6 ms·

They're implemented, but the rise of the SuperPAC after Citizens United more or less makes the regulations pointless. I can't contribute more than $2700 to a ca

by deong 9y ago

They're implemented, but the rise of the SuperPAC after Citizens United more or less makes the regulations pointless. I can't contribute more than $2700 to a campaign, but I can contribute $27,000,000 to a PAC that requires only the thinnest imaginable separation from the campaign. Basically, as long as the candidate isn't on TV personally endorsing my check, we're good.

jimmyk 9y ago
What is your alternative to the Citizens United ruling?
- int_19h 9y ago
  The exact opposite of it: money isn't speech, so restrictions on campaign financing aren't infringements on your free speech rights. Not letting you spend millions on campaign ads is not an equivalent of silencing your political opinion - you can still speak, write etc as a private individual, same as any other citizen.
  - jimmyk 9y ago
    >same as any other citizen. Hardly. Some citizens own media outlets and can hire and fire journalists based on their political leanings. Some citizens pay millions of dollars to media outlets for non-political advertising and can adjust their purchases depending on the reporting of the media outlet. Are you going to tell media outlets they can't talk about politics? Or do you disagree that media outlets have influence over elections (at least, more than I do)? I'd guess they have more influence than paid advertisements.
  - bzbarsky 9y ago
    Can I create a video and post it on my private youtube channel, as a private individual? Can I spend $10 million creating the youtube video, if I have that much money as a private individual? Can I organize a group of 10 friends to each spend $1 million on the youtube video? Can I organize 1 million people to spend $10 each on said video? Note that under McCain-Feingold (which is the law that was at issue in Citizens United) the answer to the second question is "yes", as far as I can tell: the law instituted restrictions on corporations and unions, not on rich individuals. Whether the answer is "yes" for the second and third question would have depended on whether youtube counts as "broadcast, cable, or satellite communication" as well as whether a gofundme campaign should fund under the law, and so forth. So it's really not that hard to come up with loopholes around this stuff, if you want to allow spontaneous grassroots production of political youtube videos. (Also, one person's "political ad" is another person's "documentary", often enough; this goes in both directions.)
    - int_19h 9y ago
      Most laws have loopholes, just as most software has bugs. You try to anticipate them when you write the law, and you keep an eye on them and amend the law as necessary.
      - bzbarsky 9y ago
        It's not that simple in this case, because for my first question the answer really needs to be "yes" as a clear First Amendment matter: individual political speech is clearly protected, and video is a common "speech" medium nowadays. So that's a "loophole" that is pretty much required by the Constitution. It's really not clear to me how one can draw a sane line between the first and second question, for this case, unless you want to forbid any political video that actually takes time/effort/money to do research for (see "documentary"). And then the problem becomes that either you privilege the political speech of rich individuals over non-rich ones even more than we already do, or you have to allow non-rich individuals to pool resources to speak. The "loophole" is then.. what exactly? What form the pooling takes? Whether the pooling is voluntary? Something else? I see a lot of people who are unhappy with the Citizens United decision, but not many proposals for what the law on this should be apart from "political speech from organizations I disagree with should not be allowed". For example, I see lots of "corporations shouldn't be able to engage in political speech" but very little of "unions shouldn't be able to engage in political speech" from Citizens United opponents. Amusingly, I see a fair amount of "unions shouldn't be able to engage in political speech" from people who support the Citizens United decision. And I have met absolutely no one who opposes the Citizens United decision and also thinks Michael Moore shouldn't be allowed to create movies in election years. Though I expect such people do exist; there just aren't many of them.
        deong 9y ago
        You're 100% right. What I'd say is that we as a society have to make a choice between preserving the full range of protected speech we all enjoy and curtailing the degree to which the democratic process has been corrupted by the unlimited need for private money to run a campaign. I'm not personally convinced I know which of those two options is preferable, but those are the options. I am fairly well convinced that you can't do the latter without the former.
- deong 9y ago
  I wasn't suggesting I had one. I'm just pointing out that SuperPACs get around pretty much any meaningful prior attempts at regulating campaign contributions. I don't think there is an alternative. What is needed in order to solve the problem is a complete overhaul of how campaigns are financed, including making quite a lot of currently protected speech illegal. And that cure may be worse than the disease. Without it though, politicians will continue to require massive quantities of private cash, and I don't see any way to make that not suck for the country as a whole.
  - jimmyk 9y ago
    What can possibly be done about media outlets, whose owners choose what news gets reported and what slant it takes on so on? The more you restrict the ability of people to pay for advertisements, the more control the media has over what people see.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - deong 9y ago
      Like I said, probably nothing can be done that isn't ultimately likely to be worse. Short of people spontaneously becoming smarter, you'd effectively have to outlaw news outlets deemed to be "too slanted", and even if you could do that (you can't), I'm not so naive as to think a government in control of the press would be in any way better. Basically, it's all fucked, I guess would be my considered opinion. Democracy just doesn't work when half or more of the population can be trivially manipulated into believing anything you want them to believe.

