
I’m willing to accept that in some circumstances money might facilitate free speech. But not always.
Wealth has privileges, fine, no sweat. The rich guy can buy more loud, shiny crap than me, cool. Give his money to the opera. OK, long as its not Wagner. Buy the Hope Diamond. I don’t wear jewelry. All in all, we more or less cool. Shrug.
But when they seek to exert political power to keep their happy state of affairs intact, it starts to sandpaper my scrotum, I become vexed and irritable. I do not accept, not for an instant, that greater wealth justifies more political power.
Perhaps it is not entirely possible to make the rich man exactly equivalent to the rest of us, in terms of political power. I’ll worry about that later. Right now, I’m about doing a fuck of a lot better than we have.
If all those rich folks are dumb enough to give hundreds of thousands of their money to Karl Rove then I say hip hip hooray. He can build an army of baby f*ckwads to march at his orders. Cool! Gives us someone to aim at…
If only we had a law to address the issue of someone stomping on another person’s face. But alas, that would violate the stomper’s First Amendment rights. Is that your point? 'Cause if it’s not, can you tell us what it is?
No, my point is that too much money is too close to too much power and that attracts people who are not inclined to listen to others’ free speech, but rather drown it out, lie about it or call the thugs. The point of the money in the process seems to be to drown out others and prevent oneself from being drowned out. It costs virtually nothing by comparison to attend a debate that is broadcast. There is nothing noble or noteworthy about spending piles of cash to lie about a candidate and his/her proposals.
I don’t in any way see that the framers thought money was speech, corporations were persons. Free speech is talking. Free press is writing. The right to assemble is to get together and talk or protest. I notice that the corporations that buy all the speech really seem to hate the people on Wall Street complaining about their corruption, and using their corporate networks to demean and dismiss those protestors.
Your long-winded and rather incoherent makes very little sense.
It’s not possible to “buy up all the airtime” since for several decades now the FCC requires that all radio and TV stations give “equal time” to all candidates. If station X allows John Smith to have ads promoting him for Governor, they have to offer “equal time” to his opponents.
Moreover, no there’s nothing wrong with insulting your political opponents.
It’s what all candidates do.
Moreover, I think most of us would be very uneasy about giving the power to a government agency to shut down candidates who, in the mind of some bureaucrats, crossed the line when saying negative things about another candidate.
Anyway, since EC doesn’t seem to want to answer the question, perhaps you can.
Why do you think it’s ok to give the government the power to ban movies.
