How would you rein in the politically biased pundits on NBC/MSNBC, ABC, etc? Many of the shows being broadcast are really nothing more than 30 or 60 minute campaign ads. Do you restrict them or allow others to respond as best they can?
If you want to prevent a person or corporation from spending money to influence an election, that would include the media outlets.
You can personally spend $100 or $1 million to influence an election but you can’t pay someone to vote for your choice of candidate.
Congress wrote campaign fianance laws. Congress rewrote campaign fianance laws. The Supreme Court ruled that specific parts of the laws that CONGRESS wrote and passed are unconstitutional.
Congress can write another, better, “constitutional” campaign fianance law. Blaming the SCOTUS for Congress’s failures isn’t going to get better laws passed.
Yeah, I find it funny that people think renting 30 seconds on a TV station is pure evil, but buying the whole damn network and spewing political opinions all day is just fine.
LA Times is capable of classifying SuperPAC expenditure as supporting or opposing a candidate. It doesn’t seem particularly difficult.
Would it be censorship if the FCC refused to air a bought and paid for marijuana decriminalisation ad from a Green/Libertarian candidate on a children’s channel?
What about in my hypothetical exit poll bribe, where claiming to vote for a candidate and saying why is rewarded?
That may not be the purpose, but it is the effect, as the majority of a candidate’s funds go towards electioneering communications. Just like if there were a 90% tax on all SuperPAC transactions. All the money could go towards the Federal Debt and the effect would remain the same.
Show me how that’s relevant. Also I don’t accept your premises. Both channels have their favorites, but the shows are far from campaign ads. Frex, a lot of coverage today has been about Jerry Sandusky, which is, well … irrelevant … to the campaigns of both Obama and Romney.
That is a separate issue.
No I can’t. I don’t have $1 million. If I had $1 million it would be irresponsible of me to spend it all on a campaign donation. Very, very, very few Americans have that kind of money.
Congress wrote campaign fianance laws. Congress rewrote campaign fianance laws. The Supreme Court ruled that specific parts of the laws that CONGRESS wrote and passed are unconstitutional.
Congress can write another, better, “constitutional” campaign fianance law. Blaming the SCOTUS for Congress’s failures isn’t going to get better laws passed.
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Blaming the SCOTUS for decisions so badly considered that they undermine the very foundations of democracy seems a reasonable pursuit to me.
We are agreed. The bulk of my disagreement is with Lance, who maintains that money spent on speech is protected by the First Amendment, because when it’s spent on speech, it magically becomes speech.
My point is that if you believe as Lance does, it’s internally inconsistent to cavil at vote-buying. I do not think money is speech. I do not think money spent on speech is protected by the First Amendment.
In a general proposition, he’s right. For the most part, laws can’t get around constitutional challenges for restraining speech by claiming they are only restricting money. As an example, do you really think the government could pass a law saying that no newspaper is allowed to have annual sales of more than $1 million? The law doesn’t say that the newspaper can’t be printed, and it is only restricting money. But the nexus between the limitation on money and the impact on speech is totally obvious. Of course there would be a very serious First Amendment violation there.
It isn’t inconsistent at all because buying TV ads is not analogous to buying votes. We’ve been through his five times already!
Lance also agrees that money, by itself, is not speech, and yet you keep trotting out this straw man, after we explain time and again that laws that restrict speech by restricting money are on very thin ice as far as the First Amendment goes.
Discussing Sandusky is irrelevant if you’re talking about political speech. Network spokemodels incessantly describing Party “A” as good and Party “B” as bad is political speech. If you intend to limit political speech then you’ll have to include the media outlets that provide positive coverage for one side, including running political ads as “news” in addition to running the political ads as actual ads.
How is a SCOTUS decision badly considered when they find that the half-fast bills created by Congress are unconstitutional? Unconstitutional is unconstitutional. Congress should have done a better job of writing, debating, and passing the bill.
You’re blaming the critic for panning a bad performance by an actor. It’s up to the actor to provide a better performance or the ticket buying public won’t buy tickets. Replacing the incompetent actor with another actor that the ticket buying public approves of, is another option.
Congress can still write another campaign fianance law and maybe this time it will actually be constitutional. Or the voters can elect representatives who can write constitutional bills.
Let’s inject a note of reailty into this discussion. When Lance defends the right of corporations and rich people to make unlimited campaign donations through SuperPACs, he is defending the right of corporations to buy our legislators. For example, Glaxo-Smith-Kline, which recently paid a $3 billion fine for inappropriate sales techniques used to promote Advair. One instance was:
No, the actor got a standing ovation for this one performance. However, if one squints, it turns out that their lines have to be written by the Actor’s Guild and the critic is angry that this performance skipped that.
Then the Actor’s Guild should have written a better, constitutional law in the first place.
Congress can still write another campaign fianance law and maybe this time it will actually be constitutional. Or the voters can elect representatives who can write constitutional bills.
This isn’t about whether it supports or opposes a candidate, it’s about whether it is a donation to a candidate.
You’re playing the “exceptions” game again. That exception has a rational basis (the public owns the airwaves and can regulate them) that your exception doesn’t have.
What about it? Would it be legal, you mean?
Okay.
Donating to a campaign is not a constitutional right though. Speech is.
Do you think money spent on religion is protected by the First Amendment? Could the government ban all spending (or buying or donating) of money on religious activities? Ban the buying or selling of Bibles? Ban spending money to build churches? They could copy Bibles by hand and give them away, as long as they don’t spend money.
Do you think money spent on the press is protected by the First Amendment? Could the government ban the sale or newspapers, or ban newspapers from buying paper or ink or paying reporters? They could publish all they want, as long as they don’t spend money.
Do you think money spent on abortion is protected under Roe v. Wade? (If you don’t agree with Roe itself, pretend you do for a moment.) Could the government ban the payment of doctors for abortion services, requiring any abortions to be performed for free?
Do you think money spent on legal representation is protected by the Sixth Amendment? Could the government ban anyone from giving or taking money to represent someone in court? Lawyer who agree to work for free would be the only kind you could have to represent you?
No, it does not magically become speech. It’s still money. Spending money on speech is protected like the speech, but not because it magically becomes speech. It’s not the money that matters, it’s the act of spending it - on speech.
But, hey, what if they were? Suppose Fox just decided to stop pretending and just run the equivalent of campaign ads all day. Could the government shut that down?
Yes, but subject to certain limits. The regulations must have a good reason that doesn’t involve an attempt to limit the amount of speech, the content, or who can speak.
Spending money on speech is a right. Donating money to a group that is going to spend it on speech is a right.
Voters should stop electing candidates who are “bought.”
Whether or not it’s legal to sell your vote is immaterial considering that it’s certainly illegal for any candidate to buy it. Otherwise the richest guy would always win.