4 ms·

This argument has little chance. To avoid the quid-pro-quo problem, [edit: super]PACs already avoid coordinating with politicians' campaigns. They create and di

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.

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.