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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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 Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 3:30 pm Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
| You have totally missed the point about wealthy donors and the poor and middle class. |
Rather, I think you're missing it.
| ontheway wrote: |
| There are thousands of wealthy donors available who would like to fund an alternative point of view. Some even attempt to do so, but their efforts are futile. They are limited in how much they can donate. |
Yes, in order to minimize the disparity between the wealthy and the poor with regards to funding candidates. It's a good idea.
| ontheway wrote: |
Ross Perot is a good example. He did not really want to run for president. He had some good ideas, but he is a kook and he knew that he is a kook. Ross Perot wanted to fund a candidate who believed in what he believed in. This was illegal, so he had to run for President himself, in order to have his message heard.
The problem was that Ross Perot suddenly found himself winning. He had expected to run, spread his message and lose. So, he dropped out of the race, made himself look really nutty, and then changed his mind and got back in. Had he stayed in, he would have been won hands down. His good ideas would have been drowned by the fact that he's too nutty to actually be President.
However, Ross really only wanted to fund an alternative candidate. There are many good individuals who would make better Presidents than anyone in history, if they'd had Perot's funding. It is much better for the nation to allow rich people to donate millions or even billions of dollars to good alternative candidates than to spend it on themselves, for politics or just consumer fun. |
One man shouldn't be able to single handedly fund an alternative candidate, so this is no problem. Again, there's a reason why these laws existed, and it's precisely in order to enfranchise the middle and lower classes in this regard. I don't know why you're here campaigning against the middle and lower classes, but you are. You don't even seem to realize you're doing it.
| ontheway wrote: |
| This was the best campaign in LP history and it shows that free speech is not possible without money. |
If free speech isn't possible without money, millions of Americans are being denied free speech, and we must equalize wages in order to protect their free speech. Of course, back in reality, free speech is possible without money, and as a result, wage disparity is acceptable.
You really can't win this one. Either free speech and money are linked -- in which case money in politics must be limited in order to preserve the free speech of the lower classes -- or free speech and money are not linked -- in which case you have no case at all. There is no scenario in which we are obliged to allow unlimited corporate and wealthy donor funds in our politics. Indeed, it would be quite destructive, slanting politics even more towards the interests of the wealthy and corporations than it all ready is. More bank bailouts. More socialized losses and privatized earnings. This is the utopia you're pushing for. Corporatism. But, in your fervor to condemn anything governmental, you're missing that; you don't see that you're working against what you claim to be a proponent of.
| ontheway wrote: |
| The US needs to allow its millionaires and billionaires to fund new candidates and new ideas. There are thousands waiting in the wings to do so. |
No, the U.S. needs to protect freedom of speech by minimizing the impact of political funding. Do you even see where your argument has lead you? Previously, you were at least trying -- although failing -- to give a nod to the middle and lower classes. That rhetoric has completely fallen by the wayside; at this point you're pretty much just outright saying, "The ultra-wealthy and corporations need to be able to single handedly fund candidates of their choice." Your true colors are finally showing; pro-wealthy, with a total disregard for the middle and lower classes. All your rhetoric about how your ideal society would make the lower classes better off was empty all along. Sad.
| ontheway wrote: |
| Fox, you need to open your eyes and wake up to the fact that you have been indoctrinated by the government. |
So let me get this straight. You come on here, completely ignore my counter-arguments, give a few examples of self-funded candidates who lost elections, insist that the ultra-wealthy should be able to single handed fund political candidates, and then conclude I'm brainwashed by the government.
What am I supposed to say to that? It's like listening to an elderly man rant on a train; even if you disagree with him, he didn't really make a case that can be rebutted, just a few ridiculous claims and a couple long stories.
| ontheway wrote: |
| All government actions, beyond protecting people and their property from foreign invaders and criminals, is socialism. |
There you go with the redefinition of words again. This isn't what socialism means. You can use the word however you like, but you just reveal yourself as a propaganda-peddling snake oil salesman when you do.
| ontheway wrote: |
| Mature, educated individuals eventually become congnizant of the world outside of themselves and realize that government helping the people is a fairytail like Santa Claus. Unfortunately, most people never quite reach the point of being truly educated, mature, and aware of the world outside their fairytail fantasy lives. |
Here you go just hurting your own case again. You claim a system in which personal responsibility is paramount would be ideal for everyone, then you claim most people aren't even mature and educated enough to understand reality, yet you insist that these people are competent to handle your lord-of-the-flies society perfectly well.
