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Citizens United made and sold a documentary. There's no difference between that and HBO, spending limits are ultimately an attack on independent media and new

Citizens United made and sold a documentary. There's no difference between that and HBO, spending limits are ultimately an attack on independent media and new media.

ethbro 8y ago
If you equate money spent on political advertising with votes (which I believe has strong empirical support), then failure to regulate inevitably devolves democracy into plutocracy. Assuming that's not desired, the question then becomes how best to balance free speech with equalizing commercial political speech.
- bmelton 8y ago
  And according to the Supreme Court, many times over, the very purpose of the first amendment is to protect speech, and the most important form of speech to protect is political speech. Yes, there are downsides to unfettered speech, but freedom means having to let other people do things I don't like, and in exchange, I can do things they don't like. If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then you can limit the federal powers available for purchase without curtailing the freedom of the citizenry to engage in political speech as they choose.
  - grandmczeb 8y ago
    > If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then you can limit the federal powers available for purchase without curtailing the freedom of the citizenry to engage in political speech as they choose. This is an excellent point.
    - Pyxl101 8y ago
      Furthermore, it is not well-defined which speech is "political" speech, and which is not. What cause is it possible to advocate for that is not political in some way? If the business of politics and government is passing and implementing laws, then nearly any issue is or can be political in nature. If I advocate for regulating or not regulating the Internet, software, app stores, data privacy (a la GDPR), or basically anything else, then that can be construed as political.
      - bmelton 8y ago
        If we're already in the business of protecting speech, then why does it matter whether a given speech is political enough to warrant protection?
    - squiggleblaz 8y ago
      Actually it isn't. (a) The money has an outsized power to argue for an increase in available powers as I said upthread since I couldn't reply here. (b) Democracies seem to work better and more stably when votes make a difference. If there's a full house of people wanting to shift in a certain direction the democratic principle is that the shift in that direction should happen. Otherwise democracy becomes a sham and its institutions shed trust. This creates precisely the atmosphere for antidemocratic or unliberal people to gain power. If you can vote for someone who supports your views but they can't implement them while they're operating in the system, why not vote for someone who supports your views and is willing to ignore the system to get it. And what will all checks and balances do in that environment! If you like liberal government (in the traditional sense not the partisan sense), the most effective way to get it is to encourage liberal preferences in the electorate.
      - bmelton 8y ago
        Your response assumes that without the federal government doing something, nobody will do it, but that misses the fact that we have 50 state governments and DC perfectly capable of regulating themselves. Past that, local elections already matter more in one's day to day life than federal elections, and those votes will have even more value as the role of the states grow.
        squiggleblaz 8y ago
        It doesn't assume that - it assumes that if it's bad when the federal government gets involved with something, it's equally bad when the state government gets involved. For instance, this thread is about a state pursuing large tech companies on what can be described as free speech violations. But I've never seen anyone argue that it's okay for a state government to ban free speech, but it's not okay for the federal government.
        bmelton 8y ago
        > it assumes that if it's bad when the federal government gets involved with something, it's equally bad when the state government gets involved Which in my opinion is a broadly false assumption, and ignores the very point of a federal republic, which is federalism. People in different states have different cultures, different norms, different geographies, different natural resources, different pastimes, different porn habits, different cuisines, etc. State legislatures are closer to their voting populace than federal legislatures, and thus, people's interests can be more directly reflected by voting more locally. I agree that a state trampling on your rights is functionally no better than if a federal government does so, but you have more recourse against a state government doing so, more opportunities for remedy, and more ways in which to steer the ship right where those violations are regular.
  - ethbro 8y ago
    > If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then you can limit the federal powers available for purchase without curtailing the freedom of the citizenry to engage in political speech as they choose. I may be missing something obvious, but how do you suggest this could be done?
    - bmelton 8y ago
      There are a lot of ways. For one, an adversarial congress is a feature, not a bug. We've seen already that as congress has become more polarized, lobbyist dollars have moved from federal to state in droves. Limit the scope and power of the Interstate Commerce Clause. Most modern interpretations are based on Wickard v. Fillburn's "Well, if everybody did it, it might affect interstate commerce" interpretation, which I find flawed, and which gives the federal government outsized power over the states. It is through ICC power, for example, that the federal government was putting state-legal dispensary workers in federal prison, for example. States need to reclaim their 10th amendment rights. We've seen an uptick in that recently, with many states adopting gay marriage in defiance of DOMA, or allowing marijuana usage in defiance of federal law, or more recently with Vermont (or maybe CT?) allowing prescription drugs to be purchased from out of country. Disallow regulatory bodies from having effective power to make laws. Laws should be made by Congress, and so long as agencies are beholden to the executive, and they can make rules that have law-making power, congress has abrogated its duty, and gives far too much power to <insert president's name here>. Past that, you achieve electoral results the same way you achieve any political end -- voting in the people who espouse your aims, voting out those who don't. You know who to vote for by maintaining your political savvy, from reading both sides of news articles, by holding both sides accountable, even when you happen to like them, and by being eternally vigilant to the laws, the law makers, and exploring the intended and unintended side effects of "good" laws.
