The decline of Facebook and the chilling effect of social media

Politics and religion
690

The intent of the response should be obvious: Your silly speculation about what a future court might do is irrelevant to existing law. The law cites things of value because things of value are an obvious way to contribute to a campaign without giving money, and this is so because money is fungible. If you give them an oppo research report, they don’t have to buy one themselves, and they can use the money they haven’t spent for something else. It is exactly like giving them a bus, or an office, or a box of paper. This is true whether there is a conventional market for the thing of value or not; it is a thing of value if it can be used as money, exchanged for money, or frees up money to be used elsewhere.

Trump is clearly in violation of the letter of the law. That you think that letter is problematic is neither here nor there. No court has said it is problematic, and the text is quite clear. You can imagine that a future court might strike that law down, or define it down, but what you imagine a future court might do is entirely irrelevant to currrent law.

691

I am not disputing that the oppo report can be valuable. I’m disputing that you can count it as “thing of value” for purposes of a criminal prosecution under this statute without violating the constitution. So I would ask you: Can you articulate why under your view, it would NOT be okay to prosecute a candidate who merely seeks political advice from a foreign national? (Say, one who could earn money for such consulting)

This is not “silly speculation.” UCLA First amendment scholar Eugene Volokh, in the piece I provided, makes the same argument. Is he also silly?

692

I don’t care. Your opinion is worthless for determining current law. The FEC has ruled that e.g. a list of conservative activists in 37 states was a thing of value (MUR 5409 2004). Since a list of conservative activists in 37 states has no clearer market value than does oppo research, your test must not be the right one. Try again.

He is, in fact, sometimes silly.

693

My argument, and cite to Volokh, is as relevant a consideration as your cite to FEC. We are all arguing what a court would rule if this issue came up. That is, in my interpretation of legal theory, “current law.” Regardless, it’s relevant.

694

I agree, but I sadly suspect should it ever come to pass there will be plenty of political motivation behind each yay or nay.

695

Yes, your motivated reasoning, which you have pulled from your ass, is just as valid as the governing authority for the law. Good grief.

696

I actually pulled it largely from one of a handful of leading First Amendment scholars in the world, but if your argument is that there’s not great case law on this yet, I agree!

697

My argument is that the question was settled by the statutory authority in 2004.

I mean, if you’re going to appeal to authority, at least get the actual authority.

698

It’s settled law that oppo research is a “thing of value” within that statute’s meaning? Nonsense

699

Are you really 12 years old?

700

Yes, I think your assessment of gman is spot on.

701

If the list of materials provided by Norquist to Bush was considered a thing of value, then yes, oppo research would likely be considered such.

I have a question though regarding the findings by the FEC in that case, mainly as a result of my ignorance of how they function. Was that decision by the FEC the result of an actual trial, or was it kind of an earlier proceeding that would have led to a trial if they had actually decided to pursue it? The result was that they thought Norquist violated a campaign to finance law, but that it wasn’t worth doing anything about it. Based on who the materials i saw were written by, i was getting the impression that it wasn’t actually something decided in a court, but looked more like the FEC deciding if they wanted to actually prosecute him.

702

What? FEC decisions don’t bind the courts.

703

He’s a troll. That’s what he does.

704

The cool thing about this thread is that you don’t get anywhere near this level of discourse from Trump himself. This is a first from any president in my lifetime. I mean Bush was considered simple, but he could usually string together two sentences without putting his foot in his mouth or being completely incomprehensible.

So it is up to the supporters to build that for him. Gman is the voice of Trump’s angel.

Supporting arguments I’ve read from various sources are completely across the board, and reflect more the person’s personal agenda than anything else. Of course, because they don’t come from Trump himself (outside of a rough sketch with a lot of “very’s” thrown in and often contradicted), then they have to come from somewhere else. Trump did pave the way with his war on “fake news”. Just enough truth in there to justify supporters choosing any “facts” they please. Not saying Gman is doing that; haven’t read all is posts.

