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The problem is that the US Supreme Court said that money is free speech, so covered by the 1st amendment. So much corruption has flowed from that decision that

by bdavisx 10y ago

The problem is that the US Supreme Court said that money is free speech, so covered by the 1st amendment. So much corruption has flowed from that decision that it's almost unbelievable.

afarrell 10y ago
The phenomenon described in the article predates some anti-Hillary nonprofit trying to publish a movie attacking her. Btw, If you want to advance policy around this, I would recommend reading the arguments around it. They are all laid out for the public: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/08-205P.ZX https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/08-205P.ZX
Lazare 10y ago
> the US Supreme Court said that money is free speech That is untrue. The court did not rule that "money is speech", nor did it rule that spending money is a protected activity. Rather, it ruled that spending money can facilitate a protected activity, and that laws which restrict people's ability to participate in protected activities are subject to scrutiny. We can argue about exactly where the line should be drawn, but the framework is in my view obviously correct, and is one which we apply to every other right. Money is not abortion, but that doesn't mean Texas can pass a law saying no one can spend more than $5 on an abortion, because people have a right to choose an abortion, and exercising that right, in some cases, can cost money. > So much corruption has flowed from that decision that it's almost unbelievable. Actually, you're right: I don't believe it. In my experience the most strident critics of the decision rarely understand how limited it was, how little it changed, or how weird the rules were prior to the decision. If I had a dollar for every anti-Citizen's United rant that focused on behaviour which had been legal for decades...
- rayiner 10y ago
  > Money is not abortion, but that doesn't mean Texas can pass a law saying no one can spend more than $5 on an abortion, because people have a right to choose an abortion, and exercising that right, in some cases, can cost money. That's a great analogy, I'm stealing it.
- filoeleven 10y ago
  > The Citizens United decision opened up a peculiar loophole for foreign money. Federal law prohibits “foreign nationals” — a legal term encompassing foreign individuals, corporations and governments — from putting money into the U.S. political process. But federal law also states that any company legally incorporated in the U.S., no matter its ultimate ownership, is a U.S. national. > This was not a significant concern prior to the Citizens United decision, because corporations had been largely barred from spending money on federal elections. By lifting that ban on corporate political donations, Citizens United changed the equation and made it possible for a corporation that is 100 percent owned by foreigners to participate in U.S. politics. [0]https://theintercept.com/2016/09/12/foreign-spending-on-u-s-elections-threatens-national-security-fec-commissioner-says/ https://theintercept.com/2016/09/12/foreign-spending-on-u-s-...
  - afarrell 10y ago
    Regardless, What would prevent Rosneft or Heckler & Koch from producing a video and putting it on youtube, to be shared by people on facebook?
  - Lazare 10y ago
    > This was not a significant concern prior to the Citizens United decision, because corporations had been largely barred from spending money on federal elections In a certain sense, that's technically kind of true. However, here's something else that's true: Prior to Citizens United, any corporation (including a foreign corporations) could contribute unlimited funds to an American front-group which could then spend the funds on lobbying and massive advertising blitzes, subject to almost zero restrictions (and without disclosing the source of the funds!). Basically: You couldn't run an ad that says "vote against Obama!", but you could run an ad that says "Obama is ruining America!", as long as it was more than 60 days prior to an election. Even within the 60 day window you could run ads that criticized his policies in detail so long as you avoided mentioning him by name. The main impact of Citizens United was removing the 60 day window where you could run a massive shadowy ad campaign against, eg, health care reform or gun control so long as you didn't mention the name of the politician advocating for those policies. Now you can run the same ads, but actually say the politicians name. Of course, under the law, a foreign company spending $50m on political ads hammering Obama (or Romney, or whatever) 61 days before the election wasn't "spending money on a federal election", they were just spending money on issue advocacy which happened to mention a candidate and just happened to be 61 days before an election due to a mysterious coincidence. But if the same ad ran two days later it would be a banned "electioneering communication", unless the same content runs without the name, in which case it's fine again. In the real world, all those examples are 99.99% the same. Source: A million places, but this article sums it up nicely: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/magazine/how-much-has-citizens-united-changed-the-political-game.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/magazine/how-much-has-citi...
- joesmo 10y ago
  The result of the ruling, however, has put almost a billion dollars in SuperPACs (https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php) just this election. It really doesn't matter what the details of the decision were--the outcome is selling our elections to the highest bidder.
  - Lazare 10y ago
    > The result of the ruling, however, has put almost a billion dollars in SuperPACs. Absolutely incorrect. There are two issues with your claim: 1. The overwhelming bulk of that money comes from individuals, not corporations, and thus was not restricted by the pre-Citizens United rules. (Billionaires have always been free to spend whatever they like.) 2) Much of that money is being spent on activities which did not count as "express advocacy" or "direct electioneering" under the pre-Citizens United rules, and were thus legal for corporate money to fund. (An ad that talks about Clinton being a terrible person but doesn't expressly tell you to vote for Trump was always legal, even if paid for by corporate money, so long as it ran more than 60 days before the election.) Of the two issues, both undermine your point, but the first is by far the most important. Note, for example, that according to the WaPo, a full 41 percent of that "billion dollars" came from a mere 50 individuals. Corporate money is a sideshow; this election is all about billionaires. And Citizens United didn't change the rules governing individuals. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-new-gilded-age-close-to-half-of-all-super-pac-money-comes-from-50-donors/2016/04/15/63dc363c-01b4-11e6-9d36-33d198ea26c5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-new-gilded-age-c... > the outcome is selling our elections to the highest bidder. Has it occurred to you that much of the outrage over Citizens United has been cynically manufactured by the super-rich to distract you from the actual issue?
    - joesmo 10y ago
      Fair enough. So you're saying that the outrage is manufactured to focus people's attention on how our elections are bought (post Citizens United) instead of how our elections are bought (pre Citizens United)? Or is the actual issue not the fact that our elections are bought? Because to me that seems to have always been the issue and Citizens United just added a littler more money to the pot.