      - ethbro 8y ago
        Devolving power to the states doesn't solve the problem, because state governments are also democratically elected. The central tenet is "If money can be used to buy votes, then how do you have a democracy?" Nothing you've said above seems to address that, nor anything I can think of, in a world with an absolute right to spend money to promote ones own or preferred speech.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    When they made that decision, multiple members of the court assumed there were proper disclosure regulations in place. There weren't. "If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then you can limit the federal powers available for purchase without curtailing the freedom of the citizenry to engage in political speech as they choose." And where do you think that power is going to go? It's not going to disapear into the ether.
- squiggleblaz 8y ago
  (replying here since i can't reply to another comment - even though it already has a child) > If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then you can limit the federal powers available for purchase without curtailing the freedom of the citizenry to engage in political speech as they choose. That's completely not a solution. But if Jo Squillionaire wants people to have the freedom to contract their labor to a certain company indefinitely in the future, then Jo Squillionaire has the capacity to advertise enough to buy back that right. But I don't necessarily have the capacity to contradict him. A more effective solution would simply be to limit a person's capacity to accrue wealth. If there's proper income and/or wealth taxes in place people can be rich enough without being too rich.
- smsm42 8y ago
  > which I believe has strong empirical support What is that strong support? We routinely see very well-moneyed campaigns lose. In the very last election in the US the losing candidate outspent the winning one - if you look at Super-PAC spending (which is the one considered most "dark and dangerous", right?) the losing campaign had gathered 3x from the winning one ($189.4M against $59.3M). Somehow turned out having money is not enough. So I'd like to see what you call "strong empirical support".
  - ethbro 8y ago
    As you noted, it's a complicated relationship [1], consequently the only place we'd be likely to see a reliable result is in aggregate. Correlation is not causation, but congressional campaigns in 2012 that outspent their opponent won 91% of the time [2]. One of the clearer links is to voter turnout. I've read it takes between $5-20 to reliably motivate a voter to vote. Sans this minimum level of funding, your supporters don't go to the polls, and you don't win. As for the 2016 election you note, general consensus is that the difference in funding was largely erased by media time (itself one of the primary reasons to spend money in the first place!), where Trump's approach held a clear (and cheap) advantage [3]. More broadly speaking, post-Citizens, we're in an era where we actually don't know how much "money with intent of political influence" is being spent. It's legally debatable enough that a group can now say, "This is my personal or commercial speech, so I'm not registering with the FEC." [1] http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-spending-influence-the-election-a-freakonomics-quorum/ http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-sp... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/04/think-money-doesnt-matter-in-elections-this-chart-says-youre-wrong/?utm_term=.b8b66c8a91a0 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/04/th... [3] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/04/election-2016-trump-fewer-donors-provided-more-of-the-cash/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/04/election-2016-trump...
    - smsm42 8y ago
      > Sans this minimum level of funding, your supporters don't go to the polls, and you don't win. Ah, of course, you have the minimum funding to get your message out, I do not doubt that for a minute. There's a minimum level beyond which you can not mount a successful campaign. But beyond that level, the link between dollars and votes becomes much less direct and obvious. > general consensus is that the difference in funding was largely erased by media time Yeah, of course, Trump used this trick. But the next one might use another trick. The common thread is that there are many ways to conduct the campaign, and dollars alone do not mean victory. > we're in an era where we actually don't know how much "money with intent of political influence" is being spent. Not exactly, but organizations with influence on national scale are not exactly invisible, and their ad spending is not secret too. I mean, you can't exactly hide a public electoral ad, right? And knowing how much ads were run (public info) and what is a typical spot price for an ad (public info), and the same for rallies, etc. one can estimate the spending if not entirely accurately, then with enough accuracy to be able to reason about it, I think. Of course, this does not account for things like free airtime given by networks to a popular entertaining personality or other ways to buy exposure for cheap, but this only underlines the point that dollars is not everything.

