Obviously Roosevelt did not anticipate those. You see? The only way to eliminate money influence from politics is to eliminate it entirely.
Agreed. Can anyone seriously dispute this?!
Sure. By killing freedom of speech. Great idea.
Only if you accept spending money falls under “freedom of speech.” Granted, some certain members of the Supreme Court lean that way, but their weak reasons seem to imply that they used a results-orientated approach, something typical of the Supreme Court for the last, oh, 12 years or so.
Wah…we don’t like the Supreme Court. Wah…we didn’t get our way. Let’s stamp our feet and pout. Wah. As I said in the other thread, this is a shameless attempt to stack the deck to favor a radical liberal agenda not very cleverly disguised as an appeal for “fairness”.
OP points out that the very rich have a disproportionate political influence, but any remedy for this would be a “shameless attempt to stack the deck to favor a radical liberal agenda.” 
:smack:
These posts are examples of why I find it hard to “debate” extreme right-wingers anywhere but in BBQ Pit.
Some of us seek to identify problems and propose solutions.
Others seem like juveniles at football games, rooting for one side whether right or wrong, gloating when someone on the other team is injured, complaining when a referee rules against “our” team whether the ruling was sound or not.
I’m not an extreme right winger. Not even close. I’m a slightly right-leaning moderate.
In the context of this board, this comment applies more to the numerous vocal lefties constantly bashing any and all things conservative.
I had to look it up, actually. It’s not really a controversial enough subject here to get a lot of press, and the situations are not quite analogous because there’s no presidential-level figure (i.e. no nationally-elected figure) involved around which whole SuperPACs can organize to support or criticize. I guess a Canadian election at its worst is about as exciting as a midterm American election, in large part because there’s no endless analysis on how it will affect the head of state, plus the whole thing only takes about six weeks anyway so even if we trashed the rules and went all-out, there isn’t enough time to raise and spend gigabucks.
Y’know, I’m starting to think Canadian politics are kinda rinky-dink… Heck, the three major parties collectively spent about $60 million in 2008, far less than Hillary Clinton needed that year in a losing effort.
Anyway, corporations and trade unions and other organizations cannot contribute to political campaigns in Canada (admittedly, there’s the occasional wink-wink workaround of all the employees of a company or members of a union giving the personal maximum - $1000 - to a single party, despite it being ostensibly illegal for the hierarchy to pressure them to do so, or give them the money expressly to do so).
There is a very scaled-back Canadian analog to a SuperPAC, in so-called “third party” efforts, i.e. organized advertising campaigns on behalf of individuals or groups who are not directly contesting an election, but have some specific political interest (i.e. they’re pro-life or anti-immigration or whatever). They can spend up to, I kid you not, $150,000 in “election advertising” during the campaign, with no more then $3000 per “election district.” The rest of the time, they can spend whatever they want, but if there’s no election at stake… well, who cares, really? There’s no reason a corporation or union couldn’t form and fully fund multiple astroturf “concerned citizens” groups to push a particular agenda, but disclosure laws would expose the effort immediately.
These guys summarize it far better than I ever could. The scale and the stakes are about an order of magnitude lower than a typical American midterm campaign, and at least two lower than a modern American presidential campaign.
And it seems to work well enough for us.
Well, sure, this board has any number of knee-jerk liberals and such, but I’m confident you can get serious discussion on a conservative viewpoint that has objective merit, i.e. its basis is not rooted in dogma, racism or greed. There are reasoned arguments one can make for, say, the death penalty and gun ownership. I’ve yet to hear one for opposing gay marriage, though.
How is “bashing all things conservative” in any way relevant to this thread? Campaign expenditure has reached unprecedented highs.
I’m anticipating an argumentum ad hominem or a spotlight fallacy. If I’ve learned one thing from psychology, it’s to guard against my own illusory superiority in assuming that I’m immune to the same tropes which affect the masses. Of course, given your framing, I’ll either be an unreliable, callow fellow whose political opinions flit around to alight at the nearest demagogue or a dispassionate elitist that assumes the former of everyone around me.
You won’t hear an attempt at one from me. I’m pro-gay marriage. Also pro choice, pro legalization of marijuana, pro gun and anti-Patriot Act…but I want lower taxes and smaller government.
And these don’t strike me as unreasonable desires, but politics aside your country (and mine, and indeed pretty much all the liberal democracies) have a major demographic problem that’s going to get worse before it gets better. Perhaps after the baby-boomer generation dies off and transfers its wealth, which I figure roughly will start around 2020 and last until 2050 or so, the need for major entitlement programs will drop sharply and the tax burden can as well.