Mature, educated people base their opinions on reality rather than ideology. You're like a Priest sitting in his church, having never stepped outside. Most of us don't want the religion you're selling though, fortunately. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 3:58 pm Post subject: |
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At first I thought ontheway's rant was simply fuelled by his usual, over-simplified "government: bad, no-government: good" ideology, but when he said this:
| ontheway wrote: |
| The US needs to allow its millionaires and billionaires to fund new candidates and new ideas. There are thousands waiting in the wings to do so. |
I realized his real investment in this decision. He recognizes that the general public would never lend serious funding a party designed around implementing his dystopia. They may be "immature and uneducated" as he puts it, but they at least have sufficient grasp of their own interests to realize exactly how much they'd get screwed in his totalitarian tyranny of the minority.
No, the only way ontheway's ideas could ever get serious attention is if wealthy billionaires and corporations -- the two groups who actually benefit rather than suffer as a result of them -- push them, and push them hard. Right now, they can't do that, but if they were allowed to spend freely and drown out the opposition, perhaps they could get somewhere.
This isn't about freedom of speech, I think that's been made sufficiently clear. Freedom of speech is the expression of ideas, not the expenditure of money, and that's why he abandoned it in favor of speaking up for lower and middle class people needing the ability to band together and pool their resources to have an impact. But it's not really about that either, because they all ready have that right in the form of PACs, so he changed tactics again by saying there are lots of good ideas out there, but who require wealthy billionaires to fund them. That's almost the truth, but let's face it: ontheway hates government. There's only one set of ideas he's championing here, and it's a set of ideas that requires the support of the ultra-wealthy to an atypical degree, because no one else is interested.
Transparent, but also mistaken. Corporations and billionaires in general aren't going to embrace his ideas anymore than the common people have, because while they certainly would benefit from them, they'll benefit from corporatism even more. Humans are incentive driven creatures, right? Give corporations and billionaires unlimited influence, and they'll use that influence to maximize their own benefit, and the cycle only gets worse from there.
Ideology: screwing the human race since, well, forever. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 12:21 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| One man shouldn't be able to single handedly fund an alternative candidate, |
Oh, I don't know.
Not every wealthy person is a selfish, scheming, conniving bastard uninterested in everyone else. Otherwise, philanthropy wouldn't exist or survive.
Someone with big bucks just may be able to make a positive change. Think of George Soros and his attempts to decriminalize drugs. It does happen. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 12:29 am Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| One man shouldn't be able to single handedly fund an alternative candidate, |
Oh, I don't know.
Not every wealthy person is a selfish, scheming, conniving bastard uninterested in everyone else. Otherwise, philanthropy wouldn't exist or survive.
Someone with big bucks just may be able to make a positive change. Think of George Soros and his attempts to decriminalize drugs. It does happen. |
I agree it happens. I don't think wealthy people are atypically selfish, nor do I categorize them into some "evil" group. I just think they don't have a right to exceptional influence over our political process, and I especially think foreign owned corporations and their owners don't have a right to influence in our political process.
Wealthy foreigners now have more ability to impact our political process than the average natural born citizen. Is that really where we want to be? Do Saudi oil interests really need more of a say in our politics? Do Israeli corporations need more of a say? Do Chinese business concerns need more of a say? Well, this ruling benefits all those groups, and the extra dollars they can now pour into the system have the effect of mitigating dollars spent by actual citizens.
Limiting political donations does not limit freedom of speech, and it helps politically enfranchise common American citizens. To this end, I think it's the obvious correct choice. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 10:44 am Post subject: |
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1) Of course free speech requires money to reach an audience. The way to reach an audience is constantly changing, and there are always random opportunities for minor media coverage in rare instances, but to be assured of reaching the general public requires billions of dollars.
The Dems and Reps know this, and they use government money to fund themselves to reach the public to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year.
You seem to live in some lala land Fantasy where it is possible to reach the public with no money.
