The primary issue surrounding CU is not that millions or billions of dollars is going into campaigns, the issue is whence it is coming. AAUI, Ms. Clinton (theoretically) would be pursuing transparency in campaign finance, which would technically not prohibit or restrict the outlay of gelt, it would just make sure that we would all know who was laying it out, and to whom.
Is there a mechanism to overturn it besides that or the court taking a case that can overturn it?
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Is it possible to write new legislation that would avoid the issue? Or amend the current law?
It just seems near impossible to go the amendment route.
Yes, the last amendment to be ratified took a couple of hundred of years. 
Prior to that, the highly controversial 26th amendment, which set the minimum voting age at 18, took about three and a half months from passage to threshold for ratification.
Credit where credit is due. This is a truly appalling thing to say, this would fit in well in the SRIotD thread were the parties reversed.
Since “the current law” that this decision was based on is our Constitution, specifically the right to free speech, the only way to amend that is through a Constitutional Amendment.
Or it can be overturned by another decision by a later Supreme Court. That’s happened quite a few times. For example, the same-sex marriage decision last summer overturned the Supreme Court Baker vs. Nelson decision of 1972.
To “avoid the issue”, laws that prevent secret contributions are allowed. Many people think that if the voters were able to see who got contributions from where, that would mitigate the bad effects of Citizens United. (Personally, I’m not so sure.) So there are efforts to pass laws requiring disclosure of campaign contributions. These are generally opposed by the same large contributors.
There are also some efforts to get at this from other directions. There is starting to be quite a trend of stockholder resolutions that would restrict the corporations political contributions, either by directly limiting them, requiring public disclosure to stockholders, etc. These are generally opposed by the management, and usually defeated, with the votes of large mutual funds, etc.
The proposed DISCLOSE Act is 100% constitutional provided there are no exemptions. You can’t horsetrade 1st amendment rights. Last time they tried to exempt the NRA:
Given that Anthony KEnnedy’s decision in Citizens United was based on government choosing between “favored” and “disfavored” speakers, DISCLOSE would probably fall before the Supreme Court if it favored some speakers over others.
“Contributors” is the simple and direct noun form, since they are defined by an act, “contributing”. Trying to get away with calling them “speakers” is buggering the question, that is, assuming what you want for a conclusion as a given.
Subtle. But you gotta get up pretty early in the afternoon to get one past me.
Since the bill was granting an exemption to a speaker(the NRA) rather than a contributor, the bill was favoring one speaker over all the others.
Money is still influential in smaller, local elections. They may not get a Senator or a President, but take over the local state houses and you have a new obstacle for Dems to overcome. After Congress failed to block Obamacare, many state legislatures and governors did what the national Congress wasn’t able to do and refuse to expand it. I don’t want such a thing to be the norm and so I still want money out of politics as much as possible
Concur, down to the last jot and tittle. But the examples are suggestive of a change bubbling up from the people to those who think to control us. Take TV advertising and radio, newspaper ads. Used to be the gold standard, yes? I suggest that is no longer as effective as it was, and getting less so. To grossly oversimplify, Facebook reaches more minds than NBC. As many as Fox News? No, prolly not, but Fox preaches directly to the choir. And only the choir!
How many Trump ads did you see? Trump ran an entire campaign by saying crazy shit that made the news! Every night! And he didn’t spend shit! Hillary rolled out a big ad campaign recently, and her numbers appear to be going up. But is one the result of the other?
The example I belabor is Jeb(!) spending a metric shit ton of money on New Hampshire’s primary, hoping to get just a few points in the polls, and failed spectacularly! Jeb(!) was not a great candidate, having the charisma of cottage cheese, but if the standard paradigm was still valid, he would have got something!
But he didn’t. How many Bernie ads did you see on mainstream media? Who were his Adelson, his Koch Bros.? And yet he turned in an amazing performance.
If the Pubbies money no longer works, or soon will no longer work, why should we give a rat’s patoot about Citizen’s United?
Because it’s too early to know if the trend will continue or if this election is an anomaly.
And even if it continues, it can always swing back.
Wrecking ball only has to swing once. If my fondest dreams come true, and the Pubbies are totally massacred this time out…ain’t nothin’ gonna be the same.
Well I hope you’re right.
But on to the point, I just don’t think such money should be in politics, regardless of it being influential or not.
Since money is required to do just about anything in this world, you’re not really talking about getting money out of politics, but getting SOME people’s money out of politics.
Not all of their money. Just the obscene amount of it.
Which means you’ll have to overturn Buckley too.
Well, fuck me, I was sure he was dead!
Curses! Foiled again!