4 ms·

Citizens to End SuperPACs

71 points by xrd 2y ago

vecplane 2y ago
The details seem to be concentrated in this YouTube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFrVcTmxycg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFrVcTmxycg I'm not pursuaded by this argument. Good luck trying to fight against freedom of speech.
brainwad 2y ago
This argument has little chance. To avoid the quid-pro-quo problem, [edit: super]PACs already avoid coordinating with politicians' campaigns. They create and distribute their own copy, that expresses their donors' own political views, which is protected speech. If politicians are corrupted by people publically saying nice things about them, that doesn't seem a good enough reason to infringe on speech rights. Prosecute the corruption directly.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > PACs already avoid coordinating with politicians' campaigns. No, they don't. Most PACs do and are allowed to coordinate with candidate campaigns, SuperPACs are legally prohibited from it, but also regularly do (sometimes with "hacks" like coordination by multiparty public signalling, but also fairly often just by outright violations of the rules, which are poorly enforced -- investigations are rare, and even they occur and violations are found and penalties are imposed, they are too delayed and too small to make it not worthwhile to violate the rules routinely.)
  - richwater 2y ago
    source?
    - ohmyiv 2y ago
      https://ballotpedia.org/PACs_and_Super_PACs https://ballotpedia.org/PACs_and_Super_PACs
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      Most kinds of PACs aren't banned from coordination: https://www.fec.gov/press/resources-journalists/political-action-committees-pacs/ https://www.fec.gov/press/resources-journalists/political-ac... Rampant coordination: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/08/super-pac-fec-limits-00150672 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/08/super-pac-fec-limit... Weak enforcement: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/fec-still-failing-enforce-campaign-laws-heads-capitol-hill https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/fec-... (Though I did make a mistake, I misremembered the small fines for soliciting large foreign donations as small fines for coordination; in fact, the FEC has never fined any PAC anything for coordination.)
  - brainwad 2y ago
    So there's no need to ban super PACs, just a need to enforce the existing rules? Sounds more workable than a state constitutional initiative that directly contradicts a SCOTUS ruling...
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      The problem is that the current enforcement by an "independent" (bipartisan, and in this case balanced) commission enables partisans of either party to block enforcement, traditional executive enforcement would raise the possibility of enforcement becoming (if nothing else, by negative action) biased for the current executive. Maybe you could open up private litigation to enforce it, which reduces the bias problem to the bias of the courts and the usual problems of bias for resources to litigate, which might seem the minimally dysfunctional approach if it wasn't for the Supreme Court being in the middle of a brazen corruption crisis of its own. This is an area which has a very big quis custodiet ipsos custodes problem, "just enforce the rules" as a solution kind of just skips over the fundamental challenge.
caesil 2y ago
It's very difficult to parse this https://www.citizenstoendsuperpacs.org/faqs https://www.citizenstoendsuperpacs.org/faqs Is the idea that they will raise money and then engage in quid pro quo corruption, thus proving it is possible?
richwater 2y ago
[flagged]
bwanab 2y ago
Next thing you know they're going to try to tell us that anonymous political funding by foreign adversaries and non-state actors isn't a good idea.
dinkleberg 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
prydt 2y ago
[flagged]
- richwater 2y ago
  If Bob has free speech to run ads about how bad Issue X is, and Joe has free speech to run ads about how bad Issue X is, why shouldn't Bob and Joe be allowed to combine their money, find others with similar opinions and run ads about how bad Issue X is?
  - neeleshs 2y ago
    I am not very knowledgeable about freedom of speech laws in the US, but is it limited to individuals, or is it very broad, including organizations, coalitions and partnerships of multiple people as well?
    - brainwad 2y ago
      There's also in the same clause freedom of the press. So yes, it's explicit that you can band together with others to freely publish your joint speech.
    - sofixa 2y ago
      In the US, the joke is that companies/organisations are people in terms of rights (to do damage), but not in terms of responsibilities. When Boeing or any of the oil giants or a megachurch/any other cult kill or defraud people, the organisation doesn't go to prison. There's a small fine, cost of doing business, nothing more.
    - ivan_gammel 2y ago
      The Supreme Court once made a very weird decision granting freedom of free speech to corporations: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC This is the moment when USA started morphing from a republic to oligarchy.
      - 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
AlbertCory 2y ago
"Get money out of politics" -- one of the all-time juvenile ideas. And ideologically biased as well: they really mean "make it so only people with a lot of time on their hands, like us, will be able to participate in politics."
- votepaunchy 2y ago
