To bad the supreme court ruled you can't set a limit on money spent to campaign

Yes, then we could vote on 136,231 candidates. The Ethiopian transvestite with a big boob job at 0.024% against the candidate who only speaks Maithili and doesn't know English with 0.021% of the vote in a run-off.

 

I makes no sense that corporations and unions can spend unlimited sums, but citizens are severely limited how much they can contribute.

In my opinion, only people should be able to contribute to candidates - not companies, organizations and unions etc - but people could contribute as much as they want and candidates could spend whatever they can come up with.

Plus your theory is wrong. Clinton VASTLY outspent Trump. Prior to being president anyway, Obama was not wealthy.

 

Neither are people.

 

They never should have eliminated the literacy test - provided it was an identical universal test for all and around an 8th grade level - with provisions for the blind.

 

All I know is that political contributions from known donors are obvious bribes. Obvious. Bribes, even special work-around sugar-coated ones, should be illegal. They sow corruption and do not promote some kind of free marketplace of ideas any more than direct bribes do. They are not speech. It is probably the most destructive and incorrect SCOTUS precedent that is still standing.

 

So you are really arguing that all political contributions are corrupting. Well, that's an argument that has no political solution. I suggest you resort to prayer.

 

Under US Code they are considered the same. And what is a corporation other than the people who make up the corporation?

 

The more free time you have the more free speech you have. Should we also limit the amount of time a person can spend working for and campaigning for a candidate. Is it not unfair that a person who does not work can spend more time campaigning and promoting their candidate or cause that a person who works full time?

Time is money.

 

Actually I would argue that all campaign contributions must be anonymous with respect to the lawmakers, and also limited to actual individual American citizens in a limited amount, but perhaps have a branch of the criminal justice system able to see the contributions to monitor for signs of corruption and bribes. Intentionally revealing the campaign contributions without a criminal justice purpose would be a felony, and unintentionally doing so would be a violation with fines.

 

OK well that's fanciful and would also require a raping of the First Amendment. That seems to be popular with you guys.

 

Another Citizens United thread, another exercise in lies of omission. That case was due to Michael Moore being able to use "entertainment" (movies) as political propaganda against Bush. When a RW company tried to make RW movies and do the exact same thing, O NO CAN'T HAVE THAT SUE SUE SUE! And THAT'S where Citizens United came from. Anyone who alludes to that case as "bringing money into politics" without including that necessary context after being informed of it is a purposeful liar spreading lies of omission.

See the left had been using Hollywood and TV as "entertainment" to skirt political advertising laws as long as there have been such laws. SCOTUS realized that full well, and took the gloves off for everyone.

People who form their political awareness and vote based on advertisements are either naïve, manipulated kids or morons who don't deserve to vote. So maybe what we should do to stifle "money in politics" is require at least a high school level of literacy in English and at least a GED to vote, move the voting age up to 22. Sound good lefties? Thought not.

 

Limit campaign finance to give the majority of Americans a voice, and open up the presidential debates to more candidates by revising or abolishing the stupid arbitrary rule that keeps them out.

 

This is a pretty interesting debate.

A clarification needs to be made: there seem to be at least several issues here:

1. Donations of money: direct to a candidate for that candidate's campaign expenses, vs 'indirectly' influencing elections, by spending money to support this or that political position.
2. Donations of money direct to a candidate where the candidate knows where that money is coming from, vs anonymous donations.
3. Donations of money directly or indirectly, nonymously or anonymously, by other-than-living-human-beings.
4. Donations of money directly to a candidate not visible to the public vs visible to the public. [Although I think this is technically an issue, in fact, isn't it required for all donations and their sources to be public? And if so, does everyone agree that they should be?]
4. 'Donations' of other-than-money to candidates by organizations which can mobilize their memberships -- sometimes involuntary memberships -- for electoral results.

And the underlying principle that almost everyone agrees on seems to be this: governments wield great power. We want them to make the 'best' decisions, which means the best decisions for all of us, not the best decision for some particular interest group, at the expense of the rest of us.

But .....

In a situation in which there were no conflicting interests -- we were all of the same race, class, sex, age, income-source -- we would choose our leadership from among those who sounded best able to navigate all the complex issues our leaders face. This more or less describes the way many organizations -- the Libertarians, the Communists, the Republicans, the Democrats, the local chess club the birdwatchers' association -- choose their leaders: there may be temporary coalescences around this or that issue among these groups, or conflicts over who has the best personal qualities for leadership, but no permanent factions, and especially no permanent factions around special interests which have nothing to do with the aims of the group.

But real society is not like that: it IS made up of a myriad of overlapping, criss-crossing 'interest groups', defined along first of all economic lines, lines of race, age, class, geography, sex, tribe ... and that's the problem. When you vote for someone, you think -- or say -- you're voting for someone who will be 'best for the country', or at least best for all honest citizens who play by the rules.

