The inference is bloody obvious for the reasons I cited, and is why the phrase appears in countless analyses of the case and its repercussions. Resorting to literalism instead of comprehension is not generally a productive strategy.
If I’m not mistaken, Scalia’s contribution to the CU ruling never even used the word “money” one single time, but regardless, his rationale for the ruling was crystal clear, and plainly re-iterated by the man himself. I hate making people watch videos but in this case it serves a purpose to get it directly from the horse’s mouth. I give you the late Antonin Scalia discussing Citizens United in a Piers Morgan interview, with the following quotable exchange beginning at around the 49-second mark:
SCALIA: You can’t separate speech from the money that facilitates the speech.
MORGAN: Can’t you?
SCALIA: It’s utterly impossible.
Money and speech – inseparable and forever united as one. So said Antonin Scalia in defense of his ruling on Citizens United.
Not seated on the bench, therefore not speaking ex catheter. Nor wearing the sacred rayon Robes of Power. Hence, it is stark staring decisis, which you’ve had the gall to divide in three parts!
It’s true he wasn’t wearing a robe in the video, but he might have been speaking with catheters stuck in various orifices and we’d never know. So I say we reserve judgment. And I always thought that stare decisis was the legal term for what everyone did when they noticed that one of those justices wasn’t wearing anything under their robe.
Part that confuses me is the shift of emphasis to William’s. Seems to me the issue is more like McDonnell’s acceptance of gifts rather than William’s motivations for the giving. How would William’s rights even enter into the question?
If it were illegal for McDonnell to accept gifts from his good buddy, does that necessarily mean it were illegal for Williams to offer them?
You are being pedantic. Buckley v. Valeo did indeed say that anyone can spend their own money, to their heart’s content, messaging, and Citizens United basically reaffirmed that. What was not ruled unconstitutional was restrictions on how much money can be given to someone else to support that person/party’s messaging.
Some people perceive money given to a candidate/official as a form of speech: “I support that person’s ideology, so I should be able to support them financially in order to further the common cause we share.” Some view that kind of expression of support as something that should be considered speech protected by the First; others disagree (especially if it can be seen as unduly influencing resultant policy).
Citizens United ruled that an organization can spend as much as it wants on messaging that favors a candidate (or reviles one). Some feel that indirect support of a candidate is equivalent to contributing to their campaign (which SCotUS has ruled can be restricted constitutionally) while other view it as protected speech. I have a hard time seeing it as a simple B&W question.
Giving money to a candidate or to a seated official has the same net effect, at least where large amounts are involved: the donor can expect some degree of access/influence for their largess. In that respect, there is a practical similarity between the two cases compared in the OP.
I agree completely. I don’t see how you think I don’t. CU was not about donations to candidates.
As long as you or anyone else doesn’t confuse donations to Super PACs with donations to candidates, of course. CU affirmed the right to give as much as you want to someone else, other than a candidate, to use for speech.
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Of course it’s B&W, because if spending money on your own speech could be considered a donation, then speech NOT involving money could also be considered a donation, subject to limits, and that’s obviously absurd.
No, that is not always true, but so what? Is everything done for a candidate that results in benefits for the person doing it corrupt? If I volunteer for a candidate for mayor who promises to fix potholes in the street and he wins and fixes the potholes, is that corruption or bribery? Your logic would lead to the criminalization of all politics.
Our great legal expert is now only capable of non sequiturs. Observe that he responds to this
with this
IANAL; have never pretended to be on; if I were one I hope I’d not be a pedantic dolt like some. And I specifically asked, not about the law, but about*** wise public policy***. And mentioned no party affiliation in OP. Brickhead: Is English even your first language?
But … Bribery is bad. It is immoral for public servants to accept large gifts to use their influence. It would be nice to imagine a country where bribery laws did not need to be finely crafted — i.e. where Governors weren’t criminals — but perhaps Brickhead’s confusion and hypocrisy illustrate why such a country of Law is not the country of Lawyers that we’re stuck with.
Some of our Founders were revolutionary idealists, dedicated to equality under the law. Others… businessmen and landowners, mostly…were concerned that political power should rest in sober and responsible hands. Businessmen and landowners, mostly. Guess who won!
In America, money is political power. Either that is just as it should be, or it needs fixing. I lean towards the latter. Perhaps “lean” is not strong enough a word…
Your laughable extremism and hopeless intransigence on this issue has been duly noted before, but it’s on spectacular display here.
