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Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

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Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#201

Post by tptacek »

mindslight wrote: post #192
tptacek wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is another example of an exculpatory analysis for Nader trying to convince readers that many of his voters would have broken for Bush instead of Gore if he had dropped out. Like Wikipedia, it points out that Floridian Democrats voted in anomalous numbers for Bush, implying that Floridian Naderites were the same --- which of course they were not.

You do realize that if Nader dropped out, "his" voters could have voted for another third party, a write-in, or even simply not voted, right?

Sure they could have. But statistically, we know that they wouldn't. They'd have handed the election to Gore. Nader's core supporters are liberal, and Bush was decidedly not that.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#202

Post by [deleted] »

mbesto wrote: post #183
michael_nielsen wrote: post #29

With all the critical "I-told-you-sos", this seems like a good time to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, beca…

A perhaps more concise quote would be: There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

[deleted]

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#203

Post by studentrob »

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.

You've already said this 2-3x elsewhere in this thread and people gave you thoughtful replies there. I agree mostly with the counter arguments you received.

Do you not see how difficult it is to identify what money is being spent in support of political campaigns and what money is not? Or, do you trust people who are corrupting politics to properly label how they are spending money as either a) on politics or b) not on politics? If not, who will figure it out and how? What if a foreign company starts advertising online? Do we censor that? Do we forbid US companies from investing in them which is a form of indirect support?

The whole reason I posted the above was to raise awareness that simply ending citizens united is not a whole solution unto itself. It may just drive the money underground and make it harder to track. We need a real public, open discussion about this, giving proper thought to everyone's ideas, or we'll never move forward

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#204

Post by JamesBarney »

tptacek wrote: post #172
tbrake wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do normally agree with your posts but this seems ... distressingly principled, if you like :) If we adhere to the idea that "money is speech" (Buckley v Valeo) and resist all attempts at suppressing speech, how do we avoid an eventual slide into plutocracy when upwards of 90% of all elections these days are won by the candidate who spends the most money?

I don't know what I think about campaign finance reform. On the one hand I have the obvious concerns about money buying influence. On the other hand, money tried real real hard to buy the 2012 election and failed comically. Meanwhile, the free speech issues involved in regulating campaign spending, while admittedly very inconvenient for all of us, are real, and no appeal to plutocracy extinguishes them. Certainly: th…

You're right that there isn't a lot of evidence about whether money influences elections. But ultimately it doesn't matter whether money influences elections. What is more important is whether elected officials believe money is influential in elections, and I think this is trivially true.

What are your fears if "The Democracy is for People Amendment" passed? Are you worried that the congress would limit political spending too much? Or are you worried that the amendment doesn't specifically separate political spending from political speech well enough?

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#205

Post by aetherson »

chillwaves wrote: post #196
aetherson wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The freedom to shout at strangers on sidewalks is a meaningless one in terms of ability to add your ideas to the national political dialog. All meaningful political speech in the modern day has some kind of money spend behind it -- including your posting here on this comment thread. And if we raise the bar from "I guess theoretically this might potentially affect something" to "obviously meaningful speech," then the…

That's absurd. The government can guarantee equal speech instead of allowing some speech to dominate everyone else. How can the 1st Amendment be protecting the voice of the poor if they have no avenue of expression? And when their views are beaten down by the few rich. That is not at all in the spirit of the first amendment or of democracy.

The 1st Amendment does not attempt to guarantee equality of "voice," just the opportunity to speak. It especially does not attempt to guarantee equality of voice by silencing some arbitrary group.

And even if it did, which, again, it really does not, it wouldn't do it by the avenue of declaring that "money is not speech" and thus that there are no restrictions on the government preventing people from spending money on speech.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#206

Post by jonathankoren »

gee_totes wrote: post #27
jonathankoren wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Lessig never wanted to be president; he wanted a podium. But you can't say that. If he indicated he wasn't serious about being president in any way, they never would have let him on stage. I guess that's the difference between the Democratic party debates and the Republican party debates. I know that sounds like a troll, but it's not. The GOP primary debates had 17 people running, the Democratic primary had 5 (not c…

As much as I hate to defend Lindsey Graham, I honestly think he's running for the VP slot. He would make an appealing VP for the Republican base -- hawkish on defense and a veteran of senate dealmaking.

