So money is speech? Do you believe Citizens United was properly decided then? How far do you want to go with this?
(On the other hand, I do believe Citizens United was properly decided and publishing the lists should be ok; I also believe that while Mozilla did nothing wrong here, but the campaign against Eich was mob rule to enforce a thoughtcrime and reprehensible, and I say that as a massive supporter of same sex marriage - my position is basically the same as Andrew Sullivan’s on the issue)
Was the reaction over the top? Perhaps. Is the principle of campaign contributions being public knowledge sound? I think so.
I don’t recall all of the details of Citizens United, so don’t want to give a definitive answer to that right now.
Well, the basic gist is that if you concede the money = speech, then a lot of campaign finance limits are restricting speech and likely don’t pass 1st Amendment muster (the reasons for them can’t usually survive strict scrutiny).
That has to be one of the most incorrect summaries of the case I have ever seen.
The point of the case is that in exercising one 1st amendment right, the freedom of association, through labor unions or “corporations” one did not forfeit ones right to engage in political speech.
Basically, if you were a labor union, or a company who was not a media company you were denied the right to engage in political speech for a set time before an election.
The “money = speech” rhetoric is a common misconception perpetuated by those who only chose to read the part of the decision where the court admitted that it cost money to engage in effective communication.
But the 1st amendment doesn’t even apply in the case of the Mozilla CEO as the 1st amendment doesn’t apply to citizens interacting with other citizens.
The Mozilla project espouses a freedom of access and freedom in general. So them appointing a CEO that actively expended money and effort into arbitrarily restricting the rights of others was a massive mistake by their board.
Had Mozilla been a pure for profit endeavor who did not claim this higher purpose the fallout would have been significantly reduced.
Also while Obama may at the time may not have publicly supported gay marriage he very publicly oppossed Prop 8, while Eich financially supported it.
There’s a pretty significant difference.
As for Sullivan, he’s a good writer but not all that consistent.
IIRC he condemned Alec Baldwin and called for Baldwin to be fire for his homophobic slurs against a tabloid journalist.
I actually agreed with Sullivan there, but found Baldwin’s actions(losing his temper and using homophobic slurs) less offensive than actively fighting against gay equality.
Martin, secret ballot protects who you vote for, not who you campaign for. Public speech is not private. So why should money given to make public speech be private?
As a supporter of SSM, I am somewhat appalled that a $1,000 contribution to a statewide ballot measure is enough to get an ostensibly well-qualified CEO fired.
I get it. Some of you are emotionally invested in this issue, and to you, all those who oppose SSM are “bigots.” But bear in mind you degrade your moral integrity to silence opinions you disagree with. Attempting to ruin careers is not the way to overturn long-held beliefs. This type of action does more damage to your cause than any sort of added value it could provide. You discredit bigoted views intellectually, not through this sort of mob force.
Sorry, but so long as you’re campaigning to exclude a group people from society, those people get to try to exclude you right back.
No - because being gay is OK, and being homophobic is a bad thing. Supporting rights for the one, while decrying the other, are not equivalent.
Not when he’s the head of a public non-profit corporation, it isn’t. I’ve supported the Mozilla foundation with my hard-won rands in the past, I wasn’t happy that they appointed a homophobic dick.
Who cares if he wrote Javascript - Ferdinand Porsche designed some nice cars. This doesn’t mean he wasn’t a Nazi asshole.
Indeed–I’m not taking at all seriously your insane comparisons between objecting in public to a hiring choice, and waging war, or between objecting in public to a hiring choice, and murdering someone and leaving their body in a ditch. Mockery is pretty much the only appropriate response to these arguments (although I realize that mockery is the 21st century equivalent of breaking a prisoner on the rack).
Yup. What truly disgusting is the people who are directing their criticism not against the rich bigot trying to deny rights to an oppressed minority, but against those who object to the actions of the rich bigot.
Denying rights to people SHOULD have consequences. That’s a GOOD thing.
And Bricker, that’s probably my answer to your earlier question. The law ought to have as a major goal the protection of the powerless from the depredations of the powerful. Laws that protect employees from firing based on their political beliefs are, in general, a good thing, because employees tend to be powerless compared to employers.
But that’s not always the case. And a CEO is one of those exceptions.
This is a story in which a powerful man who used his wealth to oppress a relatively powerless group got his comeuppance. I see no social interest in preventing this sort of comeuppance.
I’ll acknowledge, Martin Hyde, that this would also solve the problem we’re talking about even though I don’t think it’s the best solution. But there’s no chance of this solution being adopted right now, and I think you would agree with me about that:
You have the right to hold whatever views that you choose to. You also have the responsibility to deal with the fact that publicly airing those views might have consequences. That’s part of the growing process.
I support same sex marriage. In fact, to me it’s such a minor issue in the overall scheme of things that I believe that it is used as a distraction by some to obscure far more serious issues that the world is facing. If that position cost me a job or a “friendship” then I would deal with the fallout created by my stance.
Here’s the sticky part (at least for me) : I probably wouldn’t announce my support for it unless it was germane to the conversation being had or the situation that I was in. I wouldn’t volunteer my stance as it almost certainly would have nothing to do with most scenarios in which I would find myself. Mozilla’s ex-CEO might have done well to recognize just that.
How does it silence the man’s opinion to boycott his product? Or call for his firing? He’s free to say whatever he so wants still; he’s free to use his money as he wants. He isn’t silenced, and there’s no call for him to be silenced. He can, tomorrow, donate another $1000. He can, tomorrow, decide to make a speech filled with gay slurs. I fully support his right to do those things.