2) The poor and middle class will never have enough money, individually, to reach the general public en masse. As a result, they need to be able to form groups to do so. From the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, unions, business associations, businesses and partnerships and corporations, people do form groups. These people have common interests in forming their groups and they should, if we live in a free society, be able to use these groups to exercise their free speech on topics where their mutual interest will inspire them to do so. As a group they will have more money, and perhaps enough to reach a mass audience.
3) The truly wealthy already have the ability to fund their own speech. Perot and Bloomberg are two examples. The SCOTUS ruling does not give the wealthy more ability to fund political speech. They are already free to do so.
4) It is the poor and middle classes who benefit from the new ruling. They will now have a greater opportunity to join together to form groups that can reach out with enough money to be heard.
5) The truly wealthy already have the ability to run for office and fund their own campaigns.
6) Allowing the wealthy to fund other candidates to the maximum extent their bank accounts will allow any individual, no matter how poor, the chance to find a visionary donor to fund a campaign for office that is otherwise impossible.
There are thousands of better candidates for President than Ross Perot and it is indisputable that the people would be better off if Ross Perot were to fund any one of these than to squander his money on his own campaign.
So, it is the poor and middle classes that suffer most from restrictions and benefit most from their repeal.
The group that loses most is the fascist-socialist block and the government that it supports and worships. And it is this group that fears what the public will do if educated with the truth about our evil fascist-socialist government.
| fox wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
| Mature, educated individuals eventually become congnizant of the world outside of themselves and realize that government helping the people is a fairytail like Santa Claus. Unfortunately, most people never quite reach the point of being truly educated, mature, and aware of the world outside their fairytail fantasy lives. |
Here you go just hurting your own case again. You claim a system in which personal responsibility is paramount would be ideal for everyone, then you claim most people aren't even mature and educated enough to understand reality, yet you insist that these people are competent to handle your lord-of-the-flies society perfectly well. |
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
The level of competence required for individuals to manage their own lives in all areas pales in comparison to the level of competence necessary to manage the lives of everyone by a single bureaucratic entity. In fact, the latter is impossible. That is one reason why socialism always fails.
It is therefore absolutely obvious that while nearly every human being can manage their own affairs in a free society, the same human beings can fail to realize that government always fails and that such a belief is a Santa Claus fantasy.
These truths being self evident, it is no surprise that you do not recognize the proper role of government in a free society and the proper definition of what socialism is:
All government actions, beyond protecting people and their property from foreign invaders and criminals, is socialism.
Most disturbing is the paranoid xenophobia which you are exhibiting. If foreign nations and businesses could so greatly influence the minds of the American people as you fear, they would already be doing so.
Fortunately, libertarians are quite international in their outlook and do not fear the peoples of other lands.
****
The American people have been denied acess to the truth by generations of control by a fascist-socialist elite and their befuddled minions. We need to open up the system and repeal most of the laws and all of the current taxes, renounce the debt and entitlements, and move forward into a world of liberty.
But, blathering apologists for the fascist-socialist state, befuddled from birth by the blinders installed by their already benighted parents, bemused until brain-dead by the government controlled schools, boviate endlessly in support of the restrictions that have caused the very poverty, unemployment, lack of health care, inflation, worthless money, poor education, pollution and war, which they lament, but create through their support of the cause - government itself.
Their fear and paranoia manifests itself most profoundly when faced with the prospect that by allowing free speech in America, the people will actually discover that decades of government lies have impoverished and shortened their lives, destroyed their families, and decimated their liberties.
Opening up the political process to total free speech will help wake up America. If so, we can all finally be free and prosperous, living in a land of liberty.
But, the fascist-socialists and their minions live in fear of this very possiblity. So they rail against any opportunity for the truth to be revealed. That is why they will blather on illogically to defend the darkness - a Fantastic, Obtuse, Xenophobic darkness that rules their lives and ruins the lives of the peoples of the world. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 6:09 pm Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
| Of course free speech requires money to reach an audience. |
Nothing about free speech guarantees your message reaching anyone. It just guarantees your right to express a message. You have no constitutional basis here.
| ontheway wrote: |
| You seem to live in some lala land Fantasy where it is possible to reach the public with no money. |
Nothing about freedom of speecch guarantees your message reaching public eye, only your right to express it.
