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.
So how does it come about that you interpret support for restrictions on political campaigning as an attack on democracy?
If you believe that the additional political speech that greater donations would allow, would break the democratic process, then you have little faith in the ability of voters to weigh the facts and cast a rational vote. If you don't think that voters can do this, then it seems to me that you don't believe that democracy can really work.
I'm not saying that the people who want to limit political contributions are opposed to democracy. I'm saying that it reveals that they have little confidence that democracy can work.
Your implicit argument seems to be this: If you can't point to an obviously correct place to draw the line, then no line should be drawn anywhere.
No. I'm saying that for such restrictions to be implementable, there must be a line defined somewhere. If you want to make a rule, you've got to add something to it that still allows me, or me and my buddies, or whatever, to still make political contributions.
Secondarily, I'm hoping that expressing that distinction might reveal more about what these people are trying to accomplish (or not accomplish, as the case might be). Sort of a black box test.
Individuals and corporations can both invest money in political speech, but the amount any individual or any individual corporation is allowed to put in is limited to (some credible estimate of) the largest amount a not-entirely-crazy person
So you're prohibiting me from pooling money with friends in order to send a message of our own. Is that your intent?
It's only beyond the pale because you appear to misunderstand the ruling and the existing law.
A corporation still cannot make unlimited campaign donations. They can however spend their money however they choose. As long as they are not coordinating with any compaign.
If a candidate is running and promises to raise income tax to 99%, then I can form a political action committee or corporation and spend as much money as we want trashing the candidate that is pushing that idea. We cannot, however, donate unlimited funds to his opponent or work directly with any campaign, pay their expenses, etc.
It is a perfectly reasonable freedom that just happens to have negative consequences.
There is a limit on how much people can donate to campaigns, all of the recent hubub has been about corporations acting on their own without coordinate with a campaign.
How do the wealthy vote with their money? They are not buying votes, they are merely trying to influence other voters -- hence it's a free speech issue.
Correct. Money is commerce. While it is true that people have as much freedom to engage in commerce as they have to speak, candidates for public office do not.
I can offer a candidate as much money as I please, as is my right, but in the interest of providing equal protection under the law to the voters, the public may choose to prevent the candidate from accepting more than a certain amount from a single source.
Campaign contributions limits are not restrictions upon the rights of the public; they are restrictions upon the privilege of representing other people as part of the government. If you wish to retain your unlimited ability to speak as a private individual, do not enter the public sector.
The same principle, applied by the courts elsewhere, would also strike down laws preventing public servants from engaging in certain forms of political activity. After all, they have freedom of speech as well, don't they?
I think that the most likely and most damaging response to this will be a decreasing engagement by career politicians with near-the-median people and increasing engagement with wealthy patrons. The interests represented will shift accordingly.
No. I'm sorry, but spending money is not speech. Restricting the amount of money that one can donate to political campaigns would be perfectly fine, and would not infringe upon anyone's rights at all.
Individual humans can only contribute up to $2700 directly and $5000 to a PAC. Corporations are not tied to these limits if they want to establish their own PAC which is what they do. No one will prosecute PACs that blatantly collude with candidates illegally so campaign contributions to PACs are essentially limitless for corporations but not for people. People have less rights to speech than corporations. The problem is that corporations and lobbying groups are legally allowed to buy influence and more money is more influence so the wealthiest people and businesses will always have more rights under our current system as long as they keep the masses divided.
What I was really saying was that corporations should have to obey campaign spending limit laws that were explicitly designed to apply to them, to limit corruption.
This is a result of not having a limit on the amount a corporation can donate to a political campaign. The maximum should be 0, this is more like a government by the people for the corporations.
So the Government can't limit the amount of money corporations can spend on influencing political campaigns but, when it feels like it, it can silence them without even explaining why. Yeah that makes sense.
For years I've heard this, and I think I've reached the limit of my credulity with the line of reasoning that goes something like this: "X has billions of dollars! Billions of dollars! They will control politics as we know it!"
Lots of entities have billions of dollars. People who sell peanut butter have billions of dollars. Billions of dollars spent every day trying to get me to do something or another -- buy soap, change deodorants, purchase a new car, go to the mall. Very little of it has any impact. We're a society that is extremely used to outsiders using all sorts of clever tactics to try to get us to do things.
So unless these corporations have "special" billions of dollars that somehow magically control my mind, they are welcome to bring their message to the political discussion. In fact, everybody who wants to speak are welcome. Bring them on. All I require is that you disclose to me who you are and what you're trying to sell. Welcome to the party.
Not trying to pick a fight. I actually held the opposite view and have been slowly changing my mind over the last ten years or so.
I think corporate donors are held to the same limits as individuals: $2,800 per election to the candidate, $5,000 to their reelection committee. The rest (which still totals less than $500k) goes to state and federal party committees.
Where the unlimited contributions come in (think Citizens United) are Super PACs, but those aren't technically affiliated with candidates, and they can't contribute to the candidates. The freedom of speech angle on this is that corporations or individuals can spend this money on political ads, but it has to be independent of the candidates.
> is it illegal for me to agree?
Yes, or it was illegal for them; this exceeds campaign contribution limits.
In this context, money is effectively unlimited. Not sure why people are ok with allowing unlimited funding of campaigns by individuals or corporations while on the other hand accepting similar contributions for anything but a campaign is a felony (ie. bribery)
For the same reason groups and corporations don't have voting rights, they shouldn't be able to monopolize speech by drowning out all others.
Additionally, money is not speech. We disallow politicians directly giving people money to vote for them - why would we do that, since the politicians trade is in speech, he's simply delivering stump speech in the form of a $100 bill to his potential constituents.
How do you propose to do it? Limit contributions by corporations? I don't see the distinction, corporations are people, I can become a one man corporation by clicking a few buttons.
Money like code, is ultimately speech. I'll take that any day over the alternative limitations as long as we have legit voting and non-forced spending of money.
Technically... you can in all but one circumstance: modern US constitutional law.
I don't think any country has the same laisezz-faire approach to buying politicians... certainly not in the name of free speech. I don't think the argument has even been made.
That said, even in the US there isn't a real constitutional barrier to doing something about money in politics. You could make candidates wear sponsorships on their jerseys, like racecar drivers. No free impediment. That's a joke example, but you see my point. That particular ruling is not an actual barrier, the barrier is a legislative majority.
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.
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