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Jitzu_the_Monk posted:Yes, the system was designed to favor landed white men. Yes, it is more populist now but not nearly enough. Now we have a tyranny of the minority where elites fund both major parties to such a degree that the bulk of the body politic tends to be beholden to those elite interests. And the response is to say that democracy is thriving? Your high school civics class notwithstanding, the enlightenment assumption of "rational man," who dispassionately weighs information and votes in accordance with his self interest, is a lie. Consent of the governed is not given but manufactured through elite-controlled institutions, including the ever-consolidating broadcast and print media. There is increasingly less likelihood that our political system will function in such a way as to give voice to the vast majority of Americans' grievances. This isn't democracy at work, it's the middle-stage of a transfer of more wealth and authority to, if not the top one percent, perhaps the top ten. CU accelerated this descent into oligarchy. Ours is a dying republic, and a spectacular case study in how tyranny of the minority can subvert democratic systems while still maintaining the veneer of responsiveness to the public insofar as most citizens are still allowed to vote. Never mind the constraints on their information, choices, and where and when they may freely exercise speech and assembly. CU is one cog in a democracy-killing machine. Fox news is largely responsible for a lot of this. It's a corporation whose sole purpose is to distribute propoganda favoring corporate interests, all under the guise of journalism and free speech. But you can't really fix it because 'freedom'. The internet is kind of mucking a lot of that bolded bit up though.
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# ? May 3, 2016 20:07 |
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# ? Jun 11, 2024 04:04 |
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Nevvy Z posted:Fox news is largely responsible for a lot of this. It's a corporation whose sole purpose is to distribute propoganda favoring corporate interests, all under the guise of journalism and free speech. But you can't really fix it because 'freedom'. I can't tell if this post unironically favors censorship of fox news.
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# ? May 3, 2016 20:54 |
Places like NMI and PR are a bit of a mess from multiple directions. On the one hand, their current government systems are heavily dysfunctional, as are their economies. On the other, entry into statehood (or independence, for that matter) would likely make the problem much, much worse, rather than better. These locations are able to sustain themselves in large part because they receive many of the benefits of federal oversight, without many of the regulatory costs. This is related to why many non-US tax havens are tiny protectorates without significant alternate economies; they survive specifically by functioning on the margins of their competitors. There's not really a clean solution, although domestic anticorruption reform would be a start.
Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 22:04 on May 3, 2016 |
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# ? May 3, 2016 21:58 |
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Nevvy Z posted:Fox news is largely responsible for a lot of this. It's a corporation whose sole purpose is to distribute propoganda favoring corporate interests, all under the guise of journalism and free speech. But you can't really fix it because 'freedom'. No it's the New York times that's responsible for the propagandizing of news. Or maybe its CNN with their 24 hour news coverage that forced all types of ridiculous filler and entertainment nonsense to be broadcast as though it were news.
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# ? May 3, 2016 22:25 |
Discendo Vox posted:Places like NMI and PR are a bit of a mess from multiple directions. On the one hand, their current government systems are heavily dysfunctional, as are their economies. On the other, entry into statehood (or independence, for that matter) would likely make the problem much, much worse, rather than better. These locations are able to sustain themselves in large part because they receive many of the benefits of federal oversight, without many of the regulatory costs. This is related to why many non-US tax havens are tiny protectorates without significant alternate economies; they survive specifically by functioning on the margins of their competitors. There's not really a clean solution, although domestic anticorruption reform would be a start. Puerto Rican statehood is probably worth talking about in another thread, but wasn't the reason I raised the example. The discussion we have been having is over whether or not systemic corruption is a problem, or conversely if the large scale influence of big money in politics "is democracy" as the founders intended and not at all a problem but a sign the system is working as intended. Puerto Rico's current situation is the endpoint on that spectrum, not a slippery slope but an actual concrete present reality in America under current law. Their crisis is entirely a creature of legislative incompetence. The