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A first big step would be to severely limit campaign spending on advertisement, including SuperPAC money. If you mention your candidate's name, that ad will cou
by GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
A first big step would be to severely limit campaign spending on advertisement, including SuperPAC money. If you mention your candidate's name, that ad will count towards a hard cap on ad spending.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoYou would need to also ban all mentions of the candidate's name in media. Otherwise, a billionaire could get around this by buying a newspaper or tv or radiostation and run programs praising the candidate and maligning the opposition.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rchaud 7y agoIt's already happening. The Bezos-owned Washington Post's Opinions section has been, shall we say, skeptical of the Democratic front-runner in the two primaries/caucuses so far, resulting in this humorous juxtaposition of two stories written by the same columnist: https://i.redd.it/028hqkitate41.jpg https://i.redd.it/028hqkitate41.jpg
- munk-a 7y agoA billionaire would need to direct the newspaper to carry out such actions - if they were directing the newspaper in such a manner it would be a campaign donation, giving a candidate a ferrari counts as a donation since you're giving them something of value, even if the campaign didn't actively solicit the donation - in theory these sorts of media tricks already fall under unrecorded campaign donations that the FEC should be going after, in practice the FEC has no teeth.
- sokoloff 7y agoMy prediction is that you'd see ads for "Universal Basic Income", "2 cent tax on $50 millionaires", "a Senator who can't be bought", or "an experienced White House operator", or whatever else was 1 inch inside the boundary and could fairly clearly be linked to the preferred candidate without "counting".
- dv_dt 7y agoThis could still have a beneficial effect of pushing political discussion towards issues instead of personalities.
- m_ke 7y agoIdeally we'd get rid of the presidency and vote for people at the cabinet level instead.
- jaywalk 7y agoIdeally? Sounds like a clusterf- waiting to happen, far worse than anything we've got now.
- tathougies 7y agoThe president's personality is by far more important than his/her political views given that their views do not matter when it comes to legislation if Congress is aligned.
- pc86 7y ago> or whatever else was 1 inch inside the boundary and could fairly clearly be linked to the preferred candidate without "counting" That is generally how laws work, yes. You explicitly define the exact boundaries within which people/organizations/smaller governments may operate. And they operate exactly within those boundaries. This is why law is complicated and good lawyers make good money. Not because the system is corrupt (it might be) but because you need to draw these explicit boundaries, and then you will have people/organizations/smaller governments try to get around the spirit but follow the letter.
- munk-a 7y agoBoundary pushing is also risky business. There are two kinds of murky areas that exist - ones that are specifically carved out due to the letter of the law and ones that lie between the restricted and the allowed. The former case is where lawyers make really good money - the latter case is where judges reign and precedents are set... If there were a 1964 law that read something like "Sale of consulting services on the topic of banking via remote communication methods (radio, phone, television, or vision-phone) is prohibited when such communication would necessitate crossing a state boundary" then it's extremely likely that a judge would uphold the law as preventing such communication via VOIP if a tech company tried to offer such a service.
- ksdale 7y agoSlateStarCodex has a relevant post on money in politics - https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in-almonds/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in...
- tomp 7y agoTL;DR - there is surprisingly little money in politics. Even the "low billionaires" like Elon Musk (who has like 10 times less money than Gates, Buffet, Bezos, Bloomberg) could easily overspend all other candidates together.
- ksdale 7y agoAlso, corporations spend surprisingly little, like, a rounding error compared to how much they could spend. And there's a cynical response that they are gaining influence in other ways, but it's not like we usually model corporations as agents of great restraint, so why wouldn't they also do way more political spending?
- icebraining 7y agoWhy would they spend more? They're already getting the outcomes they want.
- ksdale 7y agoWhy do they lobby as much as they do if they’re getting everything they want?
- icebraining 7y agoThey are getting what they want because they lobby as much as they do, not in spite of them.
- ksdale 7y ago
- mc32 7y agoWhat do you do about endorsements, newspapers with profiles on politicians, unions telling their members to vote for one or the other. If no/few ads are allowed we’d likely get famous or infamous people running and winning on name recognition mostly.