by deong 9y ago

jimmyk 9y ago

What is your alternative to the Citizens United ruling?

int_19h 9y ago
The exact opposite of it: money isn't speech, so restrictions on campaign financing aren't infringements on your free speech rights. Not letting you spend millions on campaign ads is not an equivalent of silencing your political opinion - you can still speak, write etc as a private individual, same as any other citizen.
- jimmyk 9y ago
  >same as any other citizen. Hardly. Some citizens own media outlets and can hire and fire journalists based on their political leanings. Some citizens pay millions of dollars to media outlets for non-political advertising and can adjust their purchases depending on the reporting of the media outlet. Are you going to tell media outlets they can't talk about politics? Or do you disagree that media outlets have influence over elections (at least, more than I do)? I'd guess they have more influence than paid advertisements.
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  Can I create a video and post it on my private youtube channel, as a private individual? Can I spend $10 million creating the youtube video, if I have that much money as a private individual? Can I organize a group of 10 friends to each spend $1 million on the youtube video? Can I organize 1 million people to spend $10 each on said video? Note that under McCain-Feingold (which is the law that was at issue in Citizens United) the answer to the second question is "yes", as far as I can tell: the law instituted restrictions on corporations and unions, not on rich individuals. Whether the answer is "yes" for the second and third question would have depended on whether youtube counts as "broadcast, cable, or satellite communication" as well as whether a gofundme campaign should fund under the law, and so forth. So it's really not that hard to come up with loopholes around this stuff, if you want to allow spontaneous grassroots production of political youtube videos. (Also, one person's "political ad" is another person's "documentary", often enough; this goes in both directions.)
  - int_19h 9y ago
    Most laws have loopholes, just as most software has bugs. You try to anticipate them when you write the law, and you keep an eye on them and amend the law as necessary.
    - bzbarsky 9y ago
      It's not that simple in this case, because for my first question the answer really needs to be "yes" as a clear First Amendment matter: individual political speech is clearly protected, and video is a common "speech" medium nowadays. So that's a "loophole" that is pretty much required by the Constitution. It's really not clear to me how one can draw a sane line between the first and second question, for this case, unless you want to forbid any political video that actually takes time/effort/money to do research for (see "documentary"). And then the problem becomes that either you privilege the political speech of rich individuals over non-rich ones even more than we already do, or you have to allow non-rich individuals to pool resources to speak. The "loophole" is then.. what exactly? What form the pooling takes? Whether the pooling is voluntary? Something else? I see a lot of people who are unhappy with the Citizens United decision, but not many proposals for what the law on this should be apart from "political speech from organizations I disagree with should not be allowed". For example, I see lots of "corporations shouldn't be able to engage in political speech" but very little of "unions shouldn't be able to engage in political speech" from Citizens United opponents. Amusingly, I see a fair amount of "unions shouldn't be able to engage in political speech" from people who support the Citizens United decision. And I have met absolutely no one who opposes the Citizens United decision and also thinks Michael Moore shouldn't be allowed to create movies in election years. Though I expect such people do exist; there just aren't many of them.
      - deong 9y ago
        You're 100% right. What I'd say is that we as a society have to make a choice between preserving the full range of protected speech we all enjoy and curtailing the degree to which the democratic process has been corrupted by the unlimited need for private money to run a campaign. I'm not personally convinced I know which of those two options is preferable, but those are the options. I am fairly well convinced that you can't do the latter without the former.
deong 9y ago
I wasn't suggesting I had one. I'm just pointing out that SuperPACs get around pretty much any meaningful prior attempts at regulating campaign contributions. I don't think there is an alternative. What is needed in order to solve the problem is a complete overhaul of how campaigns are financed, including making quite a lot of currently protected speech illegal. And that cure may be worse than the disease. Without it though, politicians will continue to require massive quantities of private cash, and I don't see any way to make that not suck for the country as a whole.
- jimmyk 9y ago
  What can possibly be done about media outlets, whose owners choose what news gets reported and what slant it takes on so on? The more you restrict the ability of people to pay for advertisements, the more control the media has over what people see.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - deong 9y ago
    Like I said, probably nothing can be done that isn't ultimately likely to be worse. Short of people spontaneously becoming smarter, you'd effectively have to outlaw news outlets deemed to be "too slanted", and even if you could do that (you can't), I'm not so naive as to think a government in control of the press would be in any way better. Basically, it's all fucked, I guess would be my considered opinion. Democracy just doesn't work when half or more of the population can be trivially manipulated into believing anything you want them to believe.