5 ms·

When a group (whether it's citizens with a hobby, a union, a corporation, or a church) sees that government is throwing it's $3 Trillion/year bulk around in the

by tjic 17y ago

When a group (whether it's citizens with a hobby, a union, a corporation, or a church) sees that government is throwing it's $3 Trillion/year bulk around in their neighborhood, they - rationally - try to buy off the government so that it does not destroy them or do them harm. The solution is not to restrict speech - the solution is to get politics out of so many questions by getting the government out of those issues. Once upon a time doctors did not feel the need to lobby the government ... because the government did not feel the need to regulate the prices and conditions under which doctors did their work. Once upon a time target shooters did not feel the need to lobby the government ... because government did not feel the need to regulate every aspect of the hobby of shooting. Lessig is way off base here. He's a big government statist, but he doesn't want folks who disagree with him to have the power to influence the government.

azgolfer 17y ago
Yes and the brilliance of the founders was creating a very limited federal government. The aristocratic senate and the house 'of the people' had to agree. The bill would get vetoed by default. One senator could stop any bill by filibustering. The bill of rights prevented state governments from gettting out of control...
- jbooth 17y ago
  The abuse of the filibuster for one senator to stop a bill is actually a recent parliamentary invention. There's no constitutional mechanism for the filibuster, it's based on senate rules which are adopted every 2 years. Historically, 40 senators could prevent debate from being cut off but they would need to all occupy the chamber and actually be debating the whole time. See Strom Thurmond reading the phone book on the senate floor during the civil rights filibusters, for example. But that took a bunch of time, time you could be at fundraisers or hanging out at home or whatever. So they made it easier over recent years, with the result that the current Senate filibusters more than twice as much as the last one, which itself filibustered more than historically, etc.
  - drags 17y ago
    The tradition of unrestricted Senate debate has been a part of the Senate since the inception of the republic. In fact, prior to 1917, there was no mechanism for ending debate so long as any single senator desired to speak. And given that Congress used to meet much less frequently than it does at present, it was commonplace for bills to be "filibustered" simply because a single senator didn't like the bill, and other more pressing bills (read: supply bills) needed to be taken up before the end of the session. The idea of making someone speak in order to stop debate from ending was even more ludicrous than the idea of waiting out a filibuster (which in itself was ludicrous); it just wasn't even considered as a rational tactic. (For more on the circumstances of this, I would recommend reading Caro's excellent biography of Lyndon Johnson: specifically the third volume "Master of the Senate," where he discusses in depth the South's effectiveness at stopping bills from coming to a vote circa 1957). As for cloture, in its original incarnation (remember, this was only quite recently: 1917) it required 16 senators to file a petition for cloture, at which point 2/3 of those present and voting needed to vote in favor to lead to a vote. However, presiding officers consistently interpreted this Rule as NOT applying to "motions to proceed to consideration of a bill," which are necessary by Senate Rule (from I don't know when, probably since Jefferson's Manual) for making a piece of legislation the main motion. As a result, if you didn't like a bill, you could still always just filibuster the motion to proceed until the late 50s/early 60s when this loophole was closed. Since there were 3-4 votes between the motion to proceed and the final vote on the issue, a group of 10-20 senators (say, the Southern bloc) refusing to allow a bill to come to the floor was more than enough to kil lit. My point is this: the notion that the filibuster is a recently parliamentary invention ignores the 80-some-year period from 187X to 1957 when not a single bill related to racial injustice was passed into law