You lost me. Earlier you said the argument about drawing lines was “nonsense”. Now you’re using it yourself. The question I asked was why that ruling would NOT be one that could be characterized as equating money with speech. But if you want to focus on ordinary people, let’s up the amount to $1M, so that no “ordinary person” is affected by such a law.
No, I didn’t say “drawing lines was nonsense”, I said that your argument in using that as a distinguishing factor was nonsense, wherein you claimed that drawing lines on spending was somehow different than how we treat speech, and I was making the point that limits are properly and routinely imposed on all speech where it serves the interests of democracy and social order. This is what I said:
The “drawing the line” argument is nonsense, no matter how many times you repeat it. Lines are drawn in matters of conventional speech, too. That’s why there are laws against libel and slander, threats, and inciting violence. Trying to argue that the court didn’t equate money and speech because they didn’t deem it absolute is a groundless argument, because no form of speech is absolutely protected in all circumstances. The court ruled that money is speech because they overturned laws on spending money to achieve political ends on the basis of First Amendment speech protections. Simple as that.
The amount for what? There are and can be different spending limits on different political activities although, sadly, and increasingly, no spending limits at all on most of them.
But yes, specific spending limits, or the prohibition of moneyed intervention at all, depending on the situation in question, is part of the solution. At its core, what some of us are asking for is for the Koch brothers and Adelson and their ilk to have to endure a mere ten thousand times the power of ordinary people instead of ten billion times the power, so that we the people may have a better world to live in.
And that is exactly what would happen in my hypothetical. Exactly. So claiming that one ruling is the same as “money is speech” but the there is not is, to use your phrase, nonsense.
The amount in my hypothetical. Change $1,000 to $1,000,000. But my hypothetical also had nothing to do with what you think the laws ought to be. It was about what the SCOTUS would decide.
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 [del]$1,000[/del] $1,000,000? Would that decision mean that “money is speech” and if not, why not?
I’ll answer for you: No. None of them would uphold this law. If you want to go down that road, then all of them, not just Scalia, think “money is speech”.
You answered for me, but unfortunately you answered wrong. We can be sure of two things: (1) that the Supreme Court has ruled in the past in precisely the way you claim they never would, and (2) that in every single one of the major campaign finance cases that has come up before the Roberts court, the majority ruling to dismantle yet more campaign finance regulation was opposed by a vigorous dissent by the four progressive justices.
Examples of item 1 are Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce in which a more sanely constituted Court ruled that “corporate wealth can unfairly influence elections” and McConnell v. FEC which upheld most of the BCRA. Citizens United – which I’ll say again was deliberately orchestrated by the gang of conservatives led by Roberts to be a much broader case than was originally brought by the plaintiffs – overturned most of the latter and all of the former, with, again, vigorous dissent from the progressive side of the court.
Part of Stevens’ dissent, which he felt strongly enough about to read from the bench, was the following:
Stevens referenced a number of major First Amendment cases to argue that the Court had long recognized that to deny Congress the power to safeguard against “the improper use of money to influence the result [of an election] is to deny to the nation in a vital particular the power of self protection”. After recognizing that in Buckley v. Valeo the Court had struck down portions of a broad prohibition of independent expenditures from any sources, Stevens argued that nevertheless Buckley recognized the legitimacy of “prophylactic” measures for limiting campaign spending and found the prevention of “corruption” to be a reasonable goal for legislation. Consequently, Stevens argued that Buckley left the door open for carefully tailored future regulation.
So no, I don’t agree that one can conclude that “none of them would uphold” your hypothetical law on spending restrictions. Only the ones who, like Scalia, believe in the simplistic all-encompassing libertarian mantra that money is inseparable from speech, and that any such separation is “utterly impossible”.
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.
So far you’ve offered absolutely NOTHING of substance.
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.
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You talk a good game, but you offer absolutely zero substance. Stop wasting my time.
I didn’t say that.
And it really doesn’t matter. If you want to play this stupid game, I"m not interested.
I’ve already demonstrated the absurdity of your views. If you have a substantive reply, give it. Boasting and blather is a waste of my time.
Are you saying the government COULD ban such ads?
No blather or boasting please. A simple yes or no.
I notice that Wolfpup conveniently ignored my comment.
Bullshit. It’s a perfect analogy.
More bullshit.
You can’t just declare that you can limit one form of communication because there are other forms.
Your obsession with money = speech just proves you wrong.
The ONLY reason you want to limit spending on speech is to limit the speech that the money brings. You think it’s not fair that some people have “too much” speech due to money. That’s you admitting that your limits on spending are limits on speech.
The fact that you’re using personal attacks shows how desperate you are.
You cannot remove “excessive political influence.” That’s just another way of saying you want to limit speech. You may not do that. You may not decide what is excessive, or substitute your judgement for the peoples’. No. You think like a tyrant. The First Amendment was written to protect us from people like you. Thank God for that.
The government cannot “balance” dialogue. The government cannot restrict influence. Those are violations of the First Amendment.
Get over it.
The principle of free speech is a fine one, but is not improved by thinking of it as a dogma. It is not an inviolable bedrock of certainty, it is as malleable and flexible as any of our other principles, and wisely so. Do you look back longingly on a time when free speech was such a dogma, and universally adhered to, or do you look forward to that day to arrive? Because it never was, and I sincerely doubt it ever shall.