| ontheway wrote: |
| The poor and middle class will never have enough money, individually, to reach the general public en masse. |
Nor will they ever have enough money collectively to do so if they're forced to compete with the expenditures of the ultra-wealthy and massive corporations. This is why corporate spending was banned, individual donations were limited, and PACs were implenented. This maximizes the relative ability of the poor and middle class to band together to fund a message, while simultaneously not infringing upon anyone's freedom of expression.
| ontheway wrote: |
| As a result, they need to be able to form groups to do so. |
And under the law they could do so. Every time you bring up the lower and middle class needing to be able to band together to fund a message to try to defend your case, you're just making a fool of yourself, because they could do just that under the over-turned law.
| ontheway wrote: |
| The truly wealthy already have the ability to fund their own speech. Perot and Bloomberg are two examples. The SCOTUS ruling does not give the wealthy more ability to fund political speech. They are already free to do so. |
You're the one who brought up the ultra-wealthy, ontheway, not me. I was just talking about corporations until you started talking about the ultra-wealthy need to be able to single handedly fund candidates to promote new ideas. Either this ruling benefits the ultra-wealthy or it doesn't, make up your mind. Right now your case is an incoherent mess.
| ontheway wrote: |
| It is the poor and middle classes who benefit from the new ruling. They will now have a greater opportunity to join together to form groups that can reach out with enough money to be heard. |
No, they won't, because they all ready could. It's corporations whow ill benefit from the new ruling, as they have massive discretionary funds and previously had no ability to donate. The poor and middle classes have very little in terms of discretionary funds, and could all ready pool donations anyway. You're outright lying at this point, misrepresenting the reality of the previous law. Under previous law, poor and middle class could pool donations to fund candidates, and corporations could not fund candidates. Now corporations can fund candidates to an unlimited degree, but nothing's really changed regarding the lower and middle classes, who simply don't have enough money to compete. One major corporation alone could bring to bear sufficient funds to meet and exceed the political contributions of the entire American lower and middle class combined. But, you choose to ignore that, because you hate government, and you'll argue against any governmental policy, no matter what. To you, if it's government, it's bad. You don't care about reprocussions. You don't care about people or what they want. You have an ideology, and you push it.
| ontheway wrote: |
| The level of competence required for individuals to manage their own lives in all areas pales in comparison to the level of competence necessary to manage the lives of everyone by a single bureaucratic entity. In fact, the latter is impossible. That is one reason why socialism always fails. |
Newsflash: there's a happy medium between the two. Individuals managing their own lives in general, with aid in specific areas from the government. But everything is black and white with you. Nuance slides off your back like water on a duck.
The rest of your post is just propaganda, lies, snake oil, and ranting, so I've nothing to say to it. Instead, I'll just reitterate why you're wrong in simple terms.
1) This ruling has nothing to do with free speech. Freedom of speech protects expression itself, not your right to be heard. Even if money is required to be taken notice of in the public eye, that doesn't interact with your rights, because you've no right to be heard, only a right to express.
2) The poor and middle class don't benefit at all from this ruling. They could all ready pool their funds to promote political candidates under the previous law. Further, under the previous law, they could do so without having to use their funds in competition with corporate funds. Now, very little has changed for them, while corporations can now bring billions of dollars to bear to push political candidates if they so choose. The entire middle and lower class populations of America combined cannot possibly donate sufficient money to politics to match even one mega-corporation, and there are many mega-corporations.
3) This ruling gives foreigners, foreign corporations, and foreign governments more ability to finance political campaigns in America than actual American citizens have. You've shrugged this off by implying foreign corporations are incapable of affecting the minds of America because, 'they haven't all ready done so.' Well guess what? They haven't all ready done so because the law until now banned it. Sure, they could create whatever campaign advertisements they wanted in their own media, but not in the United States media, which is all most Americans watch. That all changes now. It's not xenophobia, it's just the truth. One would have to be an idiot to think that things like Saudi oil corporations, Chinese business concerns, and so forth don't have a vested interest in affecting American politics.
In short, you're pretty much 100% wrong. This ruling in no way helps the lower and middle class, it has no basis in constitutional rights, and it actively hurts citizens by drowning out their political voices comparatively at the expense of not only domestic corporations, but foreign corporations.
