1669

Good grief. So was flogging slaves, but we managed to get over that.

1670

You are so freakin naive and hopeful dude. :)

1671

You’re not going to get people to stop talking to the Congress, and the ones with the most time and money are going to get the most time, the most attention, and have the resources and time to spin their tale a lot better than someone who works 14 hour days in a factory. In this country, you cannot make it illegal for people to buy commercials, or billboards, or radio time…

What you have your head makes no sense when you spill it onto the plate in-front of you.

1672

He’s saying he’d like to stop corporations from giving money to congress.

Not an American, but I think it can indeed be illegal to buy commericals, billboards, radio time etc.

1673

It is still a lot better in Great Britain, at least with respect towards political advertising - just hold media outlets responsible and ban ads.

1674

I’m not interested in the government telling us what we can say.

Because like, right now, the government is controlled by bad guys.

1675

Can’t you see how much better it would be if the only person talking about campaigns are the guys making up or ignoring facts with a mic in their face 24/7… so that some guy nobody with no support at all try and convince everyone with the ten dollars in his pocket and not enough clot for even local airtime that the country should implement rear-end cameras in cars to save lives.

I’d like to have less money guiding campaigns, but I think the only thing these kind of attempts would do is just give the rich a full voice and everyone else… nothing. And if they couldn’t use their money in public they’ll just hide it.

1676

Other nations have 2 month elections or less, and dont allow private spending, and dont to be spiralling into tyranny just yet.

Money doesn’t equal speech in my mind. Never has and it never should have.

Politicians shouldn’t have to go begging for money from donors and we should be stopping it when ever possible. Let’s level the playing field. If you can get on the ballet, you get money to campaign. And that’s that. That’s less money to annoy people, less money to surpress the vote. It will reduce the noise and allow people to research their candidates without the clutter.

As for news casters and media empires, I think the best solution is to break it up. We already have rules about how many media organizations can be owned by a single group. We learned that with Sinclair group. Let’s go further.

Large corporations are the antithesis of democracy. We need to guard against them and be aware of the dangers they possess as they strive to create a monopoly when ever possible. That includes using bending politicians to their needs. Let’s limit how they can do that.

1677

It’s fine for you to say this, but your position is demonstrably wrong. I mean, it makes literally no sense.

But you can’t. That’s what you seem to be missing.
The only way you can “level the playing field” is to have the government entirely regulate all political speech. Otherwise, people who have exposure, or control media outlets, control what you see. You simply magnify the power of those people.

There is no workable plan to do what you want.

Not only is this hopelessly vague, it still doesn’t actually address the problem. Even if you had more companies owning media outlets, that’s not going to actually do anything to address the actual problem. You are still magnifying their power immensely, because now they can dictate what political views people see.

We don’t even need to go into the infinitely more complex and problematic area of trying to regulate modem information sources, like the internet.

Here’s the deal:
People can say what they want, even if you think they are wrong. You need to just deal with that, because if it ever changes, it’s the end of our country. It will be terrible. It will not go as you imagine.

And saying what they want means paying media outlets to publish their views. Because that’s how modern media works. You can’t change that.

No dude, they aren’t.

An undereducated, idiotic electorate is the bane of democracy.

THAT is the problem that you are falling to acknowledge.

Buying political ads isn’t the same as rigging an election. It’s not buying votes.

The reason why spending money is effective, is because voters are fucking imbeciles. Simply because you see something on TV doesn’t mean you have to believe it. The fact that you can sway so many idiots just by saturating their addled brains with noise is indicative of a problem with them, not with being able to make noise.

THAT is the real problem here. That’s what you need to deal with. And everything else is going to fail.

1678

There are already proposals to change the funding from donations to Government spending.

Your ignorance of it doesnt stop it from being true or the most effective tool to create a free and fair electoral system. It’s already being done in Maine and Arizona and being played with in California. It’s both possible and healthy to exclude private donations and creates an independent representative, rather one that is tied to special in

As for money and speech, obviously, you are listening to be despite having no money in it. Money and speech are and should be separate. One shouldnt have to have ones rights limited because of money unless you believe that the poor have little or nothing to offer our nation.

The fact is, having money doesn’t give you abilities or powers beyond normal, except that people that succeed usually exhibit behavior that is far worse than people who dont, and have been shown to lie, cheat and steal more frequently (oddly enough, it’s no the scum that floats to the top, it’s that being on top makes you prone to being scum).

Finally, corporations have one short sighted goal and that is to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. It’s always been that way. It’s why mega corporations need to be policed by the government, the only equalizer we have in this country.

1679

Free Speech is not really free. It just keeps you out of federal prison. To get your message out, you’ve got to either pay for it or get attention. If a single person with a message was all it took, we’d have a lot more people by themselves walking around with poorly painted cardboard signs at the end of street corners.

I think you’re looking at our current situation and trying to work backwards without really paying attention to how you might handcuff smaller groups by telling them they’re not allowed to form a group together to keep their fingers from being cut-off in unsafe machinery.

1680

Smaller groups don’t really benefit from the current system, regardless of what you think. At least if the money if out of the system, when they do speak with a representative, at least they can be sure no one had paid them to be against their idea or issue already.

1681

You don’t think so huh. Are you going to be sued for posting a personal video on YouTube with a copyrighted song playing in the background?

1682

That’s because a big group like Google didn’t want to have it that way.

1683

I’ll wait for the demonstration, but I won’t hold my breath.

Yet there are countries that restrict political advertising and those countries don’t regulate all political speech and the people in those countries are free and healthy and well-fed and reasonably happy and far less likely to kill each other on any given day. So, you know, work on that demonstration. This one doesn’t work.

1684

It could be that is the reason, but then that means we’re in agreement that money is effective, and that means we can also conclude that unequal amounts of money will produce unequal outcomes in politics, and that means unlimited spending by those with money corrupts democracy in favor of the spenders. It ain’t a slam dunk, but it’s a very likely outcome, right?

1685

There is a difference between donating directly or indirectly to a candidate or PAC and buying an ad to get your pov across. Large donations are about buying access, taking out an ad in support or opposition of a candidate or position seems different in kind to me.

1686

Google didn’t create copyright laws nor are they the ones that were really defending it. the EFF claims to defend the public’s right to Fair Use and others things in that area. The NRA claims to defend the second amendment rights. They’re both non-profit organizations that try to influence the government. What’s the difference between them, functionally?

1687

Ok, name a country that would regulate political speech from McDonalds, but not political speech from Amnesty International.

1688

Both are actually really really large groups. So, I don’t know what your point is. Sorry.