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Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

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Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#111

Post by oceanstone »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #97
tptacek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the three major candidates in 2000, there's no question Nader was the least likely to support military intervention anywhere. His policy intentions, many of which I support unreservedly, aren't the issue. The issue is that he had no chance of winning the 2000 election, and by staying in, he probably cost Gore the Presidency. There's a "dispute" over whether Nader was a spoiler, but that dispute relies on the notio…

It's an interesting point. How does one determine when one is past the point of being a spoiler and into being a serious candidate? It seems that there is a self-fulfilling prophesy here, wherein if one is concerned about being a spoiler, then one will begin drawing votes away from other viable candidates as soon as they enter politics, and thus spoil; but yet, in order to ever become a viable candidate in the first…

Lessig and Nader are so different though. Lessig is being perhaps overly cautious, and bailing after the Democratic Party changed the rules and excluded him from the debates (boo). Nader stayed in the 2000 race until the end, even campaigning in states where Gore and Bush were neck-and-neck.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#112

Post by superuser2 »

tinco wrote: post #42

I'm not a citizen of the U.S. so maybe I'm missing something. Why is he not just switching to the Republican party? What's this nonsense about his ideals being more in line with the democrats? I thought the Republicans were all about the founding fathers and making sure the United States are not ruled by the old-rich?

Lessig is a member of the liberal elite. He's a Harvard professor with multiple advanced degrees, writes books and gives speeches with big words in them for academic audiences, advocates pro-consumer anti-business IP policy, and endorsed Obama.

That is emphatically not a recipe for being taken seriously by the Republican party. A successful Republican candidate is the kind of guy a redneck feels he could have a beer with, bonding over frothing hatred for Obama, who is definitely a Muslim and probably not an American. Higher education is a bed of liberal snakes, waiting to corrupt our youth and rob them of their good Christian family values. Science is to be distrusted, if not outright rejected. Job creators are the true American heroes and should be given as much power as possible and taxed as little as possible: they've earned it, through superior intellect and hard work. If anyone needs to be disenfranchised in political discourse, it's not the rich, it's the welfare queens and the unions.

You have a point: there are many similarities between Lessig's views and idealized conservatism, particularly libertarianism. But the mainstream Republican base is going to hate him personally, and after that, nothing else matters.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#113

Post by Pyxl101 »

ermacaz wrote: post #110
s73v3r wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The amount you can donate to a political campaign is already limited at $2700. Your right, spending money isn't speech. However, preventing someone from buying an advertisement to display a message and they are denied because its deemed 'political' is definitely limiting someones free speech. It doesn't matter if the message is 'America Rocks', 'Shop at this new store here', or 'John McCain sucks please stop voting f…

I'm not an expert on this, but my understanding is that concerns in this area often center around donations to political action committees, rather than to campaigns directly, although both are matters of concern. A "SuperPAC" backing a candidate may receive an unlimited amount of donations, and may spend it to support their candidate as long as they don't coordinate too closely with the candidate's campaign. They must remain sufficiently independent for it to count as independent expenditure, in which case the donations and expenditure are unlimited.

Unlike regular political actions committees, which can donate to candidates and must report who they receive donations from in turn, Super PACs are not required to report their sources of income.

This essentially means that people are free to spend unlimited amounts of their own money talking about their favored political candidate, though they can't donate unlimited amounts to the politician's campaign.

I don't have a strong personal stance on this issue, but I consider the ruling fundamentally fair. If I want to spend an unlimited amount of my own money buying advertising space to raise awareness around global warming, I can do that. That's speech, and large-scale speech takes money. I should be able to do the same thing to support a political candidate.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#114

Post by tptacek »

oceanstone wrote: post #111
Pyxl101 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting point. How does one determine when one is past the point of being a spoiler and into being a serious candidate? It seems that there is a self-fulfilling prophesy here, wherein if one is concerned about being a spoiler, then one will begin drawing votes away from other viable candidates as soon as they enter politics, and thus spoil; but yet, in order to ever become a viable candidate in the first…

Lessig and Nader are so different though. Lessig is being perhaps overly cautious, and bailing after the Democratic Party changed the rules and excluded him from the debates (boo). Nader stayed in the 2000 race until the end, even campaigning in states where Gore and Bush were neck-and-neck.

