Impact of Citizens United

[Ziggurat]

WildCat, if you think instituting a campaign donation cap would solve the problem, you're wrong. For example, the Swift Boar campaign was done entirely outside the formal political campaign process.

So what?

You've learned the wrong lesson from the Swift Boat campaign: message matters more than dollars, and don't nominate weak and vulnerable candidates.

Similar but much larger efforts are now possible with no accountability under Citizens.

And what, pray tell, do you think "accountability" means? And why is it needed here?

 

[WildCat]

WildCat, if you think instituting a campaign donation cap would solve the problem, you're wrong.

I was speaking specifically about campaign donations. There's a lot of confusion about what Citizens United actually said. It had nothing at all to do with campaign donations.

For example, the Swift Boar campaign was done entirely outside the formal political campaign process.

So?

Similar but much larger efforts are now possible with no accountability under Citizens.

"No accountability"? Explain what you mean here.

Like TAM, I just cannot see how you think this is a good thing. After all, one result is that your own vote can be highly diluted, if not discounted entirely as a result.

How is my vote diluted or discounted?

 

[Beerina]

“David Plouffe had no concerns when outside organizations spent more than $400 million electing Barack Obama and the Democrats in 2008, much of it undisclosed,” Collegio said in an e-mail. “Democrats are getting demolished in the polls not because of campaign regulations, but because voters desperately want to put the brakes on the Obama agenda in the U.S. Congress.”

Thank you. And though two wrongs don't make a right, empowering government to censor speech is definitely making a wrong. But that's just hundreds of millions of deaths in the past century speaking.

 

[thaiboxerken]

And empowering corporations is okay? You don't mind if the USA becomes an oglicargy?

 

[SezMe]

"No accountability"? Explain what you mean here.

As I understand it, corporations can now donate unlimited funds without any disclosure. Correct me if I am wrong.

How is my vote diluted or discounted?

A hypothetical: A corporate-friendly Elephant is running in your district against a Donkey. The race is absolutely flooded with corporate cash which is used to finance local candidate offices, buy extensive TV and other media ads which completely characterize the record of the Dem, etc. This so distorts the election that the Rep wins. Your vote for the Dem (yeah, yeah, I know. This is a hypothetical.) is meaningless.

But, WildCat, this is not purely hypothetical. In West Virginia, Massey (the coal mining company) flooded a judicial election, got their man on the bench, and were rewarded with a judicial reversal that saved them millions of dollars.

You know money corrupts elections. It buys elections. In doing so, if you support the winning candidate, your vote was just paid for. If you didn't support the winner, you vote didn't matter.

 

[WildCat]

As I understand it, corporations can now donate unlimited funds without any disclosure. Correct me if I am wrong.

Not to a campaign you can't.

A hypothetical: A corporate-friendly Elephant is running in your district against a Donkey. The race is absolutely flooded with corporate cash which is used to finance local candidate offices, buy extensive TV and other media ads which completely characterize the record of the Dem, etc. This so distorts the election that the Rep wins. Your vote for the Dem (yeah, yeah, I know. This is a hypothetical.) is meaningless.

But, WildCat, this is not purely hypothetical. In West Virginia, Massey (the coal mining company) flooded a judicial election, got their man on the bench, and were rewarded with a judicial reversal that saved them millions of dollars.

You know money corrupts elections. It buys elections. In doing so, if you support the winning candidate, your vote was just paid for. If you didn't support the winner, you vote didn't matter.

You seem to think the Citizens United case was about campaign donations. It's not.

If you're worried about the above, then fight for lower campaign limits. No more of these $10,000/plate fund raising dinners etc. Make it $10 per person max. Bingo, no one has more influence than you!

 

[thaiboxerken]

If you're worried about the above, then fight for lower campaign limits. No more of these $10,000/plate fund raising dinners etc. Make it $10 per person max. Bingo, no one has more influence than you!

Except for the corporations that can funnel donations through a non profit anonymously.

This is happening right now. It's not a hypothetical situation.

 

[WildCat]

Except for the corporations that can funnel donations through a non profit anonymously.

This is happening right now. It's not a hypothetical situation.

So what? Cap it at $10 and the non-profit can only donate $10.

You do realize that Citizens United has nothing to do with campaign contributions, don't you?

 

[bynmdsue]

Corporations never give money to Democrats?

hunh,who knew?