by bdavisx 10y ago

The problem is that the US Supreme Court said that money is free speech, so covered by the 1st amendment. So much corruption has flowed from that decision that it's almost unbelievable.

afarrell 10y ago

The phenomenon described in the article predates some anti-Hillary nonprofit trying to publish a movie attacking her. Btw, If you want to advance policy around this, I would recommend reading the arguments around it. They are all laid out for the public: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/08-205P.ZX https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/08-205P.ZX

Lazare 10y ago

> the US Supreme Court said that money is free speech That is untrue. The court did not rule that "money is speech", nor did it rule that spending money is a protected activity. Rather, it ruled that spending money can facilitate a protected activity, and that laws which restrict people's ability to participate in protected activities are subject to scrutiny. We can argue about exactly where the line should be drawn, but the framework is in my view obviously correct, and is one which we apply to every other right. Money is not abortion, but that doesn't mean Texas can pass a law saying no one can spend more than $5 on an abortion, because people have a right to choose an abortion, and exercising that right, in some cases, can cost money. > So much corruption has flowed from that decision that it's almost unbelievable. Actually, you're right: I don't believe it. In my experience the most strident critics of the decision rarely understand how limited it was, how little it changed, or how weird the rules were prior to the decision. If I had a dollar for every anti-Citizen's United rant that focused on behaviour which had been legal for decades...

