SCOTUS under Trump

It takes a strange instrument indeed to read the Constitution to extent rights to corporations while ignoring the context of the right to assembly. Here’s the original draft of the amendment:

“The people shall not be restrained from peaceably assembling and consulting for their common good; nor from applying to the Legislature by petitions, or remonstrances, for redress of their grievances.”

This makes it pretty clear the intent was political. If you want to be a textualist about the right to assembly, that’s fine, but you should acknowledge then that the Constitution says nothing about corporations, acknowledges them no rights, and nowhere says that money is speech. Those are all inferences about intent, no better than inferring that assembly refers to political activity.

Certain jobs require a basic level of due diligence because they have an impact on the public - you wouldn’t want a bogus civil engineer designing a dam, or a quack doctor treating you. Many other professions don’t have such licensingand due diligence requirements. I can think of few professions that impact the public in the same way as a politician who is making laws that the public must follow, so why can’t lying be made part of that due diligence for politicians, with a court to decide if they are in fact lying? They should be held to a high standard, because their job is uniquely important to the public.

I think that the problem with this, is that you are talking about the government imposing regulations on people who are attempting to participate in that government.

It’s not hard to imagine a situation where a group who is currently holding power in government could abuse such laws to harm opposing political candidates who challenge their incumbency. That’s the situation that I would worry about.

They should be. And the group who is supposed to hold them to that standard is the voting public.

As some idiot got paid to write today, if you don’t like it that politicians are taking away your right to vote, you should fix that at the ballot box by voting them out…

I’m not saying the government should provide me the means to express myself, I’m saying that it has a legitimate interest in preventing other people from making impossible for me to be heard. For example, it’s important to keep thugs away from the polling place so they don’t keep me away from it. It’s important to keep people from stealing information or evidence about me and turning it over to the police. It’s important to keep business owners from telling me to take my Jewish face elsewhere. These are each ways in which actions of individuals could result in me effectively losing my rights, and thus it is judged appropriate for the government to step in and protect me.

I’m not a textualist. There is tons of case law regarding freedom of assembly, and political activity is not a prerequisite.

In fact, this right is most commonly cited when protecting labor unions. So it would be quite illogical to conclude that unions have a right to speech that the company itself lacks.

EDIT:

NAACP v Patterson

Of course, it is immaterial whether the beliefs sought to be advanced by association pertain to political, economic, religious or cultural matters

Whom they lie to in order to get and stay elected. We have plenty of smart people in this country who are familiar with writing laws that are narrow in scope. There has to be a way to enforce the telling of the truth by politicians without allowing it to become a tool to restrict opposition parties.

I agree that voting them out is the only current path to get liars out of power, but their lying is what’s keeping them in power, given the lack of critical thinking in our voting population.

Ya, I hear you. I understand the appeal.

But consider that in order to make such a law, you are effectively negating the first amendment, or at least severely curtailing it. You’re saying that the government is allowed to censor you, based on the content of your speech.

Now, while you could potentially make a narrow law that says that only bans content which is factually inaccurate, as measured by an omniscient and always correct judge, at that point you have effectively let the genie out of the bottle in terms of giving the government the ability to decide what speech is allowed, and what speech is not.

Which means that a malevolent government could then extend that law further, to limit your speech in some other way if you are saying things they don’t agree with.

This is a bad road to go down.

Yeah, the real problem is with the idea of election day in the first place. Pour all your angst and pathos into a single cathartic moment, then live with the consequences for 4 or 6 years. There are reasons to prevent someone from just being removed from office on a whim in a moment of bad publicity, but a system that encouraged significantly more ongoing consent, reflection, and getting it right would probably be a good idea.

Also, direct election of the cabinet

People who have licenses must meet criteria to obtain and renew them. How about licensing for politicians, with some bare minimum set of things they must do to maintain the public trust.

Make them have to renew their politicians license every four years, or they lose their elected position of trust. Nobody else has to have a political license, just the politicians, just the way nobody needs a medical or engineering license except doctors and engineers, which limits the possibility of abuse beyond the scope of politicians themselves.

Allow only their constituents to file complaints against them. If a complaint to the Political Board is held to be valid, they go up for a vote of confidence by their contituents. If a majority of their constituents vote no confidence, they are out. This takes the power away from the board and puts it back in the hands of the voters, but the board would have weighed in on whether the politician was guilty of one of the unacceptable actions for a person with the trust of the public.