solution to their (short term financial) crisis is obvious and straightforward: either restructuring or bailout. But those solutions are barred because Congress does not care that hospitals in Puerto Rico are without power or that a doctor is leaving the island every day. All Congress cares about is that hedge funds oppose the bailout because they will be able to profit off of the incipient default. You can argue that the problem is different because PR lacks congressional representatives, but there are millions of people on the mainland who vote and have family on the island ( and the lack of representation is itself a function of long term political gridlock). Congress doesn't care. If our government were not corrupt, if our system of government was working, Puerto Rico would not have defaulted yesterday. But it did, and the reasons why are clear, and clearly demonstrate the existence of an actual problem: our government does not care about its citizens, it only cares about money. Central to the foundational notions of our Republic was the idea that the elected representatives would be responsive to the needs of the citizenry -- the whole citizenry, not just the wealthy. Big money and manufactured consent have overturned that presumption. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 22:50 on May 3, 2016 |
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# ? May 3, 2016 22:39 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Puerto Rican statehood is probably worth talking about in another thread, but wasn't the reason I raised the example. The political equivalent of abuse by neglect? I like it because it goes well with that lawsuit about global warming. The problem is you have half the government and nation holding a position that the bolded part is a bad thing to do. As small a government as possible while being big enough to administer handjobs to the private sector. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 22:58 on May 3, 2016 |
# ? May 3, 2016 22:52 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
If by whole citizenry you mean land owning white males, then maybe yes? Even then it's a stretch to say that the wants and needs of the wealthy weren't first and foremost.
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# ? May 3, 2016 23:05 |
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EwokEntourage posted:If by whole citizenry you mean land owning white males, then maybe yes? Even then it's a stretch to say that the wants and needs of the wealthy weren't first and foremost. I mean, land-owning pretty much equated to wealthy at the time.
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# ? May 3, 2016 23:16 |
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Perhaps that should be some indication to stop the ridiculous ancestor worship cult around the founding fathers, and evaluate the law based on its merits today rather than the ideals and scribblings of a bunch of dead racists?
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# ? May 3, 2016 23:31 |
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Perhaps that should be some indication to stop the ridiculous ancestor worship cult around the founding fathers, and evaluate the law based on its merits today rather than the ideals and scribblings of a bunch of dead racists? Whoa look at this activist judge. Balls and strikes. Balls and strikes.
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# ? May 3, 2016 23:33 |
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Kalman posted:I mean, land-owning pretty much equated to wealthy at the time. bingo. "land-owning" didn't simply mean "i own my house" in their context
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# ? May 3, 2016 23:47 |
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Perhaps that should be some indication to stop the ridiculous ancestor worship cult around the founding fathers, and evaluate the law based on its merits today rather than the ideals and scribblings of a bunch of dead racists? If the ideals of bunch of Slave owning white people with a fetish for ancient Greeks and Romans aren't the appropriate proper guiding principals in the year of Obama 2016, then I don't want to live on this planet anymore
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# ? May 3, 2016 23:47 |
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Perhaps that should be some indication to stop the ridiculous ancestor worship cult around the founding fathers, and evaluate the law based on its merits today rather than the ideals and scribblings of a bunch of dead racists? Great point. We'll stop the ancestor worship. Now let's get to censoring corrupt speech. Nevvy Z posted:Fox news is largely responsible for a lot of this. It's a corporation whose sole purpose is to distribute propoganda favoring corporate interests, all under the guise of journalism and free speech. But you can't really fix it because 'freedom'. Done and done. Suck it billionaires. Oh wait a Republican has been elected and now they get to decide who the corrupt ones are: Kawasaki Nun posted:No it's the New York times that's responsible for the propagandizing of news. Or maybe its CNN with their 24 hour news coverage that forced all types of ridiculous filler and entertainment nonsense to be broadcast as though it were news.