In this instance, the valid principle of free speech is perverted and distorted. Gosh, we cannot inhibit the free speech rights of rich folks, that would be wrong! True, the Koch Brothers have a hundred thousand times more political power than the overage Joe, which runs roughshod over our ideals of political equality BUT!..we can’t do anything about that, tough shit, gotta protect the sacred First Amendment!
Principles are amenable to debate and compromise, that is what makes principles valid and worthy, and dogma a crock of shit. Many of us crave a bedrock to base all ensuing questions upon, a principle that can be dogma and remain worthy of our respect. Absolutes are for the weak. Sith happens.
Yes, it would be.
The idea that we can limit rights based on the wealth of the person is absurd.
No they don’t.
They have no more political power than anyone else.
They simply have the ability to speak more. So what? The people don’t have to listen. The people aren’t limited in the information they can find from any other source.
Exactly.
It’s scary that you would mock civil rights this way.
Absolutes are for the strong.
Just as it takes strength to uphold the rights of people you dislike in any other instance. Just as we uphold free speech for Nazis or the KKK or the legal rights of child molestors and murderers in court, we MUST uphold speech rights of the rich or the right wingers. That is strong and that is courage. (It’s the philosophy of the ACLU, by the way, which SUPPORTED the Citizens United decision. That should make you think about it at least).
Compromise and capitulation is for the weak.
The First Amendment was pretty damn absolute. It protects us from people like you who. The Founders knew that tyrants would use thinking just like yours.
That example fails on 3 counts:
- In my hypothetical I said “individuals”, not corporations
- I also said “political causes”, which is much broader category than “campaigns”
- The limitation was only on the expenditure from “general funds” by corporations, but did not limit spending from an independent fund set up solely for supporting poitical causes.
Again, this was not a law restricting money spent on advocating for “political causes”, but on money contributed to political parties or money spent by political parties.
Could the government ban the sale of bibles based on the idea that it can regulate spending on rights, as oppose to regulating the rights themselves? So as long as it allowed possession of bibles, it wasn’t infringing on religious liberty? Could it do so based on the idea that Christianity has too much influence in our country?
Could the government ban all TV news from spending money based on the idea that TV news has too much influence? As long as it didn’t actually ban the news, just spending money to produce it, would it be okay? It’s not fair that we all can’t have our own news channels, after all.
Could the government ban the creation or promotion of a political film - not the film itself, just spending any money to make it? After all, it’s just not fair that only people with the money to make political films have more influence than the rest of us.
Like opposition to Citizens United, these are obviously laughable nonsense ideas. They sound like Orwellian excuses to get around speech rights - which is what they are.
Citizens United was not a campaign finance case. No candidate campaigns were involved. That’s why the law was shit to begin with.
The problem is, John, that many cases and the opinions of more progressive justices supported prohibitions on all of them.
Just as examples, going down in order, the dissent in Mccutcheon supported limits on individual contributions, not just corporations.
Citizens United itself was all about a much broader category than just “campaigns”, and again, legal limits were strongly defended by all four progressive justices.
Previous SCOTUS decisions that this gang overturned supported all of these principles in one way or another.
And the distinction between corporate “general funds” and “independent funds” was largely irrelevant in most of the rulings and is hardly a central issue.
Since none of those appear to be absolutes, and progressive justices and analysts have consistently argued for every one of those limitations, what makes you think they are somehow inviolable absolutes?
No, lance strongarm, that wasn’t a personal attack, it was a statement of fact. Here’s a personal attack so you can tell the difference.
You are a brainless zealot and a danger to society. Unthinking morons like yourself who carry around little copies of the Constitution and quote from it as matters of absolute faith like Bible-thumping Soldiers of the Lord and demand that any deviance from the Sacred Word is heresy and punishable by death – whether you do this literally or figuratively matters not a whit – are no better than either the theocratic Mullahs of today or the Inquisitioners of yesterday. Society and civilization are the creations of man, believe it or not, and so they are always imperfect and always being refined and improved, and the process of evolving our society is sorely impeded by driveling pontificating anti-intellectual throwbacks to medieval ignorance like yourself. And this is why I no longer seriously engage with you on this topic.
You no longer engage seriously with me on this topic because you CAN’T. You are smart enough to know you’d lose, badly. You already have. I’ve exposed the complete idiocy of your opinions, and you have nothing substantive to respond with, so all you can do is throw out insults. It’s really sad, actually. If you had any pride or dignity, you’d just silently slink away instead.
Rest assured that I’ll continue to post nothing but substantive responses to your posts to continue to expose your nonsense, even if you can’t manage a serious reply and have to cover up your failures with insults and empty claims.
Lance, when they gave you the bottle of self-esteem pills, they did remind you to only take one a day, right?
I know this is the pit and you can get away with stupid shit but that doesn’t mean you should.
Wolfpup can’t muster a response to any of my posts. Can you? What say you about #113?
That it is idiotic. Did no one ever warn you not to go into a fight mad? Because you need to mop a lot of spittle up off the floor. It is getting dangerously slippery in here.
More bullshit.
Is there nobody here who can offer substance instead of stupid insults?
And it’s funny that you focus on me while ignoring the gallon of spittle coming from Wolfpup in the first place.