Citizens United made and sold a documentary. There's no difference between that and HBO, spending limits are ultimately an attack on independent media and new media.

ethbro 8y ago

If you equate money spent on political advertising with votes (which I believe has strong empirical support), then failure to regulate inevitably devolves democracy into plutocracy. Assuming that's not desired, the question then becomes how best to balance free speech with equalizing commercial political speech.

bmelton 8y ago
And according to the Supreme Court, many times over, the very purpose of the first amendment is to protect speech, and the most important form of speech to protect is political speech. Yes, there are downsides to unfettered speech, but freedom means having to let other people do things I don't like, and in exchange, I can do things they don't like. If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then you can limit the federal powers available for purchase without curtailing the freedom of the citizenry to engage in political speech as they choose.
- grandmczeb 8y ago
  > If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then you can limit the federal powers available for purchase without curtailing the freedom of the citizenry to engage in political speech as they choose. This is an excellent point.
  - Pyxl101 8y ago
    Furthermore, it is not well-defined which speech is "political" speech, and which is not. What cause is it possible to advocate for that is not political in some way? If the business of politics and government is passing and implementing laws, then nearly any issue is or can be political in nature. If I advocate for regulating or not regulating the Internet, software, app stores, data privacy (a la GDPR), or basically anything else, then that can be construed as political.
    - bmelton 8y ago
      If we're already in the business of protecting speech, then why does it matter whether a given speech is political enough to warrant protection?
  - squiggleblaz 8y ago
    Actually it isn't. (a) The money has an outsized power to argue for an increase in available powers as I said upthread since I couldn't reply here. (b) Democracies seem to work better and more stably when votes make a difference. If there's a full house of people wanting to shift in a certain direction the democratic principle is that the shift in that direction should happen. Otherwise democracy becomes a sham and its institutions shed trust. This creates precisely the atmosphere for antidemocratic or unliberal people to gain power. If you can vote for someone who supports your views but they can't implement them while they're operating in the system, why not vote for someone who supports your views and is willing to ignore the system to get it. And what will all checks and balances do in that environment! If you like liberal government (in the traditional sense not the partisan sense), the most effective way to get it is to encourage liberal preferences in the electorate.
    - bmelton 8y ago
      Your response assumes that without the federal government doing something, nobody will do it, but that misses the fact that we have 50 state governments and DC perfectly capable of regulating themselves. Past that, local elections already matter more in one's day to day life than federal elections, and those votes will have even more value as the role of the states grow.
      - squiggleblaz 8y ago
        It doesn't assume that - it assumes that if it's bad when the federal government gets involved with something, it's equally bad when the state government gets involved. For instance, this thread is about a state pursuing large tech companies on what can be described as free speech violations. But I've never seen anyone argue that it's okay for a state government to ban free speech, but it's not okay for the federal government.
        bmelton 8y ago
        > it assumes that if it's bad when the federal government gets involved with something, it's equally bad when the state government gets involved Which in my opinion is a broadly false assumption, and ignores the very point of a federal republic, which is federalism. People in different states have different cultures, different norms, different geographies, different natural resources, different pastimes, different porn habits, different cuisines, etc. State legislatures are closer to their voting populace than federal legislatures, and thus, people's interests can be more directly reflected by voting more locally. I agree that a state trampling on your rights is functionally no better than if a federal government does so, but you have more recourse against a state government doing so, more opportunities for remedy, and more ways in which to steer the ship right where those violations are regular.
- ethbro 8y ago
  > If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then you can limit the federal powers available for purchase without curtailing the freedom of the citizenry to engage in political speech as they choose. I may be missing something obvious, but how do you suggest this could be done?
  - bmelton 8y ago
    There are a lot of ways. For one, an adversarial congress is a feature, not a bug. We've seen already that as congress has become more polarized, lobbyist dollars have moved from federal to state in droves. Limit the scope and power of the Interstate Commerce Clause. Most modern interpretations are based on Wickard v. Fillburn's "Well, if everybody did it, it might affect interstate commerce" interpretation, which I find flawed, and which gives the federal government outsized power over the states. It is through ICC power, for example, that the federal government was putting state-legal dispensary workers in federal prison, for example. States need to reclaim their 10th amendment rights. We've seen an uptick in that recently, with many states adopting gay marriage in defiance of DOMA, or allowing marijuana usage in defiance of federal law, or more recently with Vermont (or maybe CT?) allowing prescription drugs to be purchased from out of country. Disallow regulatory bodies from having effective power to make laws. Laws should be made by Congress, and so long as agencies are beholden to the executive, and they can make rules that have law-making power, congress has abrogated its duty, and gives far too much power to <insert president's name here>. Past that, you achieve electoral results the same way you achieve any political end -- voting in the people who espouse your aims, voting out those who don't. You know who to vote for by maintaining your political savvy, from reading both sides of news articles, by holding both sides accountable, even when you happen to like them, and by being eternally vigilant to the laws, the law makers, and exploring the intended and unintended side effects of "good" laws.
