I was just pointing out the foundation of your argument is categorically false. We can quibble over the rest - such as “creating greater value for others” being a completely arbitrary concept. Perhaps a better argument to make for your position is that money collated by organizations such as the ACLU, BLM (or the NRA), is used for political advertising, and therefore justifiable. I would personally find that argument difficult to refute. On the other hand, I personally think 100% of lobbying, which includes political advertising, should be illegal.
OK, what if people with money want to spend that money on political speech _without_ coordinating with the candidate? That's the Citizens United problem.
There's no quid pro quo bribery, but if the NRA spends a bazillion dollars attacking your opponent but not you, it'd be hard to say there's no influence on your decision making process. At the same time, it's really tricky to ban. Is something like Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 a form of political advertising?
That sounds like you agree with the current state of things though. You agree that citizens should form groups to lobby to counter corporation lobbying. You agree that the government should (and does) give these groups money to lobby via tax statuses and tax incentives. The only disagreement is that you believe these groups should be given more money.
to match the $3.24 Billion spent on lobbying in 2014
Who says every dollar needs to be matched? If a corporation lobbies for rubber subsidies, no one will give a shit. If a corporation lobbies to make it a criminal offence to mention their brand online without a license, that crosses into free speech which might be worth a dollar or twenty to those who find that kind of thing important.
It's not the least bit realistic
You don't necessarily need to spend more than the corporations, you just need to make it lucrative to stand up for the good guy. If you can have $1m to be evil or $900k to be good, the $100k lost is more than made up for by the advocacy of those you served. It's free advertising.
I'm a private company (or private billionaire). I like your opponent. I put ads up on TV for them using my money. How can anyone stop me without it being a First Amendment violation?
And while it isn't giving that politician money, there are plenty who will recognize that my paying for their add is giving them a service that is worth money. It isn't quite as direct as donating, but the effect is the same.
You hit on the exact point that I left out and was wishing I had covered -- I have no problem with individuals, or politically organized groups of individuals, mobilizing politically even if they have more money than me, and regardless of where that money came from.
That applies to PACs, too, as long as they aren't blatant fronts for corporate interests, which we have a bunch of today anyways.
I suppose my real issue is that if you can't motivate individuals to give money/time out of their own pockets, you don't deserve to be part of the political process. If we remove all restraints on the ability of corporations to influence the process, it rapidly becomes something that they can't afford not to do -- then we get someplace where corporations "just doing business" have 10X the impact of individuals who are genuinely motivated by their principles or even their selfish interests. The damage from that scenario isn't really quantifiable -- either you get what I'm saying, or you don't. I'd consider it another major leap on our trajectory, as a nation, towards idiocracy.
My point is that you have no basis for your claim re: lobbyists and campaign funding. Use of government-granted monopolies to achieve particular ends predates modern media, and campaign funding was a much less pivotal issue back in the day when all the money in the world wouldn't buy you anything more than a newspaper ad.
Your first paragraph is correct, people can give however much they want to spend on political promotion, advertisement, etc. That's what a PAC is, groups that organize advertisement.
You're still misrepresenting reality and when you say that this functions to "facilitate the flow of money from special interests into the pockets of politicians." This money never enters the pockets of politicians. If that happens, it is a violation of the law.
Definitely certain PACs benefit certain politicians over others. A PAC organized to promote environmentalism is probably going to help Democrats a lot more than Republicans. But it is not correct in any way to say that this money is funneled to the politicians themselves. The politician does not hold the purse strings of PAC money, the PAC can decide at any time to stop promoting items aligned with that politician.
Sure. You can earn more money per unit of time by creating greater value for others. But my point is that saying "political spending is bad" doesn't make sense. Everyone is expending unequal efforts in different facets of their life. If I am busy keeping my small business afloat and can't afford to put in the kind of time a dedicated activist puts into organizing, I think I should still be able to use what resources I have to influence politics.
Otherwise, what we're saying is that everyone must dedicate significant portions of their life to on-the-ground organizing and direct action to be on an even footing relative to others. That doesn't sound like the kind of society most would want to live in. It means we'd need to forego other activities, both economic ones and leisure, just to engage in this artificially constrained political system.
Your claim was literally that corporations can spend unlimited amounts and people can't, which is simply untrue.
What's an exorbitant amount? Imagine some people, passionate about their particular political issue, pooling their money together to put up billboards, run radio ads, get a few TV spots, have a spread in the newspaper, buy some instagram ads, whatever. That's speech! Of course it is! Having the government restrict is a terrible precedent. The ability to try and influence other people, to convince them that your position or your candidate is the right one, is also a principle of democracy.
I don't disagree with your point that money corrupts politics. I was responding specifically to your questioning of why the equivalency of money and free speech came up.
You make a very persuasive case -- much more than I would make if I tried to argue the other side of this.
I'm left with the conclusion, however, that I'm free to associate with other people and pool money to run political ads. Whether or not I do that as a corporation shouldn't factor into it.
Let's assume five of us play poker every Tuesday night and we're all plumbers. A new candidate is running for office that wants to license plumbers, which we're against. So we pool our poker earnings and start running some radio spots calling his mother a fat alcoholic. So far pretty standard political fare.
But if we were a corporation of plumbers, suddenly the rules change.
Or another example. Let's say I'm General Motors and I don't like Candidate X. So I just tell MSNBC to run negative stories about him right up until election day. No harm no foul. But if I'm Ford? (which doesn't own a cable news network) I'm crap out of luck.
There's just too many self-contradictions here. The basic theory says that I'm fine pooling my money with others to speak out. Whether or not that is done with a corporation or not doesn't seem to come into it. Yes, corporations are single-minded. But so are PACs. So are all political organizations. In fact, the entire purpose of a political organization is to be single-minded about something or another.
So I like what you're saying, but it doesn't carry the argument with me at the end of the day.
But you cannot ignore the fire in a crowded theater portion when it comes to politics. Unlike many other avenues in politics money = power. By having a consecrated few such as corporations or the RIAA against the populace you have a huge power imbalance. This allows those with the cash to effectively gag the competition preventing their speech which cannot be considered fair. Perhaps individuals should be allowed to do what they wish with their money but the individual rights granted to corporations has gone to far.
Maybe, if only maybe, you should make political donations illegal. That would pretty much solve it for the legal part of business. But money is free speech whatever that may mean (I know what it means legally, you can still ban it).
Do lobbyists spend money to influence politicians? Yes? Then it's corruption.
Private money - whether it be from rich people or large corporations - should have no place in politics. The vote of a poor single mother working two jobs to only barely feed her children should carry just as much weight as that of a rich tycoon. If you believe that money should institutionally equate to influence, then you do not believe in equality.
That's a good quibble. People should be allowed to organize. I suppose there should be a distinction between political organizations and profitable ones.
So a group "Whigs for America" pooling donations is fine, but a for-profit corporation spending millions on lobbying would not be fine.
The difference being that the former group is a non-profit collection of people concerned about some aspect of government.
You're conflating lobbying and campaign finance. I know you know the difference, which means you are doing it on purpose, which I find disappointing.
One of the biggest problems in discussing lobbying is that members of the press habitually and intentionally confuse their readers about what is and is not lobbying.
To go back to my ANWR example--I'd be interested to know how many of the attendees at that Obama dinner (or any $64k/plate dinner) were registered lobbyists for the Sierra Club.
edit to add: If we want more citizen participation in government, it has to start with an accurate understanding of how they can participate. Framing lobbying as something that necessitates $64,000 donations does not help people understand how they can support nonprofits (like for example the Sierra Club or ACLU) that engage in lobbying but not huge campaign donations.
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