Choose as you will who is on the Political Board, how many people are on it, and how they are chosen - some way that limits partisan politics of course, like statewide elections with X/2 votes alowed per voter, and the top X vote getters being seated, so as to limit gerrymandering’s effect. Make the board member terms limited.

I have no doubt there are holes in this, as I just thought about it and wrote it down, but some way other than waiting multiple years to vote on corrupt politicians should be in place for the good of their constituents. Being a politician should be a way to do right by your consituents, not make a ton of money for the people who paid to get you elected.

No, because you can’t have the government be the arbiter of who is allowed to participate in government. Such a thing allows those in power to solidify it and make it permanent, and destroy democratic institutions.

Did you read the rest of the proposal? The people vote for no confidence, not the government, and the people woulkd have to choose what goes into the licensing, via voting.

You are merely giving the government additional power over you, and diluting your own influence.

You already have the ability to do those things via voting. It’s called voting.

Consider that you are making these suggestions because you believe that politicians are able to behave inappropriately, and though that behavior, get people to elect them to positions of power.

If in power, they can use that same ability to avoid the safety mechanisms you suggest, while using this new power to open their political opposition, as seen in authoritarian states.

The power to judge and regulate our elected officials must remain in the direct control of the people, via democratic vote. It is our responsibility as voters to works that power wisely.

We cannot cede that power to the government, as such a move is predicated on the false belief that the government will always be benevolent and those in power will use the power we give them wisely.

Everything I am suggesting requires a vote, down to the votes of no confidence. It allows a whole lot more voting than we are able to do now, which is a big part of thye current problem. Politicians are able to do a staggering amount of damage in just one term. With watchdogs from their district keeping them honest through Political Board complaints, they either are constantly having to get re-elected, or they shape the fuck up.

The politicians don’t get any say in this at all, it’s all voted on by the entire state population. We agree that it needs to be in the hands of the voters, I’m trying to get the hand of the voters to pull levers more often, for politicians who are not keeping faith with their constituents.

They can already do this though. You see it rarely with recall elections.

Ultimately though, it doesn’t do anything to solve the problem of a disinterested electorate.

Yeah, I gotta agree with Timex that this isn’t an improvement. House members already go up for a “vote of confidence” every two years. It doesn’t make them any more trustworthy.

EDIT:

Actually, you get two chances to boot them every two years, once at the primary election and once at the general. And that’s with an actual opponent who is hungry for the seat. A vote of confidence doesn’t even have someone in charge of the opposition.

Every two years seems too long to me if they are actively not serving their constituents. Having a board chosen by the public vetting their behavior would give some weight to whether they are acting appropriately or not, giving people additional data than the partisan news outlets to make choices with.

If the medical board gets a complaint and deciedes that the physician in question is acting ion ways that are unsafe, they don’t wait for the next time trheir license comes up for renewal. We shouldn’t have to wait for the next voting cycle to get rid of politicians who do not have the confidence of their constituents.

But the fact that House members keep getting re-elected practically every year tells you that they almost always do have the confidence of their constituents. And if a determined political opponent cannot shake that confidence, then neither will a dreary public board destined to be marginalized and derided by partisans as soon as it comes into existence.

I mean, it’s not like we lack public bodies that try to rate candidates. There are even public bodies that specifically try to identify the most unscrupulous candidates, and their opinions are closely followed by nobody ever.

But the politicians don’t have to face a vote if those public bodies rate them as failing. Elections matter to politicians. Their rating with politifact doesn’t. If lying to the public makes them face additional elections and risk theior power, they’ll at least have some incentive not to lie, no?

And if the entire point of the special election is that they’ve been found guilty of actions against their consituents interests, that’s completely different from the usual partisan lies that happen during normal elections. People may actually vote against a corrupt politician from their party if they know it doesn’t mean someone from the other party is getting the seat. They get to elect someone else in a special election from their party, who may not be as crappy. I don’t see the downside other than the potential for a whole lot of votes of no confidence, which doesn’t seem like such a downside.

You know who has time to constantly vote and follow a million different political advocacy groups? Rich people and old people. Their interests are already represented well enough.