  It’s not just “time on their hands”, it’s the taxpayer funded NGO-industrial complex that is the circularity system of today’s political system.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    True. Make your org a non-profit, then use tax-deductible contributions to hire "activists."
andy_ppp 2y ago
One person’s freedom of speech is another person’s propaganda undermining everything important in society. How is bribery not a type of free speech for example? Most countries have decided that during elections people spending huge sums of money is not going to lead to good government, but who knows.
- naveen99 2y ago
  One person’s charity, is another’s tip is another person’s bribe, is another’s lobbying.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  Sure but much like monopoly and guns, at a certain they become a severe detriment to society. Everything has a limit, I think it’s time we revisit those borders in court. However, I think current SCOTUS would double down on Citizens and increase it’s influence in some manner. Another big one is why if someone can see my donations to political parties, why are super pacs allowed to hide who the dark money is coming from? Seems like a no-brainer to make it publicly available. If I find some restaurant chain I frequent is donating millions to someone promoting fascism, I’d love to be able to give my business to another restaurant chain
zeroCalories 2y ago
If money in politics is so important why wasn't Sanders or Bloomberg able to win the Democratic primaries crying emoji
- rayiner 2y ago
  And why did Trump beat Clinton, who outspent him 2:1? Why is Trump running even with Biden, despite Biden having a huge fundraising advantage? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/briefing/biden-campaign-money.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/briefing/biden-campaign-m... Most campaign funds are spent on ads, and ads don’t really persuade voters. When was the last time a political ad even registered to you? I think campaigns spend a lot of money for the same reason we spend lots of money on interventions at the end of life. It’s more a psychological thing because the stakes are high than the money actually having a major impact on the outcome.
  - falcolas 2y ago
    > When was the last time a political ad even registered to you? They're not targeting you. Or me. Or 99.9% of the folks on this board. They're targeting their efforts at the undecided middle who are not sure who they'll vote for, or even if they'll vote. The ones who hear "Genocide Joe" or "Von Shitsinpants" and don't apply any further critical thinking. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in swing states just doing "grassroots" get-out-and-vote campaigns.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      I'm one of those people, and I don't think advertisements are effective on any of them. I think that's proven true empirically. In 2016, Clinton massively outspent Trump, but Trump broke the "blue wall" by winning over a bunch of Obama 2008 voters. If you look at polling over the last six months, Trump has significantly increased his support among working class Hispanics, and materially increased his support among black people. But Biden has spent two to three times as much as Trump on advertising: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/22/politics/advertising-election-biden-trump/index.html# https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/22/politics/advertising-election.... I think what you're really seeing with these voters is that they don't line up ideologically with either party, so their voting is highly context-dependent. They vote based on their perception of what's going on in the country. My wife and I are going to vote Trump in 2024, after voting for Biden in 2020, because of immigration, affirmative action, New York's prosecution of Trump, etc. The salience of these issues changes from election-to-election. In 2020, Biden was the pro-vaccination candidate, and in 2024, he's the pro-immigration candidate, and those two things cuts in different directions for many voters. But I don't think advertisements can change anyone's views on those issues. Obviously, cable news, Tik Tok, Facebook, etc., shape people's views on those issues (or rather, people's perception of the salience of those issues), but the candidates can't control that. I think you're correct that the grassroots get-out-and-vote campaigns have a large impact, but I think that's also very different from money spent on ads. That's about each party turning out its base to actually go vote, not really influencing people through mass media. Is it a bad thing that money is spent doing that?
rayiner 2y ago
Complaining among the first amendment applying to corporations (you know, like the ACLU) with a second Trump term looming … is a choice.
saghm 2y ago
This is my first time encountering the issue myself rather than reading about it in an existing comment, but with JavaScript disabled the site doesn't render any text at all; it only showed up after I end enabled it for both this domain and `squarespace.com`. As far as I can tell, the only part of the rendering that's dynamic is the content slowly fading in as I scrolled (possibly with some faux scroll-like effect rather than actually native scrolling). I assume from the need to whitelist squarespace.com that this is more likely to due to something done on that platform rather than an intentional decision by a developer, but it's unnecessary for a site with some basic text styling and an image or two not to just render the content without animations when JavaScript is disabled. Has anyone here used Squarespace before, and if so, is this typical for sites made with it?

