From The Next American Nation, by Michael Lind (The Free Press, 1995) (from before the McCain-Feingold Bill, but I don’t think the picture has changed all that much since it passed):
They don’t come much more libertarian than Goldwater, and even he was appalled at this state of affairs.
Now, if that money does not buy influence over politicians (or, more importantly, is not useful for getting the pol the donor wants into office), then why do the donors spend that much, year after year after year?! These are people/organizations who ordinarily really, really hate to waste money.
From the same book:
“Wall of separation between check and state” is, at least, something you can get on a bumper-sticker.
“Today’s political campaigns function as collection agencies for broadcasters. You simply transfer money from contributors to television stations.” Senator Bill Bradley, 2000.
“We’ve got a real irony here. We have politicians selling access to something we all own -our government. And then we have broadcasters selling access to something we all own — our airwaves. It’s a terrible system.” Newton Minow, former Federal Communications Commission chairman (2000).
“You’re more likely to see Elvis again than to see this bill pass the Senate.” Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (1999) on the McCain-Feingold Bill on Campaign Reform
“Unless we fundamentally change this system, ultimately campaign finance will consume our democracy.” Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) (1996).
"[Buckley v. Valeo is] one of the most weakly reasoned, poorly written, initially contradictory court opinions I’ve ever read. "Senator (and former federal district court judge) George J. Mitchell (D-ME) (1990).
“We don’t buy votes. What we do is we buy a candidate’s stance on an issue.” Allen Pross, executive director, California Medical Association’s PAC (1989).
“Political action committees and moneyed interests are setting the nation’s political agenda. Are we saying that only the rich have brains in this country? Or only people who have influential friends who have money can be in the Senate?” Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) (1988).
“The day may come when we’ll reject the money of the rich as tainted, but it hadn’t come when I left Tammany Hall at 11:25 today.” George Washington Plunkett (1905).
“Who are to be the electors of the federal representatives? Not the rich, more than the poor, not the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscure and propitious fortune.” James Madison, Federalist 57 (1788).
A truism (one that the German-American Bund, the Communist Party, etc would have heartily agreed with, but a truism nonetheless).
The problem in this thread is that we have people saying on the one hand that they think the First Amendment is a dead letter and America must be overhauled wholesale, then immediately denying that they said such things when shown the implications. The same people are rather coy about what new system they would build on the ruins of the Bill of Rights, but are definitely sure that, once they figure out what it is they are advocating for, it will be worth it.
When does the Koch brothers activity of passing out flyers become something that can be banned in your opinion? Can they do it everyday? Can they make copies of those flyers or do they have to be hand written? Can they hire someone else to pass them out? Can they email them out? Can they go over short wave radio and speak their message?
Where is the arbitrary line you are drawing between when something is okay and when it is not?
Discussing that gets into what freedom of speech actually is. Some people think it is the ability to say what you want when you want. Well, that level of freedom of speech is never limited as long as you aren’t censored. Restricting money or not restricting wouldn’t change anything at all.
But that obviously is not the definition used on either side, or else freedom of speech wouldn’t be brought up. I can only speak for my side. You have to go back into what freedom of speech was created for. It was designed to prevent those in power from limiting the influence of those who are not in power. It is designed to create a level playing field, where your influence is proportional only to the number of people who agree with you.
And even if they don’t call it freedom of speech, this is an idea that most people agree with, because it’s also essentially the definition of democracy.
So any definition of free speech that would frustrate this cannot be what freedom of speech means. Anything that would give one rich guy with a lot of money more influence in politics than someone without money cannot be freedom of speech.
That’s why I really liked what elucidator said. People want to pervert freedom of speech into something that can be used to advocate for political inequality, when that’s the exact opposite of why it exists.
BigT, how many people owned printing presses in Philadelphia or Boston in 1775-1776 or 1787-1789?
I have no love for Murdoch or the brothers Koch, but until you can provide a bright line definition of “too much” that would have been true then, is true now, and will be true in the future, your arguments appear to be crafted to oppose those particular persons and their influence rather than defining an actual principle from which rules can be constructed.
