I wasn’t speaking on basic human rights, but the legal privileges we have as a result of having collective representation. For example, we enjoy uncontaminated water despite being downstream from a chemical plant, or we can sit in a restaurant with our kids without worrying the guy across the table is legally carrying a hand grenade in his pocket “for protection”. Counterfeiting hurts no one individual directly, but we need heavy penalties for it. The invisible hand is slow to correct when there isn’t a profit motive. Why are we paying $20 to get a credit report? Does Equifax operate in a free market? Can a new credit authority compete with the incumbents? No, then regulation is needed.
I’ve made the same argument that you’re responding to so I’ll try again. One of the basic reasons for the existence of government is to protect the public from abuses and exploitation by otherwise uncontrolled corporate interests. Without government regulation there is nothing to prevent corporations from forming monopolies, engaging in collusion and price-fixing, charging extortionate prices, making dangerous and shoddy products, running false advertising, failing to honor warranties, and cheating investors, just for starters. And the amazing “invisible hand of the marketplace” isn’t going to fix any of that when corporations grow and merge and become large enough to stifle competition and that invisible hand. In effect at that point corporate interests run the economy and the public has no say in the matter, no representation and no rights. This was the case during the early part of industrialization and to a large extent through the 19th and early 20th centuries, diminishing as government regulation to some extent took hold.
That’s just silly. If it’s sometimes done that way – and it is – it’s because that’s the way industry wants it done, and allowing it to happen is not a necessity but an abdication of responsibility, an irresponsible sellout. It’s precisely the problem with the current system. No one expects legislators to be subject matter experts, but self-interested “industry insiders” are not the answer. One should expect legislators to have the integrity and responsibility to consult impartial subject matter experts before proposing or approving legislation. The government even funds many institutions that can readily provide that expertise, or may already be part of government – NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, NOAA, the EPA, etc. Institutions like the National Academies of Science exist for the sole purpose of providing impartial expertise to government on matters of science, engineering, and medicine.
If “industry insiders” are involved, they should be involved only as participants in public hearings in which all sides have representation, not as arbiters of policy. But the latter happens far too often, and many examples abound. With respect to health care, for example, the most notorious example in recent memory is that AHIP, the health insurance lobby, practically dictated the major terms of the ACA. There are many impartial experts in health care practice and economics, and many were indeed consulted – and then promptly ignored, such as health care economist Uwe Reinhardt arguing for the public option, or former industry executive turned whistleblower Wendell Potter warning of the industry’s treachery. But lo and behold, the public option was killed, and everybody acts surprised when the insurance companies cancel plans, jack up rates, and make out like bandits.
Not even close. This is just a talking-point bouncing around the conservative media. And it’s not true.
They came up with this claim by not counting undisclosed donations, which are the main way that really large amounts of money are donated. The Koch brothers, to give a prominent example, paid $4,900,000 in disclosed donations in the 2012 election and $407,000,000 in undisclosed donations. Ignoring the undisclosed donations greatly distorts the amount of money they gave.
If you add in all the money that was donated, the Koch brothers donated $412,670,666 (I’m assuming the 666 was just their little joke). The top ten union donations combined added up to $153,473,251.
The Koch Brothers spent almost thrice the aggregate of ten top unions! :eek: And plan on spending even more next cycle. :eek: 
Surely concern about money in politics is well-advised. 
What I failed to say was that the candidate’s power to make those things would be curtailed, but your own personal one would not. In this example, Candidate A would be unable to make any more lawn signs and hand them out to people if he runs out of money. However, you as a private citizen can make your own lawn sign or buy one from somewhere and place it wherever you are allowed to. The public pool of money is for candidates to spend, it has no bearing on what you as a regular citizen does with your own money, with the exception of giving it or linking it to the candidate
The vast majority of people would not be able to buy TV ads, book a stadium, or organize a campaign event. That will not change whether or not these rules are adopted. Candidates themselves run a majority of those things using the money they have and the organization they command. They book the stadiums, the TV shows, make and buy the commercials. That’s why you hear about people spending a lot of their own money on campaigns. Its expensive, there are a ton of things to buy.
What you do yourself with your friends is balanced by what the other guy’s supporter is doing with themselves and their friends, I’m not interested in regulating or restricting that (at least not yet because it doesn’t present a problem). Doing actual physical things like organizing, hosting, or creating your own signs shows motivation and would weed out a lot of the people who only want to write a check. Enough people, I think, will be put off from having to do such things that overall, there isn’t going to be an imbalance except where one candidate has more supporters than the other (and not just fewer but richer supporters).
Where I do have an interest in limiting money is donations to the candidates directly. Corporations and the rich can, with one stroke of a pen, influence candidates vastly more than any of us can in a lifetime. One check from Sheldon Adelson is more “speech” than any of us will ever have. That’s what I’m interested in limiting. With the exception of the limits I’ve already mentioned, I don’t think people should be able to donate to candidates. The candidates should use the existing pool of money for whatever they need to buy. If people want to support them with ACTUAL SPEECH, they should go and shout on street corners, make their own signs and hold them up, or decorate their houses with blue or red. Such things are more difficult for the Kochs of the world to outdo normal people’s efforts (of course they can hire people to do that, or use their money in one of many other ways, but the point is to make it MORE difficult for money to trump support, things will never be completely equal).