That principle is “solid” according to four far-right lunatics and one libertarian on the Supreme Court in the recent spate of decisions, staunchly and consistently opposed by the progressives in every single case. With one of those lunatics now deceased, it’s doubtful than anything so flagrant would pass today. The McDonnell case will be an interesting test. I would be happy for Bricker to be proved right and and the ruling to be a narrow one on the jury instruction question, or else perhaps the court will be tied in a stalemate.
It appears to be your position that progressive justices have no understanding of the Constitution, which makes exactly as much sense as the rest of your blather.
So you’re saying the government cannot ban dissenting ads against Citizens United, because money is speech after all. Perhaps you shouldn’t post while intoxicated.
Toobin certainly thinks so, but much depends on what the Court considers the central issue of the case.
And I would venture that there’s a lot more at stake than the donor expecting “some degree of access/influence”. The lunatic wing of the Court has deemed – and may yet deem again here – that there is no corruption unless a definite and specific quid pro quo can be established between the monetary contribution and some official action, to a degree that in practice is almost impossible to establish. Basically to satisfy their criteria, you’d need to enact some implausible melodrama where an Evil Tycoon offers gold to a politician if the politician will enact some malignant legislation, and the politician has to agree to take the gold and enact the legislation, with both of them shouting into a tape recorder. Anything short of that and by God, it’s just “money” and “speech” which, as Scalia so succinctly pointed out, are supposed by these lunatics to be completely inseparable.
The practical matter is that national political campaigns in America cost billions of dollars, and billions more are spent on issue advocacy through every imaginable means of communication, and on direct political lobbying. These obscene amounts of money are spent by corporations and the wealthy hugely out of proportion to their numbers and their corresponding democratically constituted rights of political determination. Here’s the real quid pro quo: the resultant political system caters overwhelmingly to its benefactors. And the public mindset is insidiously distorted on factual matters like health care policy and climate change, and fiscal matters like taxation and social policies.
Wolfpup: Do you think that any of the current SCOTUS justices would uphold a law, passed by Congress, that limited the amount money individuals could spend on advocating for political causes to $1,000? Would that decision mean that “money is speech” and if not, why not?
This would be not just a straw man, but one so poorly constructed that the entire argument teeters on the brink of incoherence.
If we lived in a world where the only possible means of mass communication was the printed media – newspapers, books, and magazines and nothing else – and if a particular small elite controlled access to most of the ink and paper and used that to ensure that their political views were persistently dominant, then you would have a valid analogy. In that situation ink and paper really does equate to speech, and speech of a particularly influential kind, and one might wish the government to step in and enact measures to ensure that, in support of a functional democracy, all views were fairly heard, not just those of the ink oligopoly. And you might have the usual gang of libertarian pinheads demanding that the government not interfere with the Natural Order of Things, and also – the libertarians’ constant fervent hope – would the government please go away and remember to turn off the lights on the way out.
Did Scalia address any questions of any specific enabling technology like in your ridiculous fabrication? Of course not, he was referring to money as a universal enabler of all speech – that is, all speech of the kind that matters politically and sways the direction of democracies, excepting only private conversations and shouting on street corners, which tends not to have much effect. In this critically important context, money is speech. Absolutely, unequivocally, and forever united as one. Scalia at least admitted it.
That’s why it matters to democracy, and why so many books and studies show American democracy to be failing to carry out its primary mission of serving the best interests of the people. Because money is not allocated according to democratic principles, but the nature and motivations of our government should be. Because, you know, that’s what democracy is!
And you don’t do your own credibility any favors by quoting lance strongarm, who has long since left the realm of rationality and gone off the deep end on this issue.
The question is fundamentally about where one draws restrictive lines, much as you said yourself earlier. Very broad prohibitions on “advocating anything, at any time” are obviously not going to fly. You’re never going to completely remove the influence of money in politics because money is fundamentally about shaping your environment, in every sense of the term. But this is worlds removed from reasonable restrictions on excessive political influence, restrictions that restore a more balanced political dialog and give ordinary people some hope and faith that governments might actually look after their interests instead of being inevitable servants of a moneyed plutocracy.
The fundamental issue with “money is speech” is that some folks have ready access to more of it than do others. If everyone is constrained to a fixed amount, and no one may borrow someone else’s unused credit, that is more like equitable freedom of speech than a case where billionaires have greater access to the soap box just by buying it.
Some might question if that formula does not overvalue speech, by placing it on the same holy plane as money. After all, money is not so weak as to need the protection of an amendment, it can take care of itself just fine.