Yeah, but that’s the world we live in, due to how money directly translates into an ability to distribute a message to people.
I think what we have here is a lack of communication, lol.
I’m not disputing any rights. I’m actually arguing for a reworking of them (for academic purposes only, as I said: I can’t think of any solutions outside of the overly restrictive or blow-it-all-up-and-start-from-scratch varieties).
But if you’re instead asking what my utopia is? @#$% donations, and instead create a government fund for special interests which effectively means we’re all giving to these groups collectively (via tax). Of course, as Timex pointed out, that’s not…
… and would require magical thinking/actions to actually pull it off.
Couldn’t the world we live in also be a world in which less-wealthy people banded together to legally restrict the influence of the wealthy on our political institutions?
Even in that world though, you run into problems.
For instance, Fox News is for all intents and purposes a state run propaganda arm at this point. But they aren’t funded by any campaign or PAC when they go on air and lie on Trump’s behalf. Or a guy posting shit on facebook, or twitter. Or writing articles in a newspaper.
It’s very difficult to draw the line between what constitutes political speech for a campaign, and just people expressing a political view. We can’t limit peoples’ ability to express their political views, so you’re left in a situation where it’s largely impossible to actually limit spending money on messaging that impacts an election.
If anything, you’re essentially just making it so that the guys who own media companies get massively oversized influence.
The REAL problem, is that so many voters are just dumb fucks, who believe whatever folks tell them.
In a better world, simply broadcasting your message MORE wouldn’t make it more effective. The message would have to be convincing beyond just “Hey, I heard this guy was bad every day for a year.”
Could we limit the ability of people to blatantly lie for political purposes? If no one else, then our politicians? Seriously wondering, not trying to pick a fight or score internet points.
Oh, for sure - I wholeheartedly agree. The only kind of government that could manage this would be one that doesn’t exist and likely never will; a purely benevolent communist regime. It just doesn’t jive with human nature as I know it.
It’s a good question. IANTimex and he may have other ideas on the subject, but I think one of the worst aspects to wrangle is the separation between political and personal speech/opinion. If candidate X only speaks verifiable truth when on stage or during ads but then lies through his or her teeth when talking with friends during “informal” gatherings which happen to get recorded and uploaded to YouTube and FB, is the restriction meaningful?
You’re always playing with fire if you start giving the government the ability to punish you for saying things that they say are lies.
Again, it ends up coming down to the fact that people consuming the information need to have some critical thinking skills.
If we are talking about utopian solutions, then I quite like the proposal that government employees are banned from taking any political contributions as a condition of employment, and must rely on public financing.
Challengers obviously could have a fundraising advantage, if they are not government employees. One clever solution is to match the amount of public financing to the amount spent by challengers. A similar system was enacted in Arizona, but (wrongly IMHO) struck down by the SCOTUS.
You make it sound like determining something is a knowing lie is some impossibly subjective, unprovable standard. Are you saying that we shouldn’t have slander/libel laws, too?
Undortunately, psychologically speaking, this is a fantasy. One of the unfortunate byproducts of the way human brains process things is that repetition is more important than anything, unless the person makes special effort.
For example if someone gets news every day reporting that ‘person X said YZ, but this is untrue’, the way framing works is it naturally inclined people to remember the lie. Even if it is, every time, reported as a lie, people still are likely to remember the lie.
Which is why big money interests are a problem. Even if you constantly push back against their lies, they can swamp out the rational response through sheer repetition until the public is primed to your framing.
Objection. Asked and answered.
Objection. Asked and answered.
I offered you an argument. You don’t have to agree with it, but you ought to actually read it, rather than pretend it didn’t directly address both of those points.
Huh. Never knew that was even attempted - thanks for the info!
And censorship exists, in cases where there is an overriding public interest (and what could be more important than the integrity of elections?). The problem isn’t censorship, it’s defining exactly how you’d like to censor these things such that it doesn’t favor entrenched power or specific viewpoints.
Let’s take it from another point of view. You are saying that without something like CU, organizations have no right to speech and therefore specific organizations can have their speech limited, or all organizations can be barred from speaking about specific topics. What about organizations that themselves suppress speech? Is paying a bunch of news sources to not mention something a legitimate exercise of free speech? Or even more succinctly, how is BCRA at issue in CU fundamentally different from laws that prevent advocacy within X feet of a polling place?
At what point do disproportionate financial resources mean that free speech has been abridged? The main reason I care about having organizations like MoveOn or Planned Parenthood sponsor specific candidates and advocate for them is because I think we need them to counter-balance someone advocating for candidates I don’t like. If the Koch brothers and Soros buy up all the ad time, there isn’t any speech left for non-oligarchs. But having the answer be that everyone has to send money to MoveOn, who then has to be allowed to buy ads, is both wasteful and detrimental. A far better solution would be to have everyone talk only about issues or news and then let the candidates themselves try to make the case for why they are better for the issues that matter.
Actually, I don’t think they are saying that. CU did nothing to overturn individual campaign spending limits. In practice, running a big ad buy (on the scale of that considered in CU) prior to an election would cost far more than the current limit (~$2400), which means individuals are effectively barred from doing it. Only corporations have that right, apparently, which is a truly strange ‘originalist’ outcome.
No, the limit only applies to contributions, not to ads you buy that are “independent”. Individuals are barred from doing it because most them can’t afford to, because those who can afford to crowd out everyone else.
I don’t think that’s right. ‘In kind’ expenditures count as individual contributions. That’s one argument for why Michael Cohen is in trouble - if he used his own money to shut Stormy Daniels up, that counts as an illegal contribution.
Similarly, I can’t subvert the campaign contribution limit by simply spending money to run my own campaign to elect the candidate. Not as an individual, anyway.
This is the other reason that CU is such a bad decision. Even if you accept the ‘corporations are people’ nonsense, it basically says you can’t restrict corporations but you can restrict actual people.
I did read it. It amounts to asserting that you can distinguish between AT&T and the DNC, and you can distinguish between “balanced” and “unbalanced” laws.
But that’s irrelevant. I’m not worried about what would good laws you could pass when your party is in power. I am worried about how to limit the bad laws passed when the GOP is in power. And nothing in the Constitution suggests that they must accept your judgment of what is “balanced” or what is a “political association”. Congress can come up with their own definition. And it doesn’t have to exclude AT&T, nor include the DNC.
It isn’t irrelevant. I’m not saying that I can distinguish these things, I’m saying the Court can distinguish these things, and should. If you’re arguing that a Court might do something crazy anyway, then I reply ‘yes, of course they can’, and point to CU.
No, the SCOTUS can’t. If there is nothing in the Constitution about whether a law is “balanced”, then they can’t throw out one that is “unbalanced”. If there is there is no distinction in the constitution about which corporations have First Amendment rights and which don’t, then once again they have to defer to legislature.
That’s the whole reason why the Courts treat a corporation as a “person”, because that’s the language used in the constitution and therefore only way to give any of them First Amendment rights.
In some cases it’s clear, but there are areas where it gets grey, and I’m always wary of letting the government prosecute you for things you’ve said. Obviously you could try to err on the side of caution and make the requirements for defining a lie super strict, and thus make it very difficult to make cases except in the most extreme situations, but I am still wary of it.
Ya, I realize this. It was more just me lamenting the weakness of our monkey brains.
It’s actually worse, especially with older humans, in that there are studies that show that providing a contradictory argument can often reinforce the false belief, because their brain seemingly only notes “he’s talking about that thing I know” rather than internalizing the fact that the new statement is talking about how the previous belief is false.
Deadly traps is the only way.