    - ethbro 8y ago
      Devolving power to the states doesn't solve the problem, because state governments are also democratically elected. The central tenet is "If money can be used to buy votes, then how do you have a democracy?" Nothing you've said above seems to address that, nor anything I can think of, in a world with an absolute right to spend money to promote ones own or preferred speech.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  When they made that decision, multiple members of the court assumed there were proper disclosure regulations in place. There weren't. "If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then you can limit the federal powers available for purchase without curtailing the freedom of the citizenry to engage in political speech as they choose." And where do you think that power is going to go? It's not going to disapear into the ether.
squiggleblaz 8y ago
(replying here since i can't reply to another comment - even though it already has a child) > If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then you can limit the federal powers available for purchase without curtailing the freedom of the citizenry to engage in political speech as they choose. That's completely not a solution. But if Jo Squillionaire wants people to have the freedom to contract their labor to a certain company indefinitely in the future, then Jo Squillionaire has the capacity to advertise enough to buy back that right. But I don't necessarily have the capacity to contradict him. A more effective solution would simply be to limit a person's capacity to accrue wealth. If there's proper income and/or wealth taxes in place people can be rich enough without being too rich.
smsm42 8y ago
> which I believe has strong empirical support What is that strong support? We routinely see very well-moneyed campaigns lose. In the very last election in the US the losing candidate outspent the winning one - if you look at Super-PAC spending (which is the one considered most "dark and dangerous", right?) the losing campaign had gathered 3x from the winning one ($189.4M against $59.3M). Somehow turned out having money is not enough. So I'd like to see what you call "strong empirical support".
- ethbro 8y ago
  As you noted, it's a complicated relationship [1], consequently the only place we'd be likely to see a reliable result is in aggregate. Correlation is not causation, but congressional campaigns in 2012 that outspent their opponent won 91% of the time [2]. One of the clearer links is to voter turnout. I've read it takes between $5-20 to reliably motivate a voter to vote. Sans this minimum level of funding, your supporters don't go to the polls, and you don't win. As for the 2016 election you note, general consensus is that the difference in funding was largely erased by media time (itself one of the primary reasons to spend money in the first place!), where Trump's approach held a clear (and cheap) advantage [3]. More broadly speaking, post-Citizens, we're in an era where we actually don't know how much "money with intent of political influence" is being spent. It's legally debatable enough that a group can now say, "This is my personal or commercial speech, so I'm not registering with the FEC." [1] http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-spending-influence-the-election-a-freakonomics-quorum/ http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-sp... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/04/think-money-doesnt-matter-in-elections-this-chart-says-youre-wrong/?utm_term=.b8b66c8a91a0 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/04/th... [3] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/04/election-2016-trump-fewer-donors-provided-more-of-the-cash/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/04/election-2016-trump...
  - smsm42 8y ago
    > Sans this minimum level of funding, your supporters don't go to the polls, and you don't win. Ah, of course, you have the minimum funding to get your message out, I do not doubt that for a minute. There's a minimum level beyond which you can not mount a successful campaign. But beyond that level, the link between dollars and votes becomes much less direct and obvious. > general consensus is that the difference in funding was largely erased by media time Yeah, of course, Trump used this trick. But the next one might use another trick. The common thread is that there are many ways to conduct the campaign, and dollars alone do not mean victory. > we're in an era where we actually don't know how much "money with intent of political influence" is being spent. Not exactly, but organizations with influence on national scale are not exactly invisible, and their ad spending is not secret too. I mean, you can't exactly hide a public electoral ad, right? And knowing how much ads were run (public info) and what is a typical spot price for an ad (public info), and the same for rallies, etc. one can estimate the spending if not entirely accurately, then with enough accuracy to be able to reason about it, I think. Of course, this does not account for things like free airtime given by networks to a popular entertaining personality or other ways to buy exposure for cheap, but this only underlines the point that dollars is not everything.