at the federal level. To my knowledge, "the South" was never even in control of 1/3 + 1 of the seats in the Senate chamber, but they still managed to effectively use Senate Rules and precedents to restrict these bills from coming to a vote, and I can't think of a single congressional session during this period that was extended to try to outlast opponents of a bill. It just didn't happen. Today, at least, you can a) get to cloture vote, since the motion to proceed loophole has been closed and b) stand a reasonable chance of succeeding at the cloture vote, since you only need to convince 3/5 of the Senate that something is worth voting on. If there is more technical filibustering right now (by which I suppose one means defeat of cloture motions), then at least there is a public denouement, rather than a policy of simply giving up when a handful of senators express opposition. === Also, two asides: 1. Thurmond's 1957 filibuster only occurred because he wasn't backed by the rest of the Southern Caucus. They chose to allow the bill to come to a vote, presumably because they knew that Lyndon Johnson (majority leader) needed a civil rights bill in order to be a plausible presidential candidate, and they really really wanted a Southern president. 2. The idea that the Senate Rules are readopted every session has never really been accepted by the Senate. Nixon was the first presiding officer to rule as such in 1953 (it may have been 1955) as part of civil rights strategy, but it was overruled on that occasion and on most later occasions. In general, I would say that the prevailing sentiment among Senate parliamentarians is that the Senate is more of a continuous body, and I would expect a real struggle if a majority ever attempted to pass a new set of Senate Rules under the supposed "normal parliamentary rules" under which the Senate debates at the beginning of each session.
- balding_n_tired 17y ago
  The Bill of Rights did not apply to the state governments until the 14th Amendment was interpreted to so apply them. Thus you had established churches in several states during the early years of the republic.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  The way you casually talk about this as if it were some sort of unanimous opinion at the time of the Constitution's drafting suggests that you should do a bit more actual research into the history. And, possibly, into the document itself, which was drafted as a reaction to the failures of a deliberately-crippled central government.
tsally 17y ago
Your analysis is spot on until your last sentence. Not only do you misuse the word statist in a structural sense (government statist is redundant in this context), you incorrectly apply it to Lessig's politics. You're points are valid without your last sentence and I hope you'll get rid of it. I'd like you to explain how these political positions of Lessig are statist please: * Reduced legal restrictions of copyright and patents * Citizen funded campaign finance * Increased government transparency and accountability Clearly he believes the sovereignty of a nation lies with the people, not the government. So again I ask you, without agreeing or disagreeing with Lessig's politics, can you clearly explain why you believe politically Lessig is a statist.
- dpatru 17y ago
  People spend money on politics because they want government to act in a certain way. The spending can be to support or defeat a particular candidate or to insure that existing politicians attach importance to the spenders' interests. In either way, spending is an attempt to exercise some control over government. When a lot of money is spent on politics, a statist sees a restricted government. The statist wants to free government from spenders' influence. The statist wants to give the government more freedom to act. When a lot of money is spent on politics, an anti-statist sees an oppressed people. The anti-statist wants to free the people from government power by decreasing the importance of government. The anti-statist wants to restrict government's freedom and power. Under this framework Lessig is a statist. He sees political spending not as a sign that government is too powerful, but rather that government is not powerful enough to act against the big spenders' interests. Lessig advocates more restrictions on the spenders. He thinks that Citizens United (rebuffing