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# ? May 4, 2016 00:06 |
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DeusExMachinima posted:Oh wait a Republican has been elected and now they get to decide who the corrupt ones are: Yeah. We know. That's why we are suggesting other, more subtle ways to tip the balance away from the corporate interest. Thanks for that piping hot fresh take on the dangers facing a totalitarian regime that also legitimately allows full and free elections. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 00:38 on May 4, 2016 |
# ? May 4, 2016 00:33 |
EwokEntourage posted:If by whole citizenry you mean land owning white males, then maybe yes? Even then it's a stretch to say that the wants and needs of the wealthy weren't first and foremost. Eh, not really. Well, yes as to the "white" part, but the whole idea of having a Republic was that the general mass of people would select the best & brightest to represent them. Federalist No. 10 came out of the closet to say posted:The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp The idea was that the mass of people would select the best and brightest (and wealthiest, yes) to represent them, and then in turn those best and brightest would govern in the interest of all (well, all citizens / white people). That's all well and good as far as it goes, but it leaves the door open to demagogues and so forth. This was one reason that the duel between Hamilton and Burr went down -- Hamilton viewed Burr as an unprincipled incipient demagogue (the Trump of the day) and a threat to the Republic. The founders also didn't really have a conception of things like modern mass media manipulation, manufactured consent, or the sheer scale of the modern corporate state (when Alexander Hamilton died, there were only five securities traded on the New York exchange). The thought that social conventions (the idea of noblesse oblige, which was Washington in a nutshell) and the sheer territorial scale of the United States would suffice to prevent collusion and large-scale corruption. Modern media operates at a scale they didn't comprehend. Fundamentally, though, the whole idea of having a Republican government by elites was precisely because they thought the elites were the best positioned to govern for the benefit of all citizens; it wasn't because they thought our modern war-of-all-against-all, gently caress-you-got-mine kleptocratic corporatism was a goal to be strived for. They would have been absolutely horrified by it (especially Madison and Jefferson). Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 03:13 on May 4, 2016 |
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# ? May 4, 2016 03:08 |
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Avenging_Mikon posted:As a Canadian, reading these past few pages is frankly horrifying. Money is speech, slavish devotion to documents made before mass communication was a thing, and refusal to potentially limit damaging speech because you don't trust your government. Money as speech is loving ridiculous on the face of it, and you can't logically argue that saying money is speech doesn't immediately cause an unequal balance of power. But some people said it once, so gently caress you, it's true forever. You're not alone, I'm an American and I'm awestruck that someone can see the House Majority Leader handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists on the floor of congress right before a vote on tobacco regulation and say "golly gosh gee, I don't see any of this corruption you're talking about, lordy how can we ever know the reason behind that timing of handing out cash, for the soul of man is mysterious and inscrutable".
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# ? May 4, 2016 03:38 |
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VitalSigns posted:You're not alone, I'm an American and I'm awestruck that someone can see the House Majority Leader handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists on the floor of congress right before a vote on tobacco regulation and say "golly gosh gee, I don't see any of this corruption you're talking about, lordy how can we ever know the reason behind that timing of handing out cash, for the soul of man is mysterious and inscrutable". No you see, everything in law must rely on strict definitions, for reality has no bearing on ideology. quote:Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, sounding like two men aware of their imminent relegation to the court’s minority bloc, mocked the idea that words could have different meanings depending on context. http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com...type=collection ... To cite one of numerous times certain members of the court have relied on pedantry without any respect for what actually goes on in practice outside the room. Citizens United being the more frequent topic, obviously.
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# ? May 4, 2016 03:57 |
That's a very selective interpretation of fed 10. Is there a reason you skipped the rest of it?quote:The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter. The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. Besides other impediments, it may be remarked that, where there is a consciousness of unjust or dishonorable purposes, communication is always checked by distrust in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary. Are those last examples funny because they're no longer considered correct? Sure. But the overarching point of the piece was that the democratic republic enjoys the benefits of both systems, particularly because where power does coalesce in the hands of a particular group of "elites", the structure of the larger representative system, particularly en masse, corrects for it. It's effectively the counterweight to the scaling problem of democratic systems. Hey, guess what's happening to the Republican party this election cycle? More generally, you're reaching further and further afield in an attempt to justify an immediately invalid restriction of political speech, in response to something that still isn't corruption. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 05:19 on May 4, 2016 |
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# ? May 4, 2016 04:59 |
Quoting the federalist papers in a discussion of constitutional law is pretty much the opposite of going "further and further afield"; it's the wellspring, not the delta. That said, I don't really see how anything you're quoting there contradicts or undermines anything I've said. Just like modern technological developments in arms has required some re-interpretation of the 2nd amendment (silencers, machine guns, etc.), modern mass media has diminished the balancing effect of territorial disparities and reduced the ability of the Republic generally to counter demagogues and scam artists who take on the role of politician. Our immune system was regions balanced against one another; that's breaking down. Hence, we're more vulnerable to systemic corruption, and we need to adapt our interpretation of the 1st, and the principles behind it, to account for that newly developed issue. As I said above, Trump is a symptom of disease, not a sign of health. In a well-functioning Republic he would never have been a serious candidate; he's only gaining prominence because that many Americans are exactly that fed up and that desperate with a system that does not serve their interests or needs. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 05:31 on May 4, 2016 |
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# ? May 4, 2016 05:27 |
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Well, that and because a lot of Americans are racist and xenophobic. Actually pretty much entirely that.