He's not bailing. He specifically refused to rule out running as an independent and is still taking donations. He also left the primary trashing the Democratic party.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#115

Post by s73v3r »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #109
s73v3r wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spending money is necessary in order to speak to a large audience. You need money to rent space to use as meeting halls, or to buy advertising space like billboards or newspaper space, or even simply run a website. The more traffic, the more eyeballs, the more people impacted, the more it costs. Speech in the real world costs money. The presidential election isn't won in the town square, where everyone can hear him g…

You're not entitled to speak to a large audience. And I'm not saying to completely ban political donations. I'm saying to severely limit them. Let every citizen donate $500/year to political causes, no more.

The budgeting problems of campaigns are not my concern. The ability of a few wealthy elites to completely dominate the political conversation simply by having more money, and therefore more speech, is.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#116

Post by ThomPete »

Eupolemos wrote: post #107
ThomPete wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats missing the essence of that quote IMO. Of course people are going to fail even again and again. You are somehow assuming that there are ways to know. But if anything we learned it is that it's trough trial and error and luck that we mostly succeed not trough armchair strategy sessions. You seem to have an issue with TR that clouds your ability to understand whats important in that quote IMO.

He is not missing it, he is addressing when it does not fit the situation and points out that this is one of those moments. There's a sweetspot with weighing planning and doing.

How many people do you think advised Obama against running for president?

You don't know before you try. You don't even know if Lessig very well knew that the didn't have a big chance but just wanted to see if he could build political momentum behind is case.

Of course we can have opinions about what he did but ultimately those are not important. Even my opinions about those opinions are not important.

The only thing that is important is that some people try and whether they fail or succeed the fact that they do, despite the obviousness of the failure that we can sit and look at afterwards it's more important that someone does that than someone comment on it.

In the political game giving voice even to minority of the voters is an important part of the democratic proces. If not enough voter gets behind it they fail but at least they have the opportunity to try.

At least to me that was the gist of the quote and the reason for the quote.

Being able to claim that Lessig was obviously wrong for even trying has zero value.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#117

Post by afarrell »

s73v3r wrote: post #32
ermacaz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its hard to poll above 0% when your only issue is being against freedom of speech

Citizens United is not freedom of speech.

http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/citizens-united-v...

Has links to the actual opinion and dissents as well as the arguments made before the court.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#118

Post by s73v3r »

studentrob wrote: post #98
tptacek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sanders' amendment essentially says that nothing in the First Amendment can be construed to limit Congress's ability to protect the integrity of elections, and (this is explicit in the amendment and without precedent anywhere else in the Constitution) from the wealthy. He delegates to Congress the details on how to use that new power to suppress the First Amendment.

So elections are more important than free speech? Darn, I disagree. It's the first amendment for good reason. I want to like someone who will really do something about this but I think this solution is a rabbit hole. Free speech is the most basic protection individuals have for asserting their rights. Elections follow. As much as I'd love to see political corruption reduced, I think those things are already in the pr…

Money isn't speech. You can say whatever you want. You're just not entitled to a platform in which to do it.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#119

Post by tptacek »

s73v3r wrote: post #118
studentrob wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So elections are more important than free speech? Darn, I disagree. It's the first amendment for good reason. I want to like someone who will really do something about this but I think this solution is a rabbit hole. Free speech is the most basic protection individuals have for asserting their rights. Elections follow. As much as I'd love to see political corruption reduced, I think those things are already in the pr…

Money isn't speech. You can say whatever you want. You're just not entitled to a platform in which to do it.

When you start telling people that they can't build their own platforms, you're getting to a place where "you can say whatever you want" becomes a pretty empty principle.
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