 

[thaiboxerken]

So what? Cap it at $10 and the non-profit can only donate $10.

You do realize that Citizens United has nothing to do with campaign contributions, don't you?

except for the fact thatit did.

 

[WildCat]

except for the fact thatit did.

No, it didn't. It wasn't about campaign contributions at all.

 

[thaiboxerken]

No, it didn't. It wasn't about campaign contributions at all.

While it wasn't about that, it did have a direct impact.

 

[Ziggurat]

But, WildCat, this is not purely hypothetical. In West Virginia, Massey (the coal mining company) flooded a judicial election, got their man on the bench, and were rewarded with a judicial reversal that saved them millions of dollars.

You seem to be taking it as a given that this was a bad outcome. But it's not a given. Sometimes corporations should be saved money. And sometimes what voters really want does line up with what corporations want.

Advertising of any kind works best when interests align. You seem to be suggesting that political advertisements are capable of brainwashing the population, and we must protect the population from brainwashing. But only corporate brainwashing, of course, because if politicians do it within the arbitrary guidelines of campaign finance law, that's somehow fundamentally different. In other words, you have little confidence in either the democratic principle (that people can be trusted to make up their own minds) or free speech.

Which is fine, just don't expect us all to agree.

You know money corrupts elections. It buys elections.

No. It influences elections. But there are more than enough cases of the better-funded candidate losing to show that it can't buy them.

And you know what else corrupts? Restrictions on free speech. If you think that such restrictions, written by politicians in power, can't be abused to protect incumbents, you're charmingly naive. I'll pick the problem of too much speech over the problem of not enough speech any day of the week.

 

[WildCat]

And you know what else corrupts? Restrictions on free speech. If you think that such restrictions, written by politicians in power, can't be abused to protect incumbents, you're charmingly naive. I'll pick the problem of too much speech over the problem of not enough speech any day of the week.

Absolutely. The Dems here in Illinois passed a state campaign "reform" law that capped, for the first time here, individual donations to political campaigns. But they exempted donations from political parties. Now the candidatea are even more beholden to what the party bosses want (becasue they now control a huge chunk of their campaign war chest), and less so to the people who actually elect them.

Yes, they actually called this "reform".

 

[T.A.M.]

No. It influences elections. But there are more than enough cases of the better-funded candidate losing to show that it can't buy them.

I am guessing you are a yankees fan, or should be.

Even the Yankees can lose, so it is fair for them to buy their way to the World Series almost every year (as of late).

TAM

 

[Ziggurat]

I am guessing you are a yankees fan, or should be.

Even the Yankees can lose, so it is fair for them to buy their way to the World Series almost every year (as of late).

TAM

And what, precisely, do you mean by fair, and why is it important? And don't define it in terms of baseball, because the relevant metric of fairness there may not be applicable to or desirable for politics.

 

[Unabogie]

Seriously, all partisanship aside, it's not hard to understand the objections to Citizens United.

Let's say you're a manufacturer who has been spewing pollutants into the water supplies of a local town, and the local community is demanding a stop to it and asking for a change in the law. Ordinarily, this kind of pressure would induce a politician to act. But what if the CEO meets with the politician and tells him that if he changes the law, the CEO will funnel a million dollars into ads attacking him and will bounce him from his seat. And does anyone doubt that this is a credible threat? Or that huge sums money thrown into a race can tilt the outcome in an era when people have such a crappy news media?

Now, in this case, the will of the people is clearly on the side of the change in law. The common good is also on the side of a change in law. It's good for the politician to change the law, since the new law would be popular. And yet, in this scenario, it's easy to see the law not being changed or changed to protect the polluter even though all other factors suggest otherwise.

This is how money corrupts the system in favor of those who have it. Now, we can disagree on how best to fix this, but the basic reality of how money works in politics shouldn't be in dispute.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Wait, zig's arguing that this isn't a bad ruling because sometimes corporations' interests sometimes coincide with the people?

 

[Ziggurat]

Wait, zig's arguing that this isn't a bad ruling because sometimes corporations' interests sometimes coincide with the people?

No, I'm saying you cannot take it as a given that corporations having influence is a bad thing.

 

[thaiboxerken]

No, I'm saying you cannot take it as a given that corporations having influence is a bad thing.

Yes I can. most, if not all, place profit above the common good.

Having a dictatorship wouldn't be a bad thing if that dictator was interested in the common god.