rayiner 10y ago
> Money is not abortion, but that doesn't mean Texas can pass a law saying no one can spend more than $5 on an abortion, because people have a right to choose an abortion, and exercising that right, in some cases, can cost money. That's a great analogy, I'm stealing it.
filoeleven 10y ago
> The Citizens United decision opened up a peculiar loophole for foreign money. Federal law prohibits “foreign nationals” — a legal term encompassing foreign individuals, corporations and governments — from putting money into the U.S. political process. But federal law also states that any company legally incorporated in the U.S., no matter its ultimate ownership, is a U.S. national. > This was not a significant concern prior to the Citizens United decision, because corporations had been largely barred from spending money on federal elections. By lifting that ban on corporate political donations, Citizens United changed the equation and made it possible for a corporation that is 100 percent owned by foreigners to participate in U.S. politics. [0]https://theintercept.com/2016/09/12/foreign-spending-on-u-s-elections-threatens-national-security-fec-commissioner-says/ https://theintercept.com/2016/09/12/foreign-spending-on-u-s-...
- afarrell 10y ago
  Regardless, What would prevent Rosneft or Heckler & Koch from producing a video and putting it on youtube, to be shared by people on facebook?
- Lazare 10y ago
  > This was not a significant concern prior to the Citizens United decision, because corporations had been largely barred from spending money on federal elections In a certain sense, that's technically kind of true. However, here's something else that's true: Prior to Citizens United, any corporation (including a foreign corporations) could contribute unlimited funds to an American front-group which could then spend the funds on lobbying and massive advertising blitzes, subject to almost zero restrictions (and without disclosing the source of the funds!). Basically: You couldn't run an ad that says "vote against Obama!", but you could run an ad that says "Obama is ruining America!", as long as it was more than 60 days prior to an election. Even within the 60 day window you could run ads that criticized his policies in detail so long as you avoided mentioning him by name. The main impact of Citizens United was removing the 60 day window where you could run a massive shadowy ad campaign against, eg, health care reform or gun control so long as you didn't mention the name of the politician advocating for those policies. Now you can run the same ads, but actually say the politicians name. Of course, under the law, a foreign company spending $50m on political ads hammering Obama (or Romney, or whatever) 61 days before the election wasn't "spending money on a federal election", they were just spending money on issue advocacy which happened to mention a candidate and just happened to be 61 days before an election due to a mysterious coincidence. But if the same ad ran two days later it would be a banned "electioneering communication", unless the same content runs without the name, in which case it's fine again. In the real world, all those examples are 99.99% the same. Source: A million places, but this article sums it up nicely: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/magazine/how-much-has-citizens-united-changed-the-political-game.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/magazine/how-much-has-citi...
joesmo 10y ago
The result of the ruling, however, has put almost a billion dollars in SuperPACs (https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php) just this election. It really doesn't matter what the details of the decision were--the outcome is selling our elections to the highest bidder.
- Lazare 10y ago
  > The result of the ruling, however, has put almost a billion dollars in SuperPACs. Absolutely incorrect. There are two issues with your claim: 1. The overwhelming bulk of that money comes from individuals, not corporations, and thus was not restricted by the pre-Citizens United rules. (Billionaires have always been free to spend whatever they like.) 2) Much of that money is being spent on activities which did not count as "express advocacy" or "direct electioneering" under the pre-Citizens United rules, and were thus legal for corporate money to fund. (An ad that talks about Clinton being a terrible person but doesn't expressly tell you to vote for Trump was always legal, even if paid for by corporate money, so long as it ran more than 60 days before the election.) Of the two issues, both undermine your point, but the first is by far the most important. Note, for example, that according to the WaPo, a full 41 percent of that "billion dollars" came from a mere 50 individuals. Corporate money is a sideshow; this election is all about billionaires. And Citizens United didn't change the rules governing individuals. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-new-gilded-age-close-to-half-of-all-super-pac-money-comes-from-50-donors/2016/04/15/63dc363c-01b4-11e6-9d36-33d198ea26c5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-new-gilded-age-c... > the outcome is selling our elections to the highest bidder. Has it occurred to you that much of the outrage over Citizens United has been cynically manufactured by the super-rich to distract you from the actual issue?
  - joesmo 10y ago
    Fair enough. So you're saying that the outrage is manufactured to focus people's attention on how our elections are bought (post Citizens United) instead of how our elections are bought (pre Citizens United)? Or is the actual issue not the fact that our elections are bought? Because to me that seems to have always been the issue and Citizens United just added a littler more money to the pot.