It’s not about attempting to change minds. It’s about desiring not to support a company run by someone who holds, and monetarily supports legislation on, views you find highly objectionable. I don’t have to put money in the pocket of someone who desires to hold people like myself down and might use that money against me. And that’s what would degrade my moral integrity - to look at someone who might take my money and use it against people like me and people who agree with me, and say “Eh, but the product’s good.”
The same way the IRS knows whether or not I decided to file my income taxes this year. Or the way they know if I filed on my taxes the same number of 1099s I actually received.
That information isn’t public knowledge, but I can assure you the IRS tracks it. Also the same way my bank knows how much money is in my checking account or any other number of privately tracked relationships.
Except as I noted, the SCOTUS has protected anonymous speech on the same grounds as anonymous political group membership. For me I see campaign contributions as a tracking of “who/what” you support; which is also exactly what a group membership list is. The reason we protect the vote, allow for anonymous speech, and allow for anonymous group membership is precisely because we as a society have realized there is a valid democratic interest in letting people support causes privately. Because in the past when people could not participate in the political process privately, intimidation was used against them to undermine the democratic process.
The entities that need to enforce bad campaign fund raising will still receive the information the same way the IRS receives our tax returns. I’m not seeing the compelling government interest here. I don’t find the “but we won’t know who is buying an election” argument to be particularly valid. For one, with individual campaign contribution limits, these lists just contain tons of people who all made the maximum campaign (and then tons more who made smaller ones.) I’ve honestly never seen any meaningful analysis or action taken based on this lists in terms of “good government” or any other concepts of “sunshine on politics.”
Now, more relevant certainly than campaign contributions is contributions to outside entities like Super PACs, because contributions to those is unlimited. But I’d posit that I don’t see where anyone really successfully proved or demonstrated anything of public interest based on the various donors to the various Super PACs in say, the 2012 elections. I would like to know where Super PAC money goes, but I don’t even see where anything meaningful has ever been done with the lists of individuals who have donated to these organizations.
Basically I don’t see the compelling public interest, because we’ve had public disclosure laws for years. For much of that history they were just trivia, some news articles would occasionally reference them but they had no political impact. But now, they are being used as “retribution lists.” I’m not sure when the practice started, but I certainly didn’t hear of it being widespread until maybe the last 3-4 years and the Scott Walker recall petition list is one that was particularly used for retributive purposes. That suggests they are a bad idea, in the same way that publishing the actual home address of convicted sex offenders on public registries is probably a much greater net negative than a net positive.
Many of the worst abuses in totalitarian regimes actually are done by non-governmental militias or thug groups. While we’re not such a State, I think that example shows why “just because government isn’t doing it” doesn’t necessarily absolve government of any responsibility. The government should not be in the business of maintaining and publishing “retribution” lists.
Precisely. I think most of the response on this forum is basically in the vein of “I am pro-SSM and I hate people who I consider to be bigots, so fuck Eich and anything that happens to him, I do not care about any other consequences.” I think if this story was just “erased” from history, and instead we had a story of someone being targeted for retribution by Scott Walker supporters many people that have “no problem” with what happened to Eich would decry that. Now, people in this thread will point out, “oh, but being homophobic is different than just signing a recall petition.” I agree with that, but, and I already know the reaction this will get, I’m quite certain many people would be willing to sign on to the general concept that the government shouldn’t be maintaining “retribution lists” if not for the fact that a prominent in stance of said list being used against a Prop 8 supporter was in the forefront of public discourse on this issue at the moment.
People are very craven and without any political integrity, almost nowhere more so than the SDMB.
Elections and ballot propositions are a government exercise and group membership isn’t. Belonging to a group doesn’t involve the government in the first place. You can’t say that about elections and ballot measures. If you don’t like retribution, talk to the assholes who want to get vengeance instead of just free speech in response to free speech. The last thing we need is for the political process to get less transparent.
A few issues with this:
We should not want people suffering consequences for their political views.
We can probably (in fact we have to) accept people suffering consequences for what they do in public. Especially in areas that relate to their job. If I’m the CEO of ExxonMobil and join a green group and start going to rallies and speaking about the evils of drilling for petroleum I think it’s more than fair I be fired. Even in Eich’s case, it is more than fair he be fired because of his public actions. But my argument is that going to a campaign rally and speaking, or penning a blog under your name, or going on TV and giving an interview are intrinsically public actions. There is no way they cannot be, and I’m not particularly interested in shielding people from consequences of actions like that. But a campaign contribution is only public due to government fiat, and is particularly a wrong headed government stance that makes something that would otherwise be just as intrinsically private as a privately held thought public knowledge, and that isn’t an ideal thing.
Part of the growing process is also supposed to be not rounding up and shooting the vanquished. I’m using colorful language there, but if you look at the history of the United States we have a pretty decent track record on treating those on the losing side of political arguments. That’s because we recognized on some level we needed, say, former Confederates, former supporters of Jim Crow or etc to continue being a part of our society. You don’t get there by going after them.
Again and again, Martin Hyde, it has to be pointed out that political views and actions are not the same thing.
Some actions are allowed to be private under the belief that your political views should be private, if you wish to keep them so, and that exposing those actions intrinsically exposes the belief. This is why the action of writing an article can be done privately. This is why the action of voting can be done privately. This is why the action of joining the NAACP can be done privately.
There are certain things that are intrinsically public, and there is no way to keep or make them private, and that’s all fair play. I argue contributions are much more like the examples I’ve just given and not like going on Fox News or writing a blog post under your own name.