- ajross 7y agoThe point is NOT that "famous" people have opinions. Of course they do, for the same reason that nobodies like us have opinions. The Wall Street Journal is absolutely welcome to tell you to vote for Trump if you happen to be reading its editorial page. Your union leadership is welcome to tell you they think Warren is great and endorse her; you voted for them and presumably you care about their opinions. Taylor Swift has been known to endorse the occasional candidate too. Shaping our opinions based on those of people we trust is the way things are supposed to work. The problem with paid advertising is that this breaks down. Now it's not the "people" we trust that are telling us this stuff, it's the "places" we go to find those people. There's a difference between Zukerberg telling us who to vote for and Facebook taking money to plaster our feed with Bloomberg ads. So people who are likely to "trust" their Facebook feed (which is most people) are now at the mercy of whoever is willing to pay Facebook the most money.
- mc32 7y agoI don’t see a clear difference between Swift/WSJ telling you something and your FB feed telling you something. I think Gervais had some truth to what he was saying. Famous people have much more gravitas than they deserve (given any expertise on any particular subject they feel is worthy of advancing). I hope you appreciate the irony in this quip.
- icebraining 7y agoI think ajross is OK with Facebook telling you, just on their blog or something, not on ads.
- ummonk 7y agoCan I DoS a candidate by spending a ton on a crappy ad that mentions them? Or heck, even an attack ad against them would count towards the hard cap.
- Consultant32452 7y agoThe problem is "news" organizations have unlimited "spending". So they are free to talk about how great everyone but Bernie/Yang/Tulsi is. They're free to leave them off polling results, exclude them from debates, etc. The marketing value of this type of thing is larger than the combined ad spend by the campaigns or superpacs. Someone did a pretty good job of cataloging this phenomenon for Yang. Bear in mind, this is just the most blatant visual removal of him from conversation and doesn't include the way they frame discussions verbally. https://vocal.media/theSwamp/a-visual-history-of-the-yang-media-blackout https://vocal.media/theSwamp/a-visual-history-of-the-yang-me... If you're going to restrict campaigns, you must also control corporate press lest they just be given all the power to choose our leaders.
- hfdh434535 7y agoI'm sorry - why is Yang entitled to a place in the conversation? I wish his campaign got more attention too. But the lack of coverage he's getting seems related to the fact that he is not well known, he is not as popular as the other candidates, and his ideas are not yet part of the mainstream discourse. You're not entitled to equal time in media coverage because you declared your candidacy. Ideally, journalists would cover the topics they think are important to their audiences. We know this doesn't play out in practice. But even in an ideal world, I don't see Yang getting more coverage.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Consultant32452 7y agoThis phenomenon is not unique to Yang. In 2016 they did the same kinds of things to Bernie, the highest rated senator in the country by polling. I just don't have a Bernie version of that website showing the corporate media putting their favored candidates in front of candidates that are polling higher. But even if you don't think any of that is true, I think it should be obvious that the corporate press will have an oligopoly over our elections. Consider the economic value to the Trump campaign that comes from how Fox News talks about him. Consider the economic value the Dem candidate will get based on how MSNBC talks about them compared to Trump. It's a huge campaign contributions that aren't accounted for by the FEC but are surely an important part of campaigns.
- MR4D 7y agoThe problem is that you can't have that and also have the first Amendment. Of all speech to be protected, the most important speech is political speech. But aside from that, what happens if my spouse runs and ad naming my opponent? Or my neighbor does? Or CNN does - perhaps in an ad for a personal interview to be televised in prime time ? There is no practical way to stop this. There will always be ways around it. But first, that Amendment thing... If you lock down political speech, you no longer have a democracy (yes, I know we are a republic). Because then the government gets to control what is or is not allowed. And I guarantee that whichever party is in power at the moment will use that to try to stay in power. And it's dominoes falling after that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- alexpetralia 7y agoRemoving campaign finance would not impair the content of free political speech, but merely its magnitude to the extent it is amplified by money.
- harryh 7y agoReducing the ability of someone to broadcast their speech is an impairment. What you have said is akin to saying that if the government banned the publishing of certain books that wouldn't be an impairment on the written word because people would still be free to write whatever they wanted down in their own personal notebooks.
- Seenso 7y ago>> Removing campaign finance would not impair the content of free political speech, but merely its magnitude to the extent it is amplified by money. > Reducing the ability of someone to broadcast their speech is an impairment. Not necessarily; it all depends on perspective. Campaign finance restrictions would (relatively) enhance the ability of a not-so-wealthy person to broadcast their speech, because their message wouldn't be so drowned out by the broadcasts of the wealthy.
- OscarCunningham 7y agoSo I just spend ten times over the limit, win, and then I can't be prosecuted.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]