Thus the politician who gives all public servants a nice pay raise and votes to increase their pensions, believes -- or says he believes -- that this is the right thing to do for everyone, or for the majority -- he would never say, "If I didn't do this I'd get a powerful coalition of labor unions after my scalp a the next election".

The politician who votes against raising the minimum wage or to cut pension payouts for retired firemen believes -- or says he believes -- that this is the right thing to do for future generations, not handing them an impossible government spending burden which will bankrupt the state -- he would never say, "If I didn't do this, my high-income taxpayer voting base would throw me out at the next election."

If you're a self-professed liberal, you will of course see that the second politician is just succumbing to special interests, while the first is public-spirited, helping out the underdog by making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes; if a conservative, the reverse.

And there's no way around this. The 'problem' is in social reality, where deep conflicts of perceived interest exist.

People will tend to see campaign finance laws, and all similar things, through the lens of whatever set of special interests they are most favorable to.

For the record, I think
--- all donations over a certain amount should be public: I want to know who's buying whom.
--- I would definitely put limits on direct non-anonymous donations to individuals for campaigning purposes, (or any other), but certainly no limits on general political advertising, such as ads or movies supporting this or that cause or position, and these should be able to be anonymously financed.
--- Public debate should be facilitated as much as possible by the government: some public financing of campaign ads would be in order, but much better, open debate forums -- definitely including minority parties like the Libertarians or the Greens.

These are achievable, but far from ideal. If we're talking ideal, I would raise the voting age to 25 and restrict the vote to those who had completed a minimum term of military service (which should then be open to absolutely everyone).

 

Money is not the only voice and individual monetary contributions are not the only way to contribute money.

Without restrictions on who can participate in a national presidential debate how do we avoid having 100 people up in stage where there can be no serious debate on the issues?

 

And illegals, and dead people. Some like to vote so much they do it many times during a single election.

 

Although I agree in principle, elimination of political parties might expose the electorate to hundreds of candidates. How do we narrow it down?

 

True, but a lot of money tossed at a campaign can paint a false picture of the candidate.

 

This is part of what will throw us into a deep Recession / Depression. Once we get rolling, all those corps. with giagantic Bond balances wont be able to make their payments. The Banks have been given a free ride out of their first problem, can't fix the second one (more QE wont work). All those buybacks ruined the economy by pushing it up prematurely. Gordon Long Matsaii site lays it all out.
They will all want bailed out again and their wont be tax dollars to do it. Some say they will take the savings of the people.
Right now the FDIC which insures all the money in the banks. Has .03c for every dollar there is in them to cover the balances. Thus, everything goes down hill, people will lose .97c on the $1.00. Yet, you will hear 99 out of 100 people say, my money is insured up to 250K. Sure it is....

 

Only if you believe money is speech. Political free speech, as in actual speech, is something I definitely believe in.

 

Are you also going to amend the constitution to make it less expensive to run for office?

Ads on television cost money, renting out venues cost money, paying people to work for you costs money.

Tell me how many ads Hillary ran in 2016 exactly and how many fewer you would like to see.

I bet you don't even know how many she had or how much she spent, or what the cost of them were.

How much do you think it costs to put signs in every city in every state in the nation?

Do you think that's free?

It seems you want no advertising whatsoever and that would be wrong. Candidates need people to vote for them so therefore they need to sell their product (themselves) and if you never advertise your product....well you probably won't be in business very long.

There is a lot more to winning an election then just having a debate on C-Span.

Advertisements gets the candidate messages out, which means people can discuss them in the media and among friends, this is how opinions are formed.

A couple of debates aren't going to give us enough knowledge to make an educated choice about who to vote for.

And we have seen many times that the biggest spenders lose elections many times meaning that its not the actual money spent that matters, its the candidate and their message.

 

They sell themselves and inflate their qualifications with their advertising. I think that there should be a cap put on contributions. Fewer signs and less bs would be more effective. At one time there was a cap, I think. A lot can be learned from debates and not so many are needed in my view.

 

Do you believe pamphlets, posters, radio/tv ads are free speech? How about speeches at rallies?

 

Banning political spending by large publicly traded corporations would not ban political spending by unions, special interest groups nor "anyone wanting to give a dollar"

Your claim is false. What does someone selling shares if they do not like how a corp spends their money have to do with anything ?

This also does not address the issue of massive political influence of big money - especially in cases where that money is coming from a foreign source as is the case with large publicly traded corporations.

I am thinking you probably do not know how publicly traded corporations operate ... "who pulls the strings".

 

Yes they are in terms of the message for a political/ideological purpose. The sticky part is the financing of those things and how that should or should not be disclosed (openly, or to an oversight group, e.g.), and whether demonstrably false things should be treated like false advertising. They can always stick to badly informed opinions without making up false claims (which is something that Trump tends to do).

 

So you want regulated and limited free speech. Less speech not more speech. Who gets to do the regulating and limiting you or me?