71 points by xrd 2y ago

The details seem to be concentrated in this YouTube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFrVcTmxycg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFrVcTmxycg I'm not pursuaded by this argument. Good luck trying to fight against freedom of speech.

brainwad 2y ago

This argument has little chance. To avoid the quid-pro-quo problem, [edit: super]PACs already avoid coordinating with politicians' campaigns. They create and distribute their own copy, that expresses their donors' own political views, which is protected speech. If politicians are corrupted by people publically saying nice things about them, that doesn't seem a good enough reason to infringe on speech rights. Prosecute the corruption directly.

dragonwriter 2y ago
> PACs already avoid coordinating with politicians' campaigns. No, they don't. Most PACs do and are allowed to coordinate with candidate campaigns, SuperPACs are legally prohibited from it, but also regularly do (sometimes with "hacks" like coordination by multiparty public signalling, but also fairly often just by outright violations of the rules, which are poorly enforced -- investigations are rare, and even they occur and violations are found and penalties are imposed, they are too delayed and too small to make it not worthwhile to violate the rules routinely.)
- richwater 2y ago
  source?
  - ohmyiv 2y ago
    https://ballotpedia.org/PACs_and_Super_PACs https://ballotpedia.org/PACs_and_Super_PACs
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    Most kinds of PACs aren't banned from coordination: https://www.fec.gov/press/resources-journalists/political-action-committees-pacs/ https://www.fec.gov/press/resources-journalists/political-ac... Rampant coordination: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/08/super-pac-fec-limits-00150672 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/08/super-pac-fec-limit... Weak enforcement: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/fec-still-failing-enforce-campaign-laws-heads-capitol-hill https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/fec-... (Though I did make a mistake, I misremembered the small fines for soliciting large foreign donations as small fines for coordination; in fact, the FEC has never fined any PAC anything for coordination.)
- brainwad 2y ago
  So there's no need to ban super PACs, just a need to enforce the existing rules? Sounds more workable than a state constitutional initiative that directly contradicts a SCOTUS ruling...
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    The problem is that the current enforcement by an "independent" (bipartisan, and in this case balanced) commission enables partisans of either party to block enforcement, traditional executive enforcement would raise the possibility of enforcement becoming (if nothing else, by negative action) biased for the current executive. Maybe you could open up private litigation to enforce it, which reduces the bias problem to the bias of the courts and the usual problems of bias for resources to litigate, which might seem the minimally dysfunctional approach if it wasn't for the Supreme Court being in the middle of a brazen corruption crisis of its own. This is an area which has a very big quis custodiet ipsos custodes problem, "just enforce the rules" as a solution kind of just skips over the fundamental challenge.

caesil 2y ago

It's very difficult to parse this https://www.citizenstoendsuperpacs.org/faqs https://www.citizenstoendsuperpacs.org/faqs Is the idea that they will raise money and then engage in quid pro quo corruption, thus proving it is possible?

richwater 2y ago

[flagged]

bwanab 2y ago

Next thing you know they're going to try to tell us that anonymous political funding by foreign adversaries and non-state actors isn't a good idea.

dinkleberg 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

prydt 2y ago

[flagged]

richwater 2y ago
If Bob has free speech to run ads about how bad Issue X is, and Joe has free speech to run ads about how bad Issue X is, why shouldn't Bob and Joe be allowed to combine their money, find others with similar opinions and run ads about how bad Issue X is?
- neeleshs 2y ago
  I am not very knowledgeable about freedom of speech laws in the US, but is it limited to individuals, or is it very broad, including organizations, coalitions and partnerships of multiple people as well?
  - brainwad 2y ago
    There's also in the same clause freedom of the press. So yes, it's explicit that you can band together with others to freely publish your joint speech.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    In the US, the joke is that companies/organisations are people in terms of rights (to do damage), but not in terms of responsibilities. When Boeing or any of the oil giants or a megachurch/any other cult kill or defraud people, the organisation doesn't go to prison. There's a small fine, cost of doing business, nothing more.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    The Supreme Court once made a very weird decision granting freedom of free speech to corporations: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC This is the moment when USA started morphing from a republic to oligarchy.
    - 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

AlbertCory 2y ago

"Get money out of politics" -- one of the all-time juvenile ideas. And ideologically biased as well: they really mean "make it so only people with a lot of time on their hands, like us, will be able to participate in politics."