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# ? May 4, 2016 05:51 |
That's...not even remotely relevant to the interpretation of the first amendment. Trump is in no way a sign of corruption. You keep asserting systematic corruption, then attributing all bad things in society to it, then raising something currently held as unconstitutional as the only and best cure. Is cancer caused by corruption, and a sign we need to overturn CU and tax political speech?
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# ? May 4, 2016 06:21 |
Everything I've talked about is part of a very clear, consistent, coherent, and straightforward story. 1) Big money drowns out any need for representatives to listen to the voices and needs of everyday, non-elite Americans 2) elected officials just straight up stop giving a poo poo about anyone who makes less than 250k/yr 3) societal problems fester and go unredressed because of lack of government interest (unemployment, underemployment, suicide rate, incarceration rate,etc.) 4) government mismanagement, negligence become chronic issues and lead to crisis after crisis (flint, puerto rico, etc.) 5) people start to vote for ever-more-radical demagogues in the hope of finding someone who will finally listen and here we are. It's not "all bad things in society", and there are of course other wide-scale problems as well (gerrymandering, for example) but it's a big part of what's keeping the government from addressing many of those bad things. Hence the "systemic." A systemic problem is by definition going to touch on a wide array of issues, hence the word "systemic." Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 06:55 on May 4, 2016 |
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# ? May 4, 2016 06:33 |
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quote:The idea was that the mass of people would select the best and brightest (and wealthiest, yes) to represent them, and then in turn those best and brightest would govern in the interest of all (well, all citizens / white people). quote:They would have been absolutely horrified by it (especially Madison and Jefferson). quote:Our immune system was regions balanced against one another; that's breaking down. Hence, we're more vulnerable to systemic corruption, and we need to adapt our interpretation of the 1st, and the principles behind it, to account for that newly developed issue. You can argue all you want about the effect of political speech and spending on government, but I think you are overstating it when you say things like "sheer territorial scale of the United States would suffice to prevent collusion and large-scale corruption" and that mass media is somehow the requirement for this "large-scale corruption"
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# ? May 4, 2016 07:52 |
OK, great, thanks for laying it out. You haven't proven 1 or 2, You haven't proven 3 or 4 are caused by 1 or 2, You haven't proven 5, You haven't proven 1 through 4 cause 5, You haven't proven CU causes or influences 1 or 2, You haven't proven your proposed solution would address 1 through 5, You haven't proven your proposed solution is constitutional, You haven't compared your solution with other solutions that wouldn't require a constitutional amendment or overturning a recent SCOTUS decision. You don't have an argument, you have a series of loosely associated claims that aren't connected to your thesis. You're using the word "systemic" here to mean "circular, all-encompassing and unfalsifiable". Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 08:06 on May 4, 2016 |
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# ? May 4, 2016 07:58 |
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You're demanding a standard of proof that is quite frankly unrealistic in politics. Sources are easily available to show that more money translates almost directly into a higher chance of winning, and the points about higher corporate spending meaning higher corporate influence are all very direct inferences to the best explanation. Add to that the fact that SCOTUS expressly held in previous decisions that actual bias due to monetary influence is hard to prove and rules are necessary that deal with the appearance of bias, and the argument is pretty clear.
