Citizens United and McCutcheon were such disasters for our democracy. Hopelessly partisan 5-4 votes from the USSC as well. No surprise given the way big money usually leans.
Corporations aren't people, and money isn't speech, no matter what five people in robes say.
The problem here isn't who Thiel supports, it's that he has the ability to throw $1,250,000 on a whim to that person. Very, very, very few people can do that.
The reason millionaires and billionaires funnel so much money into elections isn't for the hell of it. It's because they know that money buys advertising, attack ads, etc. They know it helps their side win. Because yes, there are many stupid people in this country who are easily swayed by these tactics.
Yes, we all know it's not a guarantee that the candidate with the most money wins. But wealthy people (mostly) aren't stupid: they wouldn't be spending the money if they knew it wouldn't sway any votes.
It's not about buying the election, it's about increasing their chances of winning. An analogy would be buying 1000000 raffle tickets instead of 1 like most other people get. But our entire democracy is based around the idea of one person, one vote. Allowing unlimited money into politics effectively gives vastly more votes to the wealthy.
Get the money out of politics and it's no longer an issue how big of a piece of shit Thiel is. He can like whoever he wants to and I couldn't care less. Oh shoot, I hope he doesn't see this and start bankrolling vendetta lawsuits against me now :/
If I earn money, should I be able to spend it how I like? If I have freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, isn't it fine to use my money towards the goals of freedom of speech & press? Citizens United is solid in my book.
If we were to take down Citizens United, how would you deal with media outlets like Fox or WaPo? They're clearly biased and have an agenda, their biased reporting acts as a contribution to a campaign. But they're businesses, and what they do isn't classified as campaign support, even though it should.
> If I earn money, should I be able to spend it how I like?
You already can't spend it to buy grenades, chemical weapons, illegal drugs, etc. You should not be able to spend it to influence elections either. I just explained why.
It's not 'fair', sure. But a lot of things aren't fair thanks to stupid people being stupid. Most recreational drugs are outlawed to protect the idiots that can't handle it. (Well, that's the narrative anyway. We'll sidestep the racial undertones, benefits to big pharma, etc.) Because otherwise, those idiots can go on to do the rest of us great harm. There are a lot of stupid people who are swayed by bullshit political attack ads (said attacks are deplorable from both sides), so we need some way to minimize that damage. Campaign contribution laws were not a perfect solution, but at least a stopgap measure. Now the floodgates are wide open.
> If we were to take down Citizens United, how would you deal with media outlets like Fox or WaPo?
They operated long before Citizens United came down. They concern me as well, as does MSNBC, RT, Al Jazeera, etc.
It's probably not possible to get fully unbiased news, but we've definitely gotten way worse in recent years on partisanship in news. And regardless of which party you support, you have to agree that the divide between us is becoming increasingly toxic and dangerous. The media is in large part to blame for stirring that up for their ratings.
Of course, even without news, the internet and social media are a big problem now too. Everyone simply follows like-minded people, blocks those they disagree with, and live in echo chambers to reinforce and polarize people even more. It's ... really starting to get very dangerous :/
> what they do isn't classified as campaign support, even though it should.
Should newspapers (i.e. corporations) be allowed to endorse candidates?
If so, how is this not spending money (paper, ink, time) to influence elections?
If not, how is this not an unacceptable limitation on free speech?
And, (to address a common objection to this line of reasoning), if "bona fide media organizations" get special free speech protections not available to the rest of us, who decides who is a "journalist" and who is an amateur?
Before this goes on too long, I'd like to stress that I don't have all the perfect answers in life. I don't think my views are perfect, but they are what I believe.
I know that often, how things 'should' be require laws that are basically impossible to write. But I really don't think I am being that unreasonable to say there's something grossly unfair about one person being able to pour in millions of dollars into an election to sway votes his way.
> Should newspapers (i.e. corporations) be allowed to endorse candidates?
That's a definite gray area. I can see arguments for and against that.
At least with a newspaper, people are actively choosing to buy it (barring it being in a vending machine with the endorsement on the front page.) It's usually pretty well known and clear that NYT runs liberal, and NYP runs conservative.
I don't get that choice with giant billboards as I drive around town. You can argue I can change the channel, but I don't really get that choice with TV and radio ads, either.