As an aside, that was a fairly artistically done insult. I thought it was cute, and heartily encourage you to express future insults in similar fashion. It makes your posts more interesting to read.  |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 9:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
| Of course free speech requires money to reach an audience. |
Nothing about free speech guarantees your message reaching anyone. It just guarantees your right to express a message. You have no constitutional basis here.
| ontheway wrote: |
| You seem to live in some lala land Fantasy where it is possible to reach the public with no money. |
Nothing about freedom of speecch guarantees your message reaching public eye, only your right to express it. |
Speech without an audience, or "talking to yourself," would be meaningless. Thus, the Constitution implies that one's speech may be heard. This is one reason we have the Fairness Doctrine in the media. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 9:08 pm Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| Speech without an audience, or "talking to yourself," would be meaningless. Thus, the Constitution implies that one's speech may be heard. This is one reason we have the Fairness Doctrine in the media. |
Speech with no audience may be meaningless, but that doesn't ensure you the right to an audience. Even moreso, it doesn't ensure you the right to an audience at a national level. The only thing protected is the right to express ideas, nothing more.
If the inability to spend millions or billions of dollars to get your message out there invalidates your freedom of speech, the overwhelming majority of Americans lack freedom of speech. But American citizens do have freedom of speech, because freedom of speech is purely about the ability to express, not about the ability to make yourself heard. Any idea is open for expression, but we aren't assured any venue we please, and we aren't assured any audience we please.
Again though, all of this is a red herring. Corporations are not citizens, they don't have rights, and as such the First Amendment does not apply to them. |
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goodt
Joined: 21 Aug 2009
Location: Masan, South Korea
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| Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 4:40 am Post subject: |
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| that was a wrong move |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 8:12 am Post subject: |
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So, Fox proved me correct. He was unable to read what I wrote and unable to comprehend it. Instead of linking the information together as required for comprehension, he continued to blather on illogically and without regard to what I wrote.
Fox, a corporation is a group owned in part, and sometimes 100% by the poor and middle classes and when you deny these owners their right to free speech you violate the first amendment. The country is not free and everyone is less free as a result.
Poor and middle class candidates for office, especially when running for the first time and with new ideas have no chance to compete against the candidates chosen and funded by the fascist-socialist government itself. They will be unable to reach the voters and they will not have free speech. However, they will have a chance if the rich individuals and groups of individuals, including corporations, are allowed to fund their campaigns to the full extent desired.
Had Stewart Mott been allowed to donate $10 or $20 million to John Anderson to kick off his campaign, he could have been president.
If Ross Perot had been allowed to donate his $80 million toward some better candidate, we could have elected a better president.
Instead, we get candidates who take millions of dollars in bribe money (the Clintons, John Edwards, the selling of Obama's Senate seat, the list is endless) by sellling themselves to dishonest individuals and groups illegally, but who appear to live according to your rules. So, the corrupt pols dominate the Amerian system.
The rules that limit free speech and political donations not only prevent the needed free speech which would allow America continue on the path to liberty, these limits actually foster corruption and bribery, and make it much more likely that honest politicians will be unable to obtain funding, and guarantee that criminal politicians will have access to unlimited funding.
Another recent example of a fascist-socialist pol who takes in millions in illegal cash to further his "free speech" while voting to deny everyone else the right to legal donations:
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... a hanging question for John Edwards' future: an ongoing federal grand jury probe into his campaign's finances.
Prosecutors have refused to comment about the investigation, but Young says he spent hours testifying to the grand jury about the "huge sums of money that had quietly changed hands" during the campaign. Hunter has also made an appearance at the federal courthouse in Raleigh where the grand jury is meeting.
Edwards has said in a previous statement that he is "confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly." A spokeswoman did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday.
Mellon, now 99, had promised to give money to Edwards' political groups even before the affair began and eventually gave a total of $6 million for Edwards' causes, according to Young's book. |
This is the type of currupt scumbag pols who benifit from restrictions supported by Fox.
The fascist-socialists get their money for their message no matter what. They use stolen taxpayer money, thousands of campaign workers directly paid by the government, communications paid by the government and take hundreds of millions in bribes annually to keep themselves in power.
At the same time, these corrupt fascists conspire to deny free speech to the rest of America.
Yes, the Supreme Court was correct. We need to allow free speech for all. Every person should be able to spend as much as he or she desires, individually or through any group of which he or she is a member, to spread whatever message they wish to spread.
