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Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

reuters.com

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Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#41

Post by k310 »

elevation wrote: post #25
k310 wrote: post #15

"Citizens United" turned "one man, one vote" into "one dollar, one vote" It must be overturned. It was a bogus ruling.

> It must be overturned. It was a bogus ruling. Don't I have a right to buy a $10 yard sign? A $100 bard sign? A $1000 billboard? A $10K radio ad? A $50K book printing? Why should I lose any of these rights because I join with others to help me afford it?

The issue is "Is a corporation a person with all rights assigned to people"

Makes me wonder if LLM's are going to be granted citizenship by this court.

And then, individual transistors.

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#42

Post by tpmoney »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #37
insane_dreamer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citizens United is possibly the worst SCOTUS decision ever, on par with Dred Scott and Plessy v Fergeson. Abomination.

maybe the downvotes should instead state their arguments as to why Citizens United is a good idea

Didn’t down vote, but it was a good idea because the government in citizens united was arguing the FEC (and therefore by extension the president) should have the power to preemptively restrict political speech that mentions a candidate within months of an election. I would think given the current state of American politics, the downsides of allowing Trump to suppress all political messaging about him in the months leading up to an election if it was paid for with “corporate” money to be obvious.

But more than that, among the organizations on the side of citizens united and against the government in that case were the ACLU and the AFL-CIO. When the civil liberties people and the unions are all on the same side of an issue as the conservative pundits against the federal government, there’s a very good chance the government is very much in the wrong.

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#43

Post by goatlover »

openasocket wrote: post #19

I’ve always wondered why candidates need so much money. I mean, this doesn’t go directly into their pockets, it’s largely used to fund ads, right? I have a pet theory about political ads that I would love to find data to be able to confirm/deny. My theory is that those political ads don’t actually convince anyone about who to vote for, and aren’t intended to. Instead, it’s about convincing the people who already supp…

It's like with commercial advertising. It only needs to influence enough people, whether it convinces them to buy (or vote) what they already wanted, or it convinces them to want that.

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#44

Post by niam »

nyc_data_geek1 wrote: post #3
lapcat wrote: post #2

> "It's part and parcel to a system that fully embraces free speech," said Tom Garrett, a vice president at the Institute for Free Speech. "All Americans have the right to express themselves and exercise their right to political speech to the fullest extent possible." Corporations are people, my friend.

Money is not speech, no matter what the courts say.

"Money is speech" is a reddit-ism. The argument is closer to "limiting spending can be tantamount to limiting speech."

Should the president of the US (regardless of party) be able to restrict your ability to spend money on a web server because it hosts a forum about humanrights/guns/birthcontrol/etc? Or to run a news channel/blog that focuses on a particular perspective?

If not, little prevents the most endowed campaigns from changing their form factor from ads to propoganda platforms. And buying out news platforms becomes more enticing.

Whatever line you think is reasonable to draw here, would you trust a bad president with it? And would it actually solve the problem?

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#45

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

openasocket wrote: post #19

I’ve always wondered why candidates need so much money. I mean, this doesn’t go directly into their pockets, it’s largely used to fund ads, right? I have a pet theory about political ads that I would love to find data to be able to confirm/deny. My theory is that those political ads don’t actually convince anyone about who to vote for, and aren’t intended to. Instead, it’s about convincing the people who already supp…

I dont think its just ads. This money is the lubricant to mobilize media++, consultans and private networks.

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#46

Post by lapcat »

niam wrote: post #44
nyc_data_geek1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is not speech, no matter what the courts say.

"Money is speech" is a reddit-ism. The argument is closer to "limiting spending can be tantamount to limiting speech." Should the president of the US (regardless of party) be able to restrict your ability to spend money on a web server because it hosts a forum about humanrights/guns/birthcontrol/etc? Or to run a news channel/blog that focuses on a particular perspective? If not, little prevents the most endowed campa…

> Whatever line you think is reasonable to draw here, would you trust a bad president with it?

I don't think this is a good argument, because it's oddly specific. You can't trust a bad President to properly enforce any law. That much should be clear right now. A bad President is a general danger to the country and to the world. Among other powers, the President is the commander-in-chief!

Of course Congress has the power to impeach and remove a bad President, so you don't get a bad President without also having a bad Congress. In other words, we'd have much bigger problems than campaign finance. And I would claim that we get a bad President and a bad Congress precisely because we have no campaign finance limitations anymore.

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#47

Post by dpacmittal »

siscia wrote: post #13

From one perspective I am not against lobbying in general. The idea is that legislator don't have the full context and don't know the impact of their work - so they welcome industry or matter experts. Which is quite reasonable. I would argue that the job of the legislator is to know what they are doing, but I can see it being hard for specific technical issues that really benefits from first hand experience. I am not…

Lobbying is legalise bribery, plain and simple. You pay money to get politicians to return the favor in terms of regulations and policies that benifit you (even if they are harmful to the general public)

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#48

Post by elevation »

goatlover wrote: post #33
elevation wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It must be overturned. It was a bogus ruling. Don't I have a right to buy a $10 yard sign? A $100 bard sign? A $1000 billboard? A $10K radio ad? A $50K book printing? Why should I lose any of these rights because I join with others to help me afford it?

You shouldn't have the right to spend disproportionately more on influencing an election than other people. That's not democratic. It very much favors the interests of the extremely wealthy. What would be most democratic is if tax money funded campaigns. Every candidate gets the same amount for that office. Take money out of the equation. It should not be a reason someone gets elected. That's corrupting and makes can…

> You shouldn't have the right to spend disproportionately more on influencing an election than other people

The 1st amendment freedom of the press is by nature disproportionate!

Most citizens do not own a printing press. Most presses aren't upstream of a national distribution network. Not all twitter accounts have millions of followers. "Evenness of influence" is not constitutionally guaranteed or even a natural outcome, even in a democracy.

The 1st amendment doesn't guarantee you access to the most power communications equipment and audience, only that that the Government won't suppress what you manage to obtain.

Re: Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms

#49

Post by layer8 »

mynameisbilly wrote: post #23
oefrha wrote: post #8

> It also leaves out the $106 million-plus Google co-founder Sergey Brin has spent in California fighting a proposed wealth tax and other issues Damn, I can't think of a better argument for wealth tax if one dude alone is willing to spend $100m to fight it. He clearly has too much.

The passing of Dolly Parton has really had me thinking how much good these unfathomably rich people and corporations could do. It enrages me to think of how many people $106 million could have helped.

> It enrages me to think of how many people $106 million could have helped.

That money did go somewhere, so it probably did “help” quite a number of people less rich than Sergey Brin.

(That’s just a side comment, not an argument that any single person should own that much money.)

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