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Looks like free speech wins again 
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May 15, 2014 15:25
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 17:24 |
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Elotana posted:No amount of "cleverness" is going to crowdsource around the gerrymandering that makes flipping the House an impossibility absent some drastic political upheaval in the next six months, and that alone is going to render each and every one of the five bills (excuse me, three bills, a website, and a blog post) on reform.to a dead letter in the 114th. Even if they weren't, the reform.to quintet is still silly because "cleverness" is not going to end-around the majority of SCOTUS, where the parts that actually have any bite (the clean elections provisions establishing a quasi-public election system based on opt-in matching funds) would likely be be held unconstitutional under Davis and McComish. You can probably do it as long as the public system establishes a floor instead of a ceiling, like giving challengers franking privileges and equal financing for everyone on the ballot. But that might actually unseat incumbents 
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May 15, 2014 17:06
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Elotana posted:Nope. From the syllabus of McComish: Uh just because it doesn't have a Davis-type provision doesn't make it toothless. Public financing for all candidates is fine, but equalization provisions have been struck down since Buckley v. Valeo: "But the concept that government may restrict the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment".
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May 15, 2014 22:03
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BUSH 2112 posted:Yes, God forbid that everyone have an equal amount of speech. gently caress. Just loving goddamn. That's "wholly foreign to the first amendment." Burn this loving country down. The analysis in Buckley was excellent, sorry. Trying to stop people from speaking their mind about political issues is wholly foreign. Inequality is a huge problem, but arresting people for publishing newspaper ads attacking a candidate is not the answer. As far as Davis goes, the Millionaire's Amendment to BCRA was, like the rest of it, a blatant attempt at protecting incumbents. I'll let the main supporter speak for himself: John McCain posted:Everyone is scared to death of waking up in the morning and reading in the newspaper that some Fortune 500 CEO or some heir or heiress is gonna run against them and spend $15 million of their own money. And an opponent: Chris Dodd posted:However, it seems to me this is what I would call incumbency protection. We are all incumbents in the Senate. We raise money all the time during our incumbency. Elotana posted:Simply putting the nominal election committees on a public-financing system is toothless now because of Citizens United. Great, Smith for Senate and Jones for Senate now have equal financing. This does gently caress all to prevent local millionaires from pouring money into Concerned Citizens Who Think Smith Is A Turdgoblin [not affiliated with any political party or candidate] run by Jones' campaign director from 2012. McComish ensures those donations can't be significantly equalized, while Citizens United ensures they can't be meaningfully restrained. Do you really think that someone who watched ten ads for Jones and one ad for Smith is even close as ten times as likely to vote for Jones? More to the point, the solution to the "problem" is to reduce inequality itself, not try to gag people after the fact.
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May 15, 2014 23:16
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Samurai Quack posted:Money is not speech. Of course it's not, but the talking point obscures the underlying arguments. Making it illegal to pay for a newspaper or a movie would obviously be unconstitutional.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:04
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Samurai Quack posted:Yes but there are already laws on the books that dictate acceptable content, why can't private adverts smearing one politician or another that don't originate from the a political campaign be barred under a regulation controling truth in advertising and the like? Freedom of speech is already curtailed in certain circumstances, is it really impossible to extend those circumstances to political attack ads? e: Especially ones that lie in the guise of speculation? Because the right to criticize the government is at the very center of what freedom of speech protects. I'm not really sure what "other laws" you're talking about.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:20
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McDowell posted:How do you feel about the deportation of Emma Goldman? Against it. Samurai Quack posted:FCC broadcast regulations and truth in advertising regulations. FCC regulations are all based in the fact that the airwaves are a limited resource and tragedy of the commons needs to be avoided. That said I think content-based FCC rules should be repealed. Truth in advertising laws regulate commercial speech about your own product. Those are easy to enforce. Political speech, on the other hand, is much more gray. The example you brought up of death panels actually has a kernel of truth. It was hyperbolized to an absurd extent, but that's standard for political ads. Another example: Obama seriously stretched the truth when he commented on CU at his SOTU after it. http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/supreme_court_preview/briefs-v3/13-193_pet_amcu_cato-pjo.authcheckdam.pdf
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Jul 6, 2014 01:52
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I'm pretty sure that none of them except for Boyko know about the pony stuff, because most people don't go around helldumping their employees.
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Jul 7, 2014 17:27
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And you've already got Congresspeople who want reform. Lots of them. Just look at the co-sponsors for the pending amendments. Trying to win a few districts won't change much of anything.
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Jul 7, 2014 20:06
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A rich person has just as many votes as you do.
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Jul 8, 2014 16:27
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 17:24 |
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Samurai Quack posted:It's what happens after the votes are cast that matters. Elections happen once every 4 years between a very limited field of potential candidates. Elections happen every two years, and lobbying is not a mysterious magic bullet. They certainly help influence what laws look like, but they generally can't completely change a politician's positions, because they still have to win re-election. The 18th Amendment passed on a huge wave of popular support, and despite the business opposition to it.
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Jul 8, 2014 17:05
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