The public, after seeing all the competing messages can then make up their own minds.
The ridiculous, Fantasy-based, Obtuse, Xenophobic position of the supporters of the fascist-controlled political process, is that they should controll the entire message and that anyone who opposes their fascist control should be denied the opportunity to raise funds to spend in opposition.
It comes down to this:
Freedom of speech includes the absolute necessary right to raise and spend as much money from any individual or group or one's own resources to spread whatever message any individual desires.
This was recognized by the founders and is encoded in many state laws, including the exemption of newspapers and similar orgainzations from many forms of taxation.
Shutting off the power to a TV or radio station, smashing the presses of a newspaper or denying individuals or any group the right to raise money to pay for the power, presses, paper or equipment necessary to spread their message, or denying any individual or group the right to advertise using any media ... These are all tools of fascist-socialst scumbags to deny free speech to the people. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 5:55 pm Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
| Fox, a corporation is a group owned in part, and sometimes 100% by the poor and middle classes and when you deny these owners their right to free speech you violate the first amendment. The country is not free and everyone is less free as a result. |
This is getting to be beyond disingenuous. Do you really think that political messages funded by corporate money are going to be the ones the lower and middle class minority of stock holders support? Of course not. As usual, you're yet again ignoring the realities of the issue to try to make some invalid ideological point.
Example: Giant Bank X decides to fund a political message. It can either choose to financially support a pro-bank bailout candidate, or an anti-bank bailout candidate. Now, it's absolutely clear that, with regards to any middle and lower class stock holders it has, the best choice would be funding an anti-bailout candidate; bank bailouts help the ultra-wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class. However, it's in the bank's own interests to fund the pro-bailout candidate, so that's exactly what will happen. This is how corporations operate. Corporate interests are what matter to corporations. They're not going to shoot themselves in the foot on this.
You're not stupid, and you're not ignorant, so at this point you're willfully misrepresenting reality. Lower and middle classes deserve a way to band together to fund political messages, and they had one under the law. Corporations on the other hand will fund politicians who support corporate interests, not lower and middle class interests. Hell, many large corporations are foreign owned; their only interests with regards to the politics in question are economic. But you just keep misrepresenting. You keep selling your snake oil. And American -- nay, the entire world -- will keep not buying it.
You've tried repeatedly and failed repeatedly to paint this decision as somehow in the interests of the lower and middle classes. The lower and middle classes have minimal ability to dictate corporate policy (and thus corporate expenditures), especially when it comes to major corporations with billions to spend. We all know this is true; you're simply pretending its not to try to make your invalid point. Corporate money is not going to be spent in support of policies which benefit the lower and middle classes. It's going to be spent in support of policies which benefit corporations. The true political tool of the lower and middle classes -- the PAC -- is now going to be virtually defunct by comparisons; the paltry millions a PAC can bring to bear (and this is a major PAC we're talking about) is nothing compared to the profits of a single major corporation.
| ontheway wrote: |
| However, they will have a chance if the rich individuals and groups of individuals, including corporations, are allowed to fund their campaigns to the full extent desired. |
Yes, we know you think ultra-wealthy people single handedly funding political aspirants is your only hope for seeing your totalitarian tyranny of the minority system ever getting implemented. It won't happen, though; corporatist candidates are going to see the most support from the wealthy, because humans are largely incentive driven beings. Just like the confused seniors shouting, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!" you're just shooting yourself in the foot. The policy you support here is one that will move you further from your goals, not closer. Corporations aren't going to use their political contributions to reduce government, they're going to use them to increase government in a corporatist fashion for their own benefit.
| ontheway wrote: |
| Had Stewart Mott been allowed to donate $10 or $20 million to John Anderson to kick off his campaign, he could have been president. If Ross Perot had been allowed to donate his $80 million toward some better candidate, we could have elected a better president |
Ontheway: arguing with dataless counterfactuals instead of data and solid argumentation since, well, forever. I know you think you're some sort of economic messiah who could perfectly predict what would happen in alternate situations, but you unfortunately aren't. Your claims about "how things would be if only blah blah blah" are completely uncompelling.
| ontheway wrote: |
| Freedom of speech includes the absolute necessary right to raise and spend as much money from any individual or group or one's own resources to spread whatever message any individual desires. |
No it doesn't. Freedom of speech is about speech. Not about money. Not about venue. It's about expression of ideas. That's all you are ensured, the right to express yourself. Anything beyond that loses a constitutional basis and must be justified wholly independent of the constitution. That's the fact of the matter.