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# ? May 4, 2016 08:14 |
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Jitzu_the_Monk posted:Your high school civics class notwithstanding, the enlightenment assumption of "rational man," who dispassionately weighs information and votes in accordance with his self interest, is a lie. Consent of the governed is not given but manufactured through elite-controlled institutions, including the ever-consolidating broadcast and print media. There is increasingly less likelihood that our political system will function in such a way as to give voice to the vast majority of Americans' grievances. Hieronymous Alloy posted:1) Big money drowns out any need for representatives to listen to the voices and needs of everyday, non-elite Americans
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# ? May 4, 2016 08:22 |
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Dead Reckoning posted:The fact that the current front-runner for the GOP nomination has got to where he is by telling poor whites what they want to hear while a series of establishment money favorites have crashed and burned would seem to give the lie to points one and two. If moneyed interests have greater say in the democratic process than average citizens, why is Trump the presumptive nominee instead of Jeb or Walker? By your logic, point 5 shouldn't matter, because the preferences of the majority of the electorate are irrelevant. He's not saying all of those things are simultaneous, he's saying one leads to the next. Moneyed elites have lied to people about what the cause of their suffering is and how their policies (that benefit the rich) will fix it. Then those policies obviously don't. Repeat for long enough that people's lives get lovely enough that they vote for the oompa loompa.
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# ? May 4, 2016 08:49 |
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Lemming posted:He's not saying all of those things are simultaneous, he's saying one leads to the next. Moneyed elites have lied to people about what the cause of their suffering is and how their policies (that benefit the rich) will fix it. Then those policies obviously don't. Repeat for long enough that people's lives get lovely enough that they vote for the oompa loompa. I'll let him explain his argument himself, but your explanation doesn't make a lot of sense either. So the will of the majority actually does matter, but those poor, hard working, salt-of-the-earth types are so impulsive that they can't help but vote for whoever spends the most on an election, so campaign finance is corruption because politicians listen to the people with money who tell the
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# ? May 4, 2016 09:05 |
It's pretty simple. If populists are winning, that's a sign that elite control of money and influence in politics is creating a public backlash that will elect demagogues and destroy the country, and we need to overturn citizens united to prevent it. If populists aren't winning, that's a sign that elite control of money and influence in politics is influencing the polity and controlling votes with their unequal access to political speech, and we need to overturn citizens united to prevent it.
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# ? May 4, 2016 09:23 |
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Dead Reckoning posted:I'll let him explain his argument himself, but your explanation doesn't make a lot of sense either. So the will of the majority actually does matter, but those poor, hard working, salt-of-the-earth types are so impulsive that they can't help but vote for whoever spends the most on an election, so campaign finance is corruption because politicians listen to the people with money who tell the This doesn't seem very complicated to follow. People's lives have been going well enough that they go along with what's occupying all the media. Those policies directly make their lives worse, the people in charge tell them they just need to keep electing them and they'll fix it, their lives continue to get worse until they get pissed off enough that they tell those guys to go gently caress themselves and then vote for the guy that says they'll throw all the foreigners (who are all ISIS rapists) into a meat grinder and that'll solve all their problems. Feel free to attack the argument instead of pretending you don't get it, it's incredibly straightforward and I don't believe that you don't understand it.
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# ? May 4, 2016 09:26 |
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Dead Reckoning posted:The fact that the current front-runner for the GOP nomination has got to where he is by telling poor whites what they want to hear while a series of establishment money favorites have crashed and burned would seem to give the lie to points one and two. I guess it would if you stopped reading there. These aren't pie-in-the-sky, untested ideas about politics, they are ideas that are legislated and adjudicated on in the real world. This pedantic arguing over definitions and proofs is just obfuscation of the position that money has no undue influence on politics--but since that's absurd on its face, we must arrive at the novel idea that corruption cannot be strictly defined or elementally measured, and therefore does not exist. This being the case, someone should alert the authorities to their mistake and free Sheldon Silver immediately. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/nyregion/complaint-details-how-silver-earned-millions-from-obscure-legal-work.html
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# ? May 4, 2016 09:48 |
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If money has zero effect on our political system, then how do regulations on donations materially infringe on anyone's political expression? It seems like you're exactly as capable of political expression with money as without it, as proven by "well if money matters why isn't Jeb Bush the nominee, libertards?"