That is one of the analyses I've heard. The other is that he's playing a bit of a coach, making the eventual nominee hone his foreign policy prior to the general.

The only reason why I chose Lindsey Graham for my example, was that he's stuck in JV debates, and had I could articulate a reason for his candidacy -- as opposed to Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, or George Pataki. I honestly can't figure out why their staying the race, except for perhaps for personal marketing reasons.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#207

Post by zeckalpha »

13thLetter wrote: post #179
zeckalpha wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He tried lobbying for sensible copyright legislation. The problem was campaign finance. Hence the pivot.

That's like pivoting from "I was unable to climb this mountain" to "I'll tear down this mountain with my bare hands." He switched from something achievable that he was qualified for to something immensely more difficult that he had no experience in. What's the result of that been? And, you know. Even if Citizens United is overturned (hooray! It'll once again be illegal to make a movie critical of Hillary Clinton duri…

It's more like "I was unable to climb this mountain because I couldn't breathe" to "Let's pack oxygen tanks".

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#208

Post by [deleted] »

mbesto wrote: post #183
michael_nielsen wrote: post #29

With all the critical "I-told-you-sos", this seems like a good time to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, beca…

A perhaps more concise quote would be: There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

[deleted]

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#209

Post by studentrob »

chillwaves wrote: post #196
aetherson wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The freedom to shout at strangers on sidewalks is a meaningless one in terms of ability to add your ideas to the national political dialog. All meaningful political speech in the modern day has some kind of money spend behind it -- including your posting here on this comment thread. And if we raise the bar from "I guess theoretically this might potentially affect something" to "obviously meaningful speech," then the…

That's absurd. The government can guarantee equal speech instead of allowing some speech to dominate everyone else. How can the 1st Amendment be protecting the voice of the poor if they have no avenue of expression? And when their views are beaten down by the few rich. That is not at all in the spirit of the first amendment or of democracy.

> The government can guarantee equal speech instead of allowing some speech to dominate everyone else.

How? What do you mean "the government can guarantee equal speech"? Do you mean they should disallow some speech from dominating other speech? Who decides what to censor, and how is that done, for example, on the internet? Is that not a form of censorship itself?

> How can the 1st Amendment be protecting the voice of the poor if they have no avenue of expression?

How can you say they have zero avenue? They can rally within their community with no money at all. MLK and other civil rights activists made some of the biggest changes in this country through their speech alone, and they never even held office. He may have even received donations or media support from companies employing large numbers of black people. Would you say that is unfair too?

I also want us to find a better way to end corruption in politics. I just don't think it is so simple, and free speech and the ability to spend your hard earned money on what you want, regardless of whether you're poor or wealthy, is the core of the first amendment. I'm not sure about Joe Shmoe CEO + board deciding to donate company earnings, which are not all their own, to a super PAC or secretive non-profit of their choosing. That's ~20 people deciding where the money of 100s of hard working people goes.

Is it easy to fix that? Are laws themselves enough, or do we also need to be able to enforce them? What happens when some business claims their money was not spent in support of a political campaign, but it supports a foreign company who is advertising online?

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#210

Post by hackerboos »

nl wrote: post #197
danbmil99 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your proposal would run smack up against the First Amendment. Both right and left will will reject any sort of speech control out of hand here in the USA.

Maybe. But if you can explain how overturning Citizen's United wouldn't run into that problem while this idea I'd find that helpful. OTOH, Libel in the US is already a thing. I'm saying extending those laws to make "the American people" a group that has standing, and falsehoods something that has harm. There is some existing precedent for that under libel.

The problem with CU isn't the 1st Amendment, it's corporate personhood and the press.

It's easy to argue that corporations and unions don't deserve free speech as their directors, employees and members are all entitled to free speech individually.

However the press is different. Nobody, rightly so, wants to limit the press to say and print whatever they like (so long as it's not slander/libel) and today's press is made up of corporations.

How do we keep a free press and silence other corporations?

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