I'm sorry, but like with complex issues (eg abortion), I don't have a perfect answer for you on this point. Any choice is going to come with consequences. But that doesn't mean I think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater and have a cash free-for-all in our elections.
I sympathize with your sentiment, but I don't agree with your conclusion. Opening the door for the government to regulate opinions about the government seems, on its face, ripe for abuse of power.
If we had wise angels permanently running the government, we could dispose of many precautions. But, since we don't, we should try to have laws where we would be safe from oppression even if our worst enemy took power.
Correct. That was what I was getting at with one vote, one person and buying more raffle tickets than another for a drawing. Money = votes, otherwise there wouldn't be so much money in play.
It's not a true democracy when the rich (whether that be the Koch brothers or George Soros) indirectly get way more voting power than the lower and middle classes get.
If people weren't swayed by obvious attack ads, then I wouldn't care how much money people wanted to throw away on elections. And indeed, they wouldn't throw any away, because it would be a total waste then.
Yes. If everyone had the same amount of money, then we wouldn't have needed campaign finance laws. (We effectively don't have them now.)
I'm not even advocating for everyone to have an exactly equal amount of money. Hard work should be rewarded. But I don't think there's anything the Koch brothers do that entitles them to hundreds of billions of dollars; when the poorest workers bust their asses for 80 hours a week and only earn $15,000 a year. That isn't a fair and just society. We can do much better. And we used to do way better. Income inequality has increasingly soared out of control for decades now.
Okay, so... we need to nail some things down for your utopia. What is and is not allowed to be said or printed?
I imagine I can say (with my voice) anything I want? What if I'm standing on a soapbox on a busy corner, 12 hours a day? What if I give a speech to 200,000 people in a stadium?
What about over a radio broadcast? How do you cap that? Individual contributions to campaigns are capped at something like $2.5k, do I essentially get $2.5k of airtime, as valued by advertising times?
What if I'm not specifically supporting a candidate? But I could say: "We should really have a candidate that is good at fixing spine vertebrate, because they'd be good at fixing the spine of America!" or "The next person to appoint a supreme court justice should be pro-life."
If I'm near my $2.5k of cap of support, am I even really allowed to say anything? "America needs a _strong_ candidate" could be an interpreted as support for... well, someone.
I suspect that your solution is going to be impractical and hard to enforce.
One obvious place to draw the line - indeed, the place where used to be drawn - is the part where Citizens United tried to pay channels to air their film about Hillary. Normal media outlets are businesses, which means that they need to cover their costs somehow. They also have to gain and keep the trust of their audience through their reporting. If you're just paying off existing media outlets to show your propaganda to their audience solely for your political gain, then you're engaged in campaigning. This is why Citizens United's earlier attempts to get Fahrenheit 9/11 and its trailers banned failed; the FEC found that it was bona fide commercial activity.
>Citizens United and McCutcheon were such disasters for our democracy
The Citizens United case was about a non-profit being able to produce, advertise, and air a film about a presidential candidate. The government said that they could not because of election financing laws.
This seems much more like a free speech issue than an election financing issue. Do we really want to go down the path were the government can tell you that you can't make a movie about a person because they are currently running for office?
Corporations aren't people, and money isn't speech, no matter what five people in robes say.
The problem here isn't who Thiel supports, it's that he has the ability to throw $1,250,000 on a whim to that person. Very, very, very few people can do that.
The reason millionaires and billionaires funnel so much money into elections isn't for the hell of it. It's because they know that money buys advertising, attack ads, etc. They know it helps their side win. Because yes, there are many stupid people in this country who are easily swayed by these tactics.
Yes, we all know it's not a guarantee that the candidate with the most money wins. But wealthy people (mostly) aren't stupid: they wouldn't be spending the money if they knew it wouldn't sway any votes.
It's not about buying the election, it's about increasing their chances of winning. An analogy would be buying 1000000 raffle tickets instead of 1 like most other people get. But our entire democracy is based around the idea of one person, one vote. Allowing unlimited money into politics effectively gives vastly more votes to the wealthy.
Get the money out of politics and it's no longer an issue how big of a piece of shit Thiel is. He can like whoever he wants to and I couldn't care less. Oh shoot, I hope he doesn't see this and start bankrolling vendetta lawsuits against me now :/