It's very clear you're used to just being able to shout people down with propaganda; when are you going to learn that that doesn't work on me? If you really feel you have a case, you're going to have to start engaging in some concise, sound argumentation. None of this, "Corporations will use their political donations to support the messages the lower and middle classes want to see supported!" rubbish; we all know that's a lie. None of this, "If only the ultra-wealthy could single handedly fund political candidates things would be so much better," nonsense; that's just a dataless counterfactual. No more of this, "The First Amendment protects monetary expenditures," inanity; that's just plain untrue. No, if you want to make your point here, you're going to have to try something new. Propaganda has failed, angry insults have failed, how about trying actual sound argumentation for once? Of course, that's impossible, because you can't prove something that's not true with sound argumentation. That's why you have to resort to deceptive rhetoric, dataless counterfactuals, and outright lies. 
As an aside, I think you classification of the idea that foreigners should not be seriously contributing to our political campaigns as xenophobia counts as another of your word redefinitions. Congratulations on changing that dictionary one word at a time. Maybe some day, you can publish an entire dictionary of alternate definitions that snake oil salesmen can use in their propaganda. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2010 7:20 am Post subject: |
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I don't know if this has already been posted, but Glennwald has an interesting read on Citizens United.
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[I]t's often the case that banning certain kinds of speech would produce good outcomes, and conversely, allowing certain kinds of speech produces bad outcomes (that's true for, say, White Supremacist or neo-Nazi speech, or speech advocating violence against civilians). The First Amendment is not and never has been outcome-dependent; the Government is barred from restricting speech -- especially political speech -- no matter the good results that would result from the restrictions.
I'm also quite skeptical of the apocalyptic claims about how this decision will radically transform and subvert our democracy by empowering corporate control over the political process. My skepticism is due to one principal fact: I really don't see how things can get much worse in that regard. The reality is that our political institutions are already completely beholden to and controlled by large corporate interests.
I understand and sympathize with the argument that corporations are creatures of the state and should not enjoy the same rights as individuals.
But the speech restrictions struck down by Citizens United do not only apply to Exxon and Halliburton; they also apply to non-profit advocacy corporations, such as, say, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, as well as labor unions, which are genuinely burdened in their ability to express their views by these laws. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2010 8:09 am Post subject: |
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| Ira Glasser, ACLU wrote: |
In these and many other cases over decades, not-for-profit cause groups of all kinds were repeatedly subjected to curbs on precisely the kind of speech the First Amendment was designed to protect.
In the current case that has caused all the commotion, the victim was a not-for-profit group called Citizens United that wanted to distribute a film it had made criticizing Hillary Clinton and questioning her fitness for office. No good, said the law, you can't criticize her while she's running for office. Why? Because Citizens United was incorporated.
So is the ACLU and so is pretty much every other cause organization.
Should Planned Parenthood, for example, or NARAL Pro-Choice America be banned from criticizing Sarah Palin during a future campaign for office? That was precisely the question raised by the Citizens United case.
Should the fact that such activist citizens' organizations are incorporated allow the government to bar their speech, especially when it matters most?
That is the question the Court was asked to answer, and it answered correctly:
such organizations' freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment.
Why liberals should be unhappy about that, or willing to tolerate the censorship of their own speech that would have resulted from a contrary decision is a mystery. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2010 6:23 am Post subject: |
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In Black Caucus, a Fund-Raising Powerhouse
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| From 2004 to 2008, the Congressional Black Caucus�s political and charitable wings took in at least $55 million in corporate and union contributions, according to an analysis by The New York Times, an impressive amount even by the standards of a Washington awash in cash. Only $1 million of that went to the caucus�s political action committee; the rest poured into the largely unregulated nonprofit network. (Data for 2009 is not available.) |
So those of you freaking out about the Supreme Court's decision, do you really think this made campaign financing worse?? Please... |
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RufusW
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Busan
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| Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2010 8:10 am Post subject: |
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