Truly, the president of the people. Who you want and how you want, if you choose to make up your own narrative.

Message boards are great for this because you can selectively quote and there is a pause from one comment to the next, with other conversations in between, allowing you to adjust and move goalposts less noticeably.

Fascinating stuff.

Quick edit: I would say this is highly relevant to the title of this thread, as Facebook is another primary vehicle for this type of support.

705

The statute (52 USC 301) both defines campaign finance law and creates the FEC to administer the law. Among other things, the FEC investigates alleged violations of the law and determines if a violation occurred. It takes a supermajority of the commissioners to determine that, i.e. 4 of the 5 commissioners have to agree there is a violation. The FEC may, but is not required to, refer violations to the DOJ for prosecution in that case. There are also administrative penalties, but the statute leaves open the possibility of criminal charges.

In this case the FEC decided that a violation occurred (thus a list of activists is a ‘thing of value’) but decided not to refer it for prosecution, presumably because information in the list was publicly available and thus the value was considered low. The value would have been something like the labor cost of paying someone to collect the information. Also, too, the FEC isn’t known for aggressive prosecution of campaign finance violations.

This outcome to my mind improves the argument that both the DNC emails and the DNC’s internal polling analytics are ‘things of value’. Neither of those things were publicly available to the Trump campaign, and neither of them are things the Trump campaign could have developed themselves without substantial labor cost; further, to ‘develop themselves’ means ‘pay someone to hack the DNC’, which is of course also a crime.

Here’s the statute if you’re having trouble getting to sleep:

http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title52/subtitle3/chapter301&edition=prelim

Neither do your juvenile opinions. It is the job of the FEC to determine if something is a thing of value. A court may disagree down the line, but no court has done so, and you can’t dismiss current law and administrative rulings on that law on the grounds that something different may happen later.

Do you really have no integrity at all? Here’s a summary of our exchange on this point. I think it’s fair.

Me: The Trump campaign has violated 52 U.S. Code § 30121 by seeking or accepting something of value from the Russians.
You: What? An oppo research report isn’t a thing of value!
Me: Why not?
You: It can’t be, because it has no clearly defined market value.
Me: But here is the FEC - the statutory authority for the law - ruling that a list of conservative activists was a thing of value.
You: So what?
Me: Well, that list also has no clearly defined market value, so your test isn’t the test the FEC uses to determine if something is a thing of value.
You: So what?
Me: So your test is the wrong one.
You: So what?
Me: Are you really 12 years old?

Care to improve your performance here?

706

But to be clear, this isn’t actually a court ruling. It’s more akin to a DA deciding to prosecute a case (technically not quite that). To decide things like legality you’d actually have to prosecute the guy in a court of law.

What we have here is the opinion of an administrative body, but their opinion isn’t actually law. If that correct?

To be clear, I’m not sure where this fits into your larger discussion.

707

That is not correct. The statute empowers the FEC to administer the law and determine if a violation has occurred. They have the authority to determine the meaning of ‘thing of value’. The fact that a future court might overrule them means nothing at all to current law. By analogy, it’s like saying ‘yes, this Federal Judge has ruled X, but it is possible a Court of Appeals might overrule the Federal Judge later, so the Federal Judge’s ruling is not law.’ That’s an absurd reading of the law.

708

Sure, but this is the same as the fact that a district attorney is empowered to administer the law and decide whether to indict a person for breaking it.

It’s not that their opinion is worthless, it’s just that it’s not quite the same as actual case law.

They have an opinion, but they would need to actually defend that opinion in a court of law. That’s an important step that never happened in this case.

To be clear, I’m not disagreeing with whether the materials in question are considered an item of value, i think they clearly are, this is more about the finer point of whether other aspects of the law have been actually decided in the courts to a super concrete degree.

709

But isn’t this the concept of Chevron deference? That, unless Congress has specified more precisely what a “thing of value” was, then the court would defer to the agency to define it.