The fact that you are unable to advocate you position without hyperbolic nonsense suggests that your position isn’t that strong.
Limiting money in politics isn’t about keeping people from speaking.
And yet we can’t make it 5 posts into a discussion of money without someone bringing up how imperative it is to ban The Wrong Opinions from being spoken.
Again, it is perfectly possible, Constitutionally, to limit donations to political candidates in almost any way Congress sees fit. If you want to do this, vote for politicians who will do so. If you want to use “limit money in politics” to mean “make it illegal for The Wrong People to speak The Wrong Opinions on the pretext that they have The Wrong Money” then you are an un-American censor.
It’s also a fact that the meat of the bills that the FEC Democrats and Hillary Clinton support (and the law at the heart of Citizens United that the progressive class thinks is so great) are purely “keep people from speaking The Wrong Opinions” bills, and they cannot be supported in good faith by anyone who wants me to believe that the specter of censorship is “hyperbolic nonsense.”
Who said that? You’re not accurately describing the positions of your opponents in this debate.
Again, you are not characterizing the debate honestly.
Who holds the position, “make it illegal for The Wrong People to speak The Wrong Opinions on the pretext that they have The Wrong Money”?
That’s an inaccurate straw man of the position people who are pro-campaign finance reform hold. It’s like saying people who are abortion rights want to murder children just so they suffer.
I’m surprised you expect anyone to take your position seriously when you characterize things like this.
No one is trying to keep people from saying the wrong opinions. That’s just some shit you’re saying.
Read Citizens United, or the law it overturned, or the statement of the Democrats on the FEC that are the subject of this thread. Just constantly repeating “money in politics! money in politics!” is a poor substitute for actual knowedge or argument.
Certainly would be. If such were the case.
Rich people are not specifically stupid. If money in politics were not to their advantage, they would not spend their precious money trying to keep it that way. If their money was not seen as producing the desired results, they would squander it elsewhere, and simply shrug off any proposed laws about political spending. They wouldn’t care.
But they do care, don’t they?
You don’t defend that inequality, you simply assert that “free speech” is divine writ, cannot be tampered with, must not be modified by human hand. But “free speech” is a mechanism of political equality, that is what it is about. Using the principle of free speech to defend political injustice is deeply fucked up, and not in a good way.
Also, you gotta be able to shout “Theater!” in a crowded fire.
In other words, that it’s a right, not something that Hillary Clinton can take away at her whim? Yes, I and every moral person agree.
It’s not a means to any other end, it’s a right.
That analogy is still both historically illiterate and morally irrelevant.
Here is what this thread is actually about:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/tell-fec-not-amp-internet-regulations
What the Democrats on the FEC are talking about is treating speech as money – telling people who put up Youtube videos, blogs, or even Straight Dope Message Board posts which are pro- or anti- some candidate that they are making a “donation in kind” to the candidate and must comply with regulations on campaign donations or face prosecution.
This is exactly the bullshit that was ruled unconstitutional in Citizens United, and the other members of the FEC are absolutely right to do anything in their power to block it.
You are saying “it should be illegal to post your political opinions on the Internet” and then refusing to defend such an evil notion with anything but squawking “money in politics! money in politics!” like a parrot that’s spent too much time in Bernie Sanders’s office.
Sounds right to me.
To restate what I see to be the key point: “a democracy cannot function” i.e. it is not a democracy.
This is particularly clear in looking at the Republican primary, where there is a mad rush to pick up big money donors. Jeb Bush looks like a good bet mostly because he has managed to get a large number of financial backers, and its recognized that anyone who doesn’t have big donors backing him up isn’t going to stand a chance. In the current framework it is completely impossible to run for president without gaining the support of the 0.01%. Our political system is turning out to be like Iran, but instead of the Clerics deciding who can and can’t run, the 0.01% decide who is or is not acceptable to be put forward as a candidate.
A country where 0.01% of the population can determine who is allowed to run for president, is not a democracy.
Truly, we wouldn’t want any rich people interfering in the transfer of power from the Obamas (net worth $20M) to the Clintons (net worth $55M).
