Just on a related note, two senior British politicians have been accused this week of ‘cash for access’, using their position to make speeches and present bills in return for cash. There’s now a call from certain corners for MPs consultancy roles to be banned.
I am myself not sure that such a kneejerk response is wise, but I also find their actions deplorable…though?
Well blow me down, just as I mentioned that, Sir Malcolm has resigned from his Committee chair and will stand down as an MP at the upcoming general election.
So long as it has your name on it. I do not believe the First Amendment guarantees anonymous speech.
For clarification, I’m not asking what the law is now. Rather, I’m asking whether, under the OP’s proposal – “We need to limit campaign contributions to $1000, for both individuals and corporations” – I’d be banned from spending two thousand dollars, or two million dollars, or whatever, buying ads on TV and the radio, and in newspapers and across billboards, and, y’know, on this here newfangled information superhighway.
First off, I would say it’s not accurate to claim that “our government is ruled by billion dollar corporations”, so before we debate whether we “like it that way” or not, we should make sure we are accurately describing “that way”.
But it is significant to the debate. $200 million dollars in dark money was spent on the 2014 midterms, and that is just a preview of what will be spent on the 2016 Presidential election. If something isn’t done to reign in anonymous political donations, you are going to see more outrage like the OP, and you risk a real overeaction that will certainly impose the very restrictions on free speech that you decry.
Yeah, the evidence that government is ruled by billion dollar corporations is frankly just not there.
In a free society people should be allowed to lobby their elected representatives. In fact, almost everyone is in favor of some lobbies, they just dislike lobbying for issues where the lobbyist has a different position than them. Lots of unions, civil rights groups and etc do lobbying. But the people here aren’t talking about banning these organizations, they’re talking about banning “the evil” lobbyists, you know the ones advocating for their interests!
Should lobbyists be allowed to bribe representatives? No, of course not. And the types of perks or gifts they can give out should also be strictly limited (or rather, the elected representatives should be strictly limited in what they can accept.) But if a guy who represents say, 50,000 senior citizen’s interests in a Senator’s State wants to call him up to advocate for an upcoming important vote on Social Security–that’s damn right something I want happening. In a huge representative democracy lobbying groups serve a valuable organizing function, making large groups of people who individually have little chance of influence or access more noticeable to politicians.
Also in a free society people should be able to express their opinions about political candidates. In a scheme in which you cannot buy radio, television, or print access to espouse your views, then you’re basically saying the “fourth estate” of the media should be the only ones that get the right to tell us who to vote for and what issues to care about.
The two limitations I’d probably go along with are simple, and both related to limited resources. Television and radio broadcasts utilize limited public goods, that is why their spectrum is licensed from the FCC–but not owned by private entities, spectrum ultimately is owned by the Government for the good of its citizens. Since television/radio spectrum is limited, advertisements on them are very expensive and only so many can be aired. This creates a lot of bad results for fairness in political campaigns and even just for the actual viewing experience of regular people. So for television and radio I would simply say, political advertisements are limited to only so many minutes per week. Further, the media companies can set whatever rates for said advertisements they want, but no candidate can buy more than a certain fixed percentage of available minutes per week. The specific numbers are not something I’ve brainstormed, but to give you an idea my “sweet spot” would probably reduce the total number of television and radio ads by 80% or so.
However, cable, newspaper and internet advertising are not really limited resources in the same way. So in that case I would be fine with the current system continuing.
Are you claiming there was no press and no speech prior to 1976? Because I would disagree with those claims. Free press and free speech existed prior to Buckley and would exist if Buckley was overturned.
“The Act’s contribution provisions are constitutional, but the expenditure provisions violate the First Amendment.”
I wasn’t yet decrying anything, because I still don’t know what the OP’s outrage was. I didn’t see him express outrage about “dark” money or “anonymous” donations; for example, he merely said that we “need to limit campaign contributions to $1000, for both individuals and corporations.”
So as per the OP, if I want to make a campaign contribution of two whole thousand dollars – well, shucks, he doesn’t care whether I do it anonymously or openly; he wants to stop me from doing that, period.
And as for me shelling out thousands, or hundreds of thousands – or, sure, hundreds of millions – for ads, I get that you don’t want me doing it anonymously, and I respect that. But again, I honestly don’t know whether the OP wants to stop me from doing it at all; he didn’t say a thing about anonymity.
To how many minutes should MSNBC be limited?
Regards,
Shodan
That’s not what you claimed.
Right, and they’ve got to be able to spend unlimited amounts of money in the process of dissemination, because, First Amendment.
In the olden days it wasn’t really fair because no one knew where candidates stood without tons of TV attack ads to guide them.
I would say it’s this way. To argue otherwise doesn’t seem like a very credible or winning proposition.
Some seem to be trying to skate around the problem by arguing that there’s nothing that can be done about it. I disagree. Others argue, perversely, that instead of putting reasonable limits on the political propagandizing of corporations and the self-serving plutocracy and trying to restore the government to the people, the right answer is to stifle the government, the last hope of the people. Just keep an eye on the political finance laws that the oligarchy has been most anxious to dismantle, and has recently been doing at a frenetic pace, and there’s part of your answer. You generally can’t go wrong by looking at what the Koch brothers want, and doing the exact opposite.
The 1st Amendment should be brought in line with the rule that private money should be out of politics. Face it, the people who are winning, the ones who have the money will never, ever agree to take money out of politics. Either they have to do a 360 of their views, or we’ll have to steal all their money
The 1st should have an exception: “…free speech, except when it comes to money in politics because abuse of money in politics is worse than not having free speech” 
Well, that’s a whole debate in and of itself, but I will note from your link:
Emphasis added.
So the incumbent gets years of free PR, and his opponent counters this…how? I’m sorry, but those already elected, unless they are lame ducks, started their next campaigns they day they were elected using their public office and the free press. Again I ask: Are you going to order the Press not to cover the incumbent when she/he does something that puts her/him up a few points in the public spotlight? If political opponents are restricted from accepting private vending, how do you propose to even the campaign field?
Considering that this country was founded by some of the wealthiest people in the world at the time over demands for tax cuts and looser economic regulations, I don’t think “the rich have too much power in America” is exactly a new phenomenon.
Now you’re getting it. Even rich people’s speech is protected. And groups of less than rich people who pool their money.
So your own cite says our government is not a democracy and it is controlled by rich corporations… and you want to give them more power to stifle speech? You posted a cite concluding that the majority of people have no voice in American government and you want to give that government more power to take away their speech?
Government is a tool of business. Always has been, always will be. The only way to stay free is to make it as powerful as it needs to be and no more. The power to tell everyone how much money they can spend on messages they care about to their fellow citizens and their political representatives is about a thousand steps too far.
So is the power to stifle competition, subsidize and bail out existing businesses and award no-bid contracts, so I suggest that if your problem is too much influence by business on the government, you start there. Remove those tools and watch their influence dwindle.
There are countries that do successful limit how much money can be spent on campaigns, that aren’t exactly totalitarian states. The UK and Ireland both prohibit paid political advertising (which was recently upheld by the European court of human rights). People in the UK with opinions are still allowed to express them. There is a middle ground between “Allow unbridled political spending” and “everyone better toe the party line”
Which is a bit easier to do when the basis of your legal system is “God has invested absolute power in the Queen which Parliament exercises on her behalf”, as opposed to having a written constitution which is deliberately difficult to modify.
How do you propose amending the First Amendment to effectively “take money out of politics” without neutering it entirely?