I don’t expect them to go gently, though. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
Bingo. Free speech rights have never been absolute, but the first amendment has always safeguarded against restrictions on political expression, when those restrictions are for that reason alone. It is the very essence of that right. Whatever other restrictions that have been permitted (e.g., all the “no shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater stuff”) it has never, NEVER permitted quashing political expression, for that reason alone, for the rationale that certain political expression is bad for society. That is *exactly *what that amendment guards against.
Agreed. That’s one of the things we accept as a free society. Sometimes we don’t like how others use their rights, but it’s the price we pay to maintain personal liberty.
Leaving aside the ‘it violates the First Amendment’ part (clearly it does, and clearly some don’t see that or don’t care), what exactly are we trying to ‘fix’ with this effort? That rich people have a disproportionate rresentation to high level elected office in the US? If so, how will this fix it and what evidence is there that it would have the desired effect, even of you could get it implemented exactly as the OP desires (:dubious:).
I’d think by banning all political advertising this would actually make it less likely that someone who is poor and not famous would be elected…if that’s what we are trying to fix. After all, our current President wasnt exactly rolling in money before the run up to the election. Had he had no access to the various Democratic political machines and moneyed interests that supported him early on there was, IMHO, almost no chance he’d be president today, or ever gotten prominent enough to give the speech that put him on the countries radar. But I’m willing to hear arguments about how cutting off ALL paid political advertising would, um, do whatever it’s supposed to do to fix whatever problem it’s supposed to fix. Or something.
-XT
I’m confused then how this reform would stack the deck for radical leftist reforms then. If the right has arguments of merit, and fairness, and can make them with the same elocution and access to time as the left under this rule then they should command the same share of votes they do now. Removing money from the equation merely puts everyone on the same footing for the presentation of the substance of their arguments. Logically then, there are only a few reasons to oppose this reform:
- Stubbourn pig-headedness. Simple resistance to any change.
- The right depends heavily on purchased influence to continue its agenda
- The right’s arguments are not as persuasive as the sound bite form and will not stand up to good scrutiny without heavy marketing.
snip.
So do I and I’m pretty left though independent. The problem though, is that this political philosophy/goal requires a great deal of personal responsibility on the part of all private citizens and companies to be totally viable as a governmental model. The abuses of the industrial revolution and the following years demonstrated that private industry was unable or unwilling to provide basic services for all citizens. As a personal philosophy, or even as a principles used to guide a small, homogenous town they work rather well. On the grand scale, they favor the strong, fail to protect the weak or poor, and do not encourage diversity or equality. All fine things that can be ignored if you are a member, no matter how minor, of the set of citizens that benefit directly or indirectly from these policies. I don’t support handouts, but neither could I in good conscience vote for policies that deliberately advantage those who already are in a good position. Particularly when those same people fail in their obligation to those they would care for without govt. intervention.
It’s not that I think that private industry cannot provide those things. It is that history and my life experience has demonstrated to me that that they cannot be reliably trusted to do so. I don’t want to pay more taxes, but I understand that they may be necessary to get the country in order; fiscally and otherwise.
The ban on tobacco advertising is limited to the pubic airwaves, which the courts have held are subject to some degree of regulation Tobacco companies are free to advertise all they want in printed and non-broadcast media.
In the settlement of the tobacco lawsuits, the companies agreed to certain other advertising limitations, but that is a civil matter, not a regulatory one.
You all realize this is yet another, largely left led, proposed assault on freedom of speech. There is no purer form of speech than political speech and figuring out how to limit it until you get the results you like is something I find really disturbing.
It doesn’t really matter who gets the advantage. Deciding that you dont like seeing wealth drive results in politics is not sufficient excuse to muzzle your opponents.
It’s definitely a free speech issue, but I am not convinced that free speech entails unlimited funding must be allowed.
Free speech should be about the right to publicly state any opinion. Unlimited right to spam people and try to drown out other views isn’t inherent to free speech, indeed arguably it’s contrary to it.
And within the context of a contest, you can set rules to make the contest fairer and more orderly. e.g. No-one argues that “stand by your ad” contravenes freedom of speech, because all recognize that politicians spouting shit and then distancing themselves from it spoils the contest.
To me it is the clearest of all free speech lines and the 1st amendment requires that unlimited expenditure be allowed. If i were to purchase a newspaper to broadcast my political opinion or hire an army of bums to walk around with sandwich boards i would expect we would all agree that speech is protected.
Progressives, with whom I share many sympathies, dont like the political power that great wealth entails so you try to to dress up what amounts to tyranny as some moral crusade. The truth is that you dont like the results. Those elected tend to be wealthy old men. I would suggest that if you dont like the results then you have to do better than silencing speech you dont like.