Ooooh! “the German-American Bund, the Communist Party.” Also the Republican Party, the John Birch Society, the various Koch-funded shadow organizations, and others, including the Democratic party.
Why don’t you stick to trying to argue the points of your belief and stop waving bloody shirts around. They do nothing to make your point and they simply inflame emotions, needlessly.
No, I’m trying to get across the fundamental block on your side. You have to discus ideas before you can discuss implementations. You keep on misstating the position of those of us who want campaign finance reform.
The practical solutions are beyond my pay grade. Those are what the various campaign reform ideas are about. It’s a hard problem to solve, and I don’t know what will fix it. But someone going around completely misstating the purpose only serves to stop any reforms or discussion about them before they start.
Yes, one of those places where you seem to be living in a completely different world from the rest of us. The entire method of “restricting speech” being decided was based on monetary restrictions. The main result was the creation of political advertizing entities with no monetary restrictions.
Is Citizens United the sole problem? But it is part of it. It equated the speech of organizations with the money they spend to make said speech.
Where you have repeatedly said that finance reform is about restricting speech we don’t like, when we’ve told you multiple times it isn’t? Where you said I admitted it was about restricting speech I didn’t like, when I said nothing about liking anything? Everything we’ve been saying applies equally to all speech, but you repeatedly characterize it as people trying to stop the speech they don’t agree with.
You are trying to take our desire to remove corruption from politics, and change it into us creating corruption in politics.
I don’t agree with that, but even if I did that would certainly mean that people like the Koch Brothers needed protection when Democrats controlled the Presidency, the House and the Senate.
I’m going to need one them cite thingies for that. Also, you’re shifting to “influence” instead “speech”. But that kind of equality has never existed and I dread the types of controls that would have to be put in place to accomplish that.
No, it’s not. Democracy is rule by the people. You can have democracy without free speech and you can have free speech without democracy.
One key aspect of free speech is to not censor speech for content. I can’t imagine anyone being disallowed to speak out in favor of inequality in the US, even if most of us would disagree with him.
At any rate, that was a lot of words, but it didn’t answer the question.
Likewise a truism with which the Abolitionist Society and the Suffragettes and the Grange and the AFL-CIO and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Students for a Democratic Society and the National Organization for Women and United Farmworkers would have heartily agreed. Just because something is a truism does not mean it is unimportant, nor not worth saying.
“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
“Instead of devising unworkable limits on campaign financing that leave the basic system intact, we should cut the Gordian knot of campaign corruption by simply outlawing paid political advertising on behalf of any candidate for public office.”
Outlawing speech is limiting speech. Not sure why that is a difficult concept to understand.
It outlaws paid political advertising, which is a limit on speech. The claim was you could limit money spent without limiting speech. You seem to be thinking that as long as you don’t limit all speech you haven’t limited speech.
I don’t believe that most are against the content of the speech. They are against the volume.
This is where Haber is having his trouble. He repeatedly innacurately says that people want to outlaw speech they don’t like. That’s not true (at least in general, I’m sure some do). They want to outlaw the intensity with which that speech can be spread via spending duckets.
Limiting the ability to say a message isn’t the same thing as limiting the ability to broadcast it at some cap.
“Instead of devising unworkable limits on campaign financing that leave the basic system intact, we should cut the Gordian knot of campaign corruption by simply outlawing paid political advertising on behalf of any candidate for public office.”
John Mace asked how you would limit money without limiting speech. The above does not answer that question. You ARE limiting speech - is “paid political advertising” somehow not “speech”?
It’s a perfect solution. All you have to do is redefine what “speech” is to exclude the speech we don’t like. Then we ban it. What should we call this new concept of redefining language to fit political goals? I suggest Newspeak.
Let’s say I’ve amassed $50B over the years and now would like to devote my life and my billions to advocate for Same Sex Marriage, Raising the Minimum Wage and cutting back the Defense Budget, redirecting the money to Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
How much of my money should I be allowed to spend in that advocacy?