The point of all this is to try to illustrate that if you have 2 candidates and one of them has one supporter with 1 million dollars and the other has 10 supporters worth only 100 dollars, the person with 10 supporters should generally win. The candidate with the rich supporter, in our current system, is basically using his money to buy 10000 more supporters for his preferred candidate. That’s how things work now. I don’t think that’s more free, I think that is bribery and cannot be allowed
So you’re okay with the Koch brothers doing all this? So long as they fund it themselves and not through the Republican party? What difference does it make to you whether the Koch brothers fund the Republican party directly, or set up a PAC with their own money to support Republican candidates outside of the RNC?
And since this only affects the candidates (and their parties?), how much of my own money do I get to spend if I want to start a third major party? Does that count as my money to do with what I please? Or party money to be restricted by legislation?
Beyond that, it works in the UK because the only actual elected politicians are local MPs. Everyone else is voted to/appointed by Parliament and the queen.
So in other words, David Cameron only had to stand for election to his own district as a MP, not get elected Prime Minister by the entire nation.
The analogous situation in the US would be how John Boehner only had to get elected directly by his constituents in Ohio, and was elected Speaker by the House.
Even then, Boehner’s representing and getting elected by some 600,000 people, more or less, while Cameron’s Witney constituency only comprises 78,000 people.
It’s a lot easier not to have paid political ads when the highest elective office in the land is a MP, with a constituency roughly half that of a Texas House representative (ideally 167,000 people).
I think your question misses the point. RIGHT NOW, pretty much only the Koch brothers and people with money can do this. Even if my rules were adopted tomorrow, nothing will change. Your debate seems to imply that my rules would alter anything that is already happening in terms of money buying power and influence.
With that said, as Stephen Colbert illustrated quite nicely on his former show, there are rules governing SuperPACs where they cannot coordinate with the candidates they support in order to promote at least the impression of fairness. Obviously it is impossible to say that all private interest groups must be neutral because there are issues they support and those issues are not neutral. These too would no be changed by my rules.
What I am asking for is no corporate and private donations to candidates at all. Zero dollars. You nor I cannot give money to Candidate A, but neither can Koch nor Exxon. I would also eliminate rules about corporate free speech, because corporations are not people. If the Kochs want to have a dinner for the GOP nominee, they can do it in one of their many homes, but it cannot be an Exxon sponsored event, they cannot use corporate money to push any agenda. Again, in real life right now, you and I don’t have that power. These rules wouldn’t affect you to the extent that you cannot get a corporation to skirt the rules on donations and donate thousands to a candidate. It is wrong for you to imply that my rules would somehow hurt everyone’s speech when in fact it would vastly be disproportionately targeted towards the likes of the Kochs (or if you prefer, George Soros).
Now in answer to your last question in that paragraph, it doesn’t make too much of a difference I admit, especially to someone who can basically print money. But it should make some difference. And that difference at least shrinks the gap a little bit between your power and the power of the Kochs. To go further than that I am not willing, at least not yet. I accept that money and influence will always have an outsized value in terms of political power. Until a better set of rules are devised, I’m prepared to live in that reality knowing I can’t change it.
I assume there are already rules in place to what gets considered a legitimate third party. The Green Party, the Libertarian Party, and the Independent Party are recognized as real political parties. The Party of Ron, I suspect, is not, for reasons I’m sure exist. I can’t give you a definitive answer, nor will I try because there are some things I willingly admit I have little knowledge of. If you’re a tiny party, I don’t think what you do with your money even matters
Clearly the biggest issue with taking money out of politics is it may lead to democracy.
Clearly, that is the biggest issue…for those that haven’t bothered to look at the issue in depth.
Can you cite that bit about the Koch Brothers personally spending $407,000,000 in 2012? I think you may be confusing the money they personally spend with the money they raise from other sources as part of their PAC(s).
Oooh, I’m wounded.
Once again, I’m not sure what distinction it is that you’re making. I was comparing the amount of money unions donate vs the amount of money the Koch brothers donate.
If a union official write a check to some candidate, is the money coming out of his personal bank account? Obviously not. The union official is donating money that he has control over. And maybe he also writes a smaller check that’s drawn on his personal account.
It’s the same for the Koch brothers. They donate some of their personal money and they donate a larger sum of money they have control over.
Regardless of whether we’re talking about personal money, controlled money, or total money, the Koch brothers are giving more than unions are. I suppose if you compared the Kochs’ personal donation to a union’s total donation, you could find examples where the union gave more. But that’s an apples and oranges comparison.
No one has actually suggested taking money out of politics. All that has been suggested is somehow stopping the “wrong” people from doing it. Even with an amendment, that won’t work out the way you imagine since the government gets to decide who is privileged to reach the masses at will(Hint: the politicians) and who is not(everyone else).
that’s not democracy, that’s a banana republic.
I would settle for forcing all donors to be identified. At least we should know whose money it is. Can you at least agree with that?
I gots no problem with that. I just don’t think it will satisfy most except as a first step.
That’s how we make sausage.
And identified promptly and publicly, not in a filing with some obscure agency six months after the election is over. This should cover public identification of which organization (or individual) is paying directly for any political ads and support, but who is funding the organization, all the way back to the origins of the money.
As long as it applies to everyone without exception, it’s constitutional.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting we eliminate all political spending or political donations. We just want to make it possible to establish an upper limit.
Would you consider it acceptable to have an amendment which said that no individual could donate more than one million dollars a year to political campaigns? Let’s face facts, for most people, that would be a non-issue - most of us have no desire or capability to donate a million dollars to any cause.