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# ? May 4, 2016 10:28 |
Dead Reckoning posted:The fact that the current front-runner for the GOP nomination has got to where he is by telling poor whites what they want to hear while a series of establishment money favorites have crashed and burned would seem to give the lie to points one and two. If moneyed interests have greater say in the democratic process than average citizens, why is Trump the presumptive nominee instead of Jeb or Walker? By your logic, point 5 shouldn't matter, because the preferences of the majority of the electorate are irrelevant. This was covered at length up thread but politics is about more than just the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination; the down-ticket exists. More to the point, Trump is also succeeding in large part because he's profiting off of decades of work by Fox News and decades of right-wing think tank groups and propaganda outlets, which have pushed various narratives (success in the private sector is better than government experience; washington insiders are bad; you can't trust "the media"; etc.) which are now backfiring. OneThousandMonkeys posted:These aren't pie-in-the-sky, untested ideas about politics, they are ideas that are legislated and adjudicated on in the real world. This pedantic arguing over definitions and proofs is just obfuscation of the position that money has no undue influence on politics--but since that's absurd on its face, we must arrive at the novel idea that corruption cannot be strictly defined or elementally measured, and therefore does not exist. Yup. I have no idea what the people arguing in this thread do for a living -- and it doesn't really matter for purposes of whether or not their arguments are valid, regardless -- but some of these defenses are starting to remind me of the old Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it". Those who have eyes to see let them see, etc. evilweasel posted:But everyone in this discussion is broadly familiar with the current influence money is having on politics so I don't really see the point in belaboring it. If this were a court, of course we'd need to do that because you have to lay it out in your papers, but on an internet politics forum we can rely on everyone's general awareness of the current state of politics. One would think! I don't really know how anyone can look at the current situation in Puerto Rico not see a problem. There's no counter-narrative saying anything else; everyone admits it's straight up "hedge funds don't want a restructuring" that's the barrier to solving the problem. Edit: ultimately, as I said a few pages ago, this is a factual dispute over whether or not there is good evidence of systemic corruption. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:55 on May 4, 2016 |
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# ? May 4, 2016 12:20 |
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VitalSigns posted:If money has zero effect on our political system, then how do regulations on donations materially infringe on anyone's political expression? It seems like you're exactly as capable of political expression with money as without it, as proven by "well if money matters why isn't Jeb Bush the nominee, libertards?" Completely meaningless expression that serves no purpose is as protected as expression that does things.
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# ? May 4, 2016 13:44 |
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Donating money is political expression.
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# ? May 4, 2016 13:45 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Everything I've talked about is part of a very clear, consistent, coherent, and straightforward story. I agree with all of this and well-said.
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# ? May 4, 2016 14:00 |
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euphronius posted:Donating money is political expression. Corporations should not have political expression as they have no voting power.
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# ? May 4, 2016 14:03 |
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The Larch posted:Completely meaningless expression that serves no purpose is as protected as expression that does things. Except the argument is that political expression is the most fundamental of first amendment activities because "discussion of public issues and debate on the qualifications of candidates are integral to the operation of the system of government established by our Constitution. The First Amendment affords the broadest protection to such political expression in order 'to assure (the) unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people" wow, that sounds pretty important and worthy of the strongest protections possible. But now people are saying money doesn't do any of those things, it isn't integral to the operation of our government, it doesn't influence politicians or elections at all nor bring about any political or social changes whatsoever. Sooooooo since donations are completely useless, I don't see what's the purpose of treating them like we do actual spoken or printed speech, seems like it doesn't really matter. euphronius posted:Donating money is political expression. Is a 100% income tax constitutional?
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# ? May 4, 2016 14:05 |
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Mr. Nice! posted:Corporations should not have political expression as they have no voting power. Mr. Nice! posted:Corporations should not have political expression as they have no voting power. The people who own them do.
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# ? May 4, 2016 15:23 |
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# ? Jun 11, 2024 04:04 |
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Mr. Nice! posted:Corporations should not have political expression as they have no voting power. Newspapers are generally run by corporations, though...
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# ? May 4, 2016 15:30 |