votepaunchy 2y ago
It’s not just “time on their hands”, it’s the taxpayer funded NGO-industrial complex that is the circularity system of today’s political system.
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  True. Make your org a non-profit, then use tax-deductible contributions to hire "activists."

andy_ppp 2y ago

One person’s freedom of speech is another person’s propaganda undermining everything important in society. How is bribery not a type of free speech for example? Most countries have decided that during elections people spending huge sums of money is not going to lead to good government, but who knows.

naveen99 2y ago
One person’s charity, is another’s tip is another person’s bribe, is another’s lobbying.
EasyMark 2y ago
Sure but much like monopoly and guns, at a certain they become a severe detriment to society. Everything has a limit, I think it’s time we revisit those borders in court. However, I think current SCOTUS would double down on Citizens and increase it’s influence in some manner. Another big one is why if someone can see my donations to political parties, why are super pacs allowed to hide who the dark money is coming from? Seems like a no-brainer to make it publicly available. If I find some restaurant chain I frequent is donating millions to someone promoting fascism, I’d love to be able to give my business to another restaurant chain

zeroCalories 2y ago

If money in politics is so important why wasn't Sanders or Bloomberg able to win the Democratic primaries crying emoji

rayiner 2y ago
And why did Trump beat Clinton, who outspent him 2:1? Why is Trump running even with Biden, despite Biden having a huge fundraising advantage? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/briefing/biden-campaign-money.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/briefing/biden-campaign-m... Most campaign funds are spent on ads, and ads don’t really persuade voters. When was the last time a political ad even registered to you? I think campaigns spend a lot of money for the same reason we spend lots of money on interventions at the end of life. It’s more a psychological thing because the stakes are high than the money actually having a major impact on the outcome.
- falcolas 2y ago
  > When was the last time a political ad even registered to you? They're not targeting you. Or me. Or 99.9% of the folks on this board. They're targeting their efforts at the undecided middle who are not sure who they'll vote for, or even if they'll vote. The ones who hear "Genocide Joe" or "Von Shitsinpants" and don't apply any further critical thinking. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in swing states just doing "grassroots" get-out-and-vote campaigns.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    I'm one of those people, and I don't think advertisements are effective on any of them. I think that's proven true empirically. In 2016, Clinton massively outspent Trump, but Trump broke the "blue wall" by winning over a bunch of Obama 2008 voters. If you look at polling over the last six months, Trump has significantly increased his support among working class Hispanics, and materially increased his support among black people. But Biden has spent two to three times as much as Trump on advertising: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/22/politics/advertising-election-biden-trump/index.html# https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/22/politics/advertising-election.... I think what you're really seeing with these voters is that they don't line up ideologically with either party, so their voting is highly context-dependent. They vote based on their perception of what's going on in the country. My wife and I are going to vote Trump in 2024, after voting for Biden in 2020, because of immigration, affirmative action, New York's prosecution of Trump, etc. The salience of these issues changes from election-to-election. In 2020, Biden was the pro-vaccination candidate, and in 2024, he's the pro-immigration candidate, and those two things cuts in different directions for many voters. But I don't think advertisements can change anyone's views on those issues. Obviously, cable news, Tik Tok, Facebook, etc., shape people's views on those issues (or rather, people's perception of the salience of those issues), but the candidates can't control that. I think you're correct that the grassroots get-out-and-vote campaigns have a large impact, but I think that's also very different from money spent on ads. That's about each party turning out its base to actually go vote, not really influencing people through mass media. Is it a bad thing that money is spent doing that?

rayiner 2y ago

Complaining among the first amendment applying to corporations (you know, like the ACLU) with a second Trump term looming … is a choice.

saghm 2y ago

This is my first time encountering the issue myself rather than reading about it in an existing comment, but with JavaScript disabled the site doesn't render any text at all; it only showed up after I end enabled it for both this domain and `squarespace.com`. As far as I can tell, the only part of the rendering that's dynamic is the content slowly fading in as I scrolled (possibly with some faux scroll-like effect rather than actually native scrolling). I assume from the need to whitelist squarespace.com that this is more likely to due to something done on that platform rather than an intentional decision by a developer, but it's unnecessary for a site with some basic text styling and an image or two not to just render the content without animations when JavaScript is disabled. Has anyone here used Squarespace before, and if so, is this typical for sites made with it?