government's attempt to silence corporations) was wrongly decided. Massive political spending is of concern to both statists and anti-statists. For statists, it is a sign that government is not acting independently and disinterestedly in the people's interests. Money is corrupting government. For anti-statists, it is a sign that government is seen by the people as a large threat or a large opportunitiy, neither of which is good because it implies that government is important, which it shouldn't be. Little political spending is viewed favorably by both statists and anti-statists. For statists, it is a sign that special interests see political spending as futile to stop a government from acting in the common interest. For anti-statists, it is a sign that government is too weak to matter very much or is acting so neutrally that no one is complaining.
fnid2 17y ago
what's wrong with allowing each member of that large group to petition congress, to "speak" so to speak independently. If every employee of GM wants to donate $2k to Obama, great, let them. If GM wants to donate $2M to Obama -- no way!
lambda 17y ago
Lobbying the government is fine; lobbying is just asking the government to consider your point of view. This is what Lessig says in his essay; he never asks for restriction of speech. Lessig isn't talking about speech, but money. Money paid directly to campaigns. Money paid to congressmen and their staff as soon as they leave congress, providing an incentive to support those interests that are most likely to hire them afterwards. This is not an issue of free speech; this is an issue of buying laws. Whether you believe in a large or a small government, if established interests can buy laws, they can control congress, and those laws that they buy aren't going to do do anything about making the government that they've paid for smaller and less effective. How are you going to reduce the size of the government without getting rid of the influence of those who benefit directly from government largesse, or from government regulations increasing the cost of mounting effective competition?
- hack_edu 17y ago
  This is a good platform to pose this question as well. Can someone lay down some information about just how money equates speech. Its used so often by now that its meaning is lost, merely a talking point.
  - dantheman 17y ago
    It allows you to pay for pamphlets or tv advertisements so that others can here your message. It actually favors the unknown, those whose opinion won't be covered in the newspaper.
    - natep 17y ago
      I don't see a problem with individuals or corporations sending out pamphlets or putting out ads (because trying to draw the line would be too hard), as long as the source is clearly indicated as not from the candidate. The problem is when a corporation or individual gives so much money to one candidate that he or she is disproportionately responsible for that candidate's victory. This is the reason why we have 1 vote/person. As it is, the wealthy are able to vote with their money, while the poor can only vote at the polls (with limited choices and high risk of disenfranchisement).
samdk 17y ago
Once upon a time people felt the need to lobby their government because they were being killed by their medicine. It's easy to paint a rosy picture of our past. Do government regulations go too far some of the time? Definitely. But they do serve an important purpose in others.
barnaby 17y ago
Don't be Naive! Laws and regulation have never _not_ been up for sale to the highest bidder. So your fictional doctor is only lobbying to reverse the result of previous lobbying. Your fictional "once upon a time" must have been the time when people rode unicorns to work, and nobody ever hungered because elves in trees fed everybody. In the real world money is what makes laws, and Lessig is the closest thing we have to a super-her.
vannevar 17y ago
Once upon a time, charlatans killed people right and left because no one regulated who could claim to be a doctor. Once upon a time, a mob could ransack your house and steal your belongings because there was no law. That's why we invented government. Government starts regulating behavior whenever enough people are adversely affected by that behavior that they demand the regulation. Rather than simply giving in to anarchy as you suggest, let's try to improve democracy.