This is an example of the kind of nonsense you’re throwing out. Unable to defend your position, you attack the wealth of the Obamas and Clintons.
That’s silly because the Obamas and Clintons generally want to reduce the sway the wealthy have in politics. If people over six foot four got two votes, it would be perfectly possible for someone seven feet tall to be against that.
And if that’s a policy position they advocate, then attacking them for their height would be nothing more than a distracting bleat.
I’m the only one bringing facts or argument to this thread. What “position” is being defended by anyone else besides “the First Amendment is irrelevant because of something about fires and theaters from a long-mooted Supreme Court case that upheld jailing anti-war protestors” and “money in politics! squaaaawk!”?
Say something about what you actually want to do besides going in the circle of “there should be no free speech/I refuse to acknowledge or defend that I just said there should be no free speech” and I’ll address it.
The wealth of popular Democrats who support “campaign finance reform” is very relevant, because it shows that you have no problem with “the rich,” just the rich who have opinions you don’t wish to let anyone else hear. As for the people making Youtube videos, blog entries, and Straight Dope Message Board posts that Ann Ravel wants to censor – again, it has nothing to do with their bank accounts, and all of those media are free. It has everything to do with the Democratic presumption that they are entitled to rule and the voters should be fired for stupidity if they get in the way.
No, you haven’t. You’ve not even tried. You’ve just repeatedly converted what people actually said into something completely different, in order to fit your worldview of how things must be. You don’t even get remotely close to an attempt to rebut what anyone else has said.
To tell the truth, you seem to live in a world that none of the rest of us live in, where we say things that we didn’t actually say. So it’s kinda hard to have a serious debate with you.
In fact, that’s why I didn’t bother addressing you before.
What do I need to rebut? The ridiculous “fire in a crowded theater” doctrine? That was overturned by the Supreme Court in Brandenburg 46 years ago. The idea that posting “I don’t like Hillary Clinton” on a message board is a “contribution in kind” to Jeb Bush and should be regulated? You’ll need to make some sort of case for that before I can rebut anything. The notion that Citizens United was about “corporate personhood” or “unlimited donations?” I have posted a full explanation of what the case actually addressed above.
After six years of Obama, Democrats have become as complacent and entitled as Republicans were in 2005. Just as they thought that they would rule forever and needed to say nothing more than “support the troops” and “9/11” to dismiss actual arguments, we now have Democrats in the same position, just with “money in politics” and “Fox News” as the catchphrases. What is it that you wish to do about “money in politics” and/or the Ann Ravel plan that is actually the subject of this thread? You haven’t put up any “argument” for anything to discuss, besides a historically illiterate case for limiting the freedom of speech.
Cool. A non-snarky post of yours that I’m probably going to steal. It’s precisely the problem I have with the American version. Free speech is treated as a good unto itself. It’s not–it’s a method to accomplish something good.
So we’ve again established that the people supporting whatever they think “campaign finance reform” is" don’t believe in free speech or the American system. Old news. When is one of them actually going to post what, specifically, they want to see with regards to “campaign finance reform” or “money in politics?”
And just to make my first post clear–though I thought it was already.
I’m for making where rich people are not entitled to more speech than non-rich people, all else being equal. I do not want to silence anyone. I just want the poor to have the same exact speech power as the rich do.
That’s the fundamental problem with Citizens United. Speech is not limited, but money is. So you cannot treat money used for speech and speech itself as equivalent. You can limit money without limiting speech.
ETA: Stop misrepresenting other people’s argument, Haberdasher. Because I’m starting to think the misunderstanding is not genuine.
Why did it eat them?!
How?
What specific laws do you wish to see enacted, and what specific measurements of “having the exact same speech power” would constitute the test of those laws’ success? You’re just repeating platitudes.
Ruling that you cannot treat speech as money is the exact-- and only – thing that Citizens United did. Read my description above.
What do you believe is being misrepresented?
The only way you can do that is by silencing those who are not poor. Unless by “speech” you mean ONLY the sounds produced by vocal cords. Every other form of speech requires money.