by tjic 17y ago

azgolfer 17y ago

Yes and the brilliance of the founders was creating a very limited federal government. The aristocratic senate and the house 'of the people' had to agree. The bill would get vetoed by default. One senator could stop any bill by filibustering. The bill of rights prevented state governments from gettting out of control...

jbooth 17y ago
The abuse of the filibuster for one senator to stop a bill is actually a recent parliamentary invention. There's no constitutional mechanism for the filibuster, it's based on senate rules which are adopted every 2 years. Historically, 40 senators could prevent debate from being cut off but they would need to all occupy the chamber and actually be debating the whole time. See Strom Thurmond reading the phone book on the senate floor during the civil rights filibusters, for example. But that took a bunch of time, time you could be at fundraisers or hanging out at home or whatever. So they made it easier over recent years, with the result that the current Senate filibusters more than twice as much as the last one, which itself filibustered more than historically, etc.
- drags 17y ago
  The tradition of unrestricted Senate debate has been a part of the Senate since the inception of the republic. In fact, prior to 1917, there was no mechanism for ending debate so long as any single senator desired to speak. And given that Congress used to meet much less frequently than it does at present, it was commonplace for bills to be "filibustered" simply because a single senator didn't like the bill, and other more pressing bills (read: supply bills) needed to be taken up before the end of the session. The idea of making someone speak in order to stop debate from ending was even more ludicrous than the idea of waiting out a filibuster (which in itself was ludicrous); it just wasn't even considered as a rational tactic. (For more on the circumstances of this, I would recommend reading Caro's excellent biography of Lyndon Johnson: specifically the third volume "Master of the Senate," where he discusses in depth the South's effectiveness at stopping bills from coming to a vote circa 1957). As for cloture, in its original incarnation (remember, this was only quite recently: 1917) it required 16 senators to file a petition for cloture, at which point 2/3 of those present and voting needed to vote in favor to lead to a vote. However, presiding officers consistently interpreted this Rule as NOT applying to "motions to proceed to consideration of a bill," which are necessary by Senate Rule (from I don't know when, probably since Jefferson's Manual) for making a piece of legislation the main motion. As a result, if you didn't like a bill, you could still always just filibuster the motion to proceed until the late 50s/early 60s when this loophole was closed. Since there were 3-4 votes between the motion to proceed and the final vote on the issue, a group of 10-20 senators (say, the Southern bloc) refusing to allow a bill to come to the floor was more than enough to kil lit. My point is this: the notion that the filibuster is a recently parliamentary invention ignores the 80-some-year period from 187X to 1957 when not a single bill related to racial injustice was passed into law at the federal level. To my knowledge, "the South" was never even in control of 1/3 + 1 of the seats in the Senate chamber, but they still managed to effectively use Senate Rules and precedents to restrict these bills from coming to a vote, and I can't think of a single congressional session during this period that was extended to try to outlast opponents of a bill. It just didn't happen. Today, at least, you can a) get to cloture vote, since the motion to proceed loophole has been closed and b) stand a reasonable chance of succeeding at the cloture vote, since you only need to convince 3/5 of the Senate that something is worth voting on. If there is more technical filibustering right now (by which I suppose one means defeat of cloture motions), then at least there is a public denouement, rather than a policy of simply giving up when a handful of senators express opposition. === Also, two asides: 1. Thurmond's 1957 filibuster only occurred because he wasn't backed by the rest of the Southern Caucus. They chose to allow the bill to come to a vote, presumably because they knew that Lyndon Johnson (majority leader) needed a civil rights bill in order to be a plausible presidential candidate, and they really really wanted a Southern president. 2. The idea that the Senate Rules are readopted every session has never really been accepted by the Senate. Nixon was the first presiding officer to rule as such in 1953 (it may have been 1955) as part of civil rights strategy, but it was overruled on that occasion and on most later occasions. In general, I would say that the prevailing sentiment among Senate parliamentarians is that the Senate is more of a continuous body, and I would expect a real struggle if a majority ever attempted to pass a new set of Senate Rules under the supposed "normal parliamentary rules" under which the Senate debates at the beginning of each session.
balding_n_tired 17y ago
The Bill of Rights did not apply to the state governments until the 14th Amendment was interpreted to so apply them. Thus you had established churches in several states during the early years of the republic.
ubernostrum 17y ago
The way you casually talk about this as if it were some sort of unanimous opinion at the time of the Constitution's drafting suggests that you should do a bit more actual research into the history. And, possibly, into the document itself, which was drafted as a reaction to the failures of a deliberately-crippled central government.

tsally 17y ago

Your analysis is spot on until your last sentence. Not only do you misuse the word statist in a structural sense (government statist is redundant in this context), you incorrectly apply it to Lessig's politics. You're points are valid without your last sentence and I hope you'll get rid of it. I'd like you to explain how these political positions of Lessig are statist please: * Reduced legal restrictions of copyright and patents * Citizen funded campaign finance * Increased government transparency and accountability Clearly he believes the sovereignty of a nation lies with the people, not the government. So again I ask you, without agreeing or disagreeing with Lessig's politics, can you clearly explain why you believe politically Lessig is a statist.

dpatru 17y ago
People spend money on politics because they want government to act in a certain way. The spending can be to support or defeat a particular candidate or to insure that existing politicians attach importance to the spenders' interests. In either way, spending is an attempt to exercise some control over government. When a lot of money is spent on politics, a statist sees a restricted government. The statist wants to free government from spenders' influence. The statist wants to give the government more freedom to act. When a lot of money is spent on politics, an anti-statist sees an oppressed people. The anti-statist wants to free the people from government power by decreasing the importance of government. The anti-statist wants to restrict government's freedom and power. Under this framework Lessig is a statist. He sees political spending not as a sign that government is too powerful, but rather that government is not powerful enough to act against the big spenders' interests. Lessig advocates more restrictions on the spenders. He thinks that Citizens United (rebuffing government's attempt to silence corporations) was wrongly decided. Massive political spending is of concern to both statists and anti-statists. For statists, it is a sign that government is not acting independently and disinterestedly in the people's interests. Money is corrupting government. For anti-statists, it is a sign that government is seen by the people as a large threat or a large opportunitiy, neither of which is good because it implies that government is important, which it shouldn't be. Little political spending is viewed favorably by both statists and anti-statists. For statists, it is a sign that special interests see political spending as futile to stop a government from acting in the common interest. For anti-statists, it is a sign that government is too weak to matter very much or is acting so neutrally that no one is complaining.

fnid2 17y ago

what's wrong with allowing each member of that large group to petition congress, to "speak" so to speak independently. If every employee of GM wants to donate $2k to Obama, great, let them. If GM wants to donate $2M to Obama -- no way!

lambda 17y ago

Lobbying the government is fine; lobbying is just asking the government to consider your point of view. This is what Lessig says in his essay; he never asks for restriction of speech. Lessig isn't talking about speech, but money. Money paid directly to campaigns. Money paid to congressmen and their staff as soon as they leave congress, providing an incentive to support those interests that are most likely to hire them afterwards. This is not an issue of free speech; this is an issue of buying laws. Whether you believe in a large or a small government, if established interests can buy laws, they can control congress, and those laws that they buy aren't going to do do anything about making the government that they've paid for smaller and less effective. How are you going to reduce the size of the government without getting rid of the influence of those who benefit directly from government largesse, or from government regulations increasing the cost of mounting effective competition?

hack_edu 17y ago
This is a good platform to pose this question as well. Can someone lay down some information about just how money equates speech. Its used so often by now that its meaning is lost, merely a talking point.
- dantheman 17y ago
  It allows you to pay for pamphlets or tv advertisements so that others can here your message. It actually favors the unknown, those whose opinion won't be covered in the newspaper.
  - natep 17y ago
    I don't see a problem with individuals or corporations sending out pamphlets or putting out ads (because trying to draw the line would be too hard), as long as the source is clearly indicated as not from the candidate. The problem is when a corporation or individual gives so much money to one candidate that he or she is disproportionately responsible for that candidate's victory. This is the reason why we have 1 vote/person. As it is, the wealthy are able to vote with their money, while the poor can only vote at the polls (with limited choices and high risk of disenfranchisement).

samdk 17y ago

Once upon a time people felt the need to lobby their government because they were being killed by their medicine. It's easy to paint a rosy picture of our past. Do government regulations go too far some of the time? Definitely. But they do serve an important purpose in others.

barnaby 17y ago

Don't be Naive! Laws and regulation have never _not_ been up for sale to the highest bidder. So your fictional doctor is only lobbying to reverse the result of previous lobbying. Your fictional "once upon a time" must have been the time when people rode unicorns to work, and nobody ever hungered because elves in trees fed everybody. In the real world money is what makes laws, and Lessig is the closest thing we have to a super-her.

vannevar 17y ago

Once upon a time, charlatans killed people right and left because no one regulated who could claim to be a doctor. Once upon a time, a mob could ransack your house and steal your belongings because there was no law. That's why we invented government. Government starts regulating behavior whenever enough people are adversely affected by that behavior that they demand the regulation. Rather than simply giving in to anarchy as you suggest, let's try to improve democracy.