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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

#51

Post by sensanaty »

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…

The issue is that lobbying puts the power in the hands of the one that has the most money. Yes, politicians should hear out expert opinions when discussing policy matters because nobody knows everything. However with lobbying, the only people that get a voice are the ones paying the most.

Combine that with these megacorps with infinitely deep pockets, it becomes extremely hard to hear both sides of an issue, and we end up in the opposite of the original issue, where the only context legislators get is the context paid for by monied interests.

It's blatant bribery. I come from a 3rd world country where bribery takes the form of slipping a cop or judge some cash to let you off the hook, and in my mind this is in no way different. Hell, it's maybe even worse because we pretend it isn't blatant corruption and is somehow recognized as okay!

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

#52

Post by sensanaty »

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?

Except in your world the person with the most resources is the one that wins by default because they simply outspend everyone else, how is that righteous? Especially when we're not talking about individuals here, we're talking about corporations.

Besides your premise is flawed to begin with, you most certainly cannot freely rent out a billboard and put anything you want on there, or a radio ad, or a book printing. Restrictions on content already exist, and I see no reason why an exception should be made for political parties.

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

#53

Post by niam »

lapcat wrote: post #46
niam wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 po…

The President is an example (and actual) enforcement mechanism for the State. Not the argument.

We want to ban independent political expenditure past a certain dollar threshold. Great. How do we do that without torching legitimate civic and commercial participation, and without accidentally entrenching rich participants even more? I'm unconvinced you can do that, and unconvinced that ads are a worthy enough evil to be worth the try, particularly if it requires amending over the First Amendment. ("If" is an operative word.)

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

#54

Post by bigbadfeline »

ratelimitsteve wrote: post #31
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.

Corporations are only people when it comes to rights and profits. When it comes to responsibilities they revert to being nebulous entities whose behaviors are emergent phenomena that no one can actually be held accountable for. Or, to borrow the old maxim, "Corporations aren't people until Texas executes one."

> Corporations are only people when it comes to rights and profits. When it comes to responsibilities they revert to being nebulous entities whose behaviors are emergent phenomena that no one can actually be held accountable for.

You do have a point here. Corporate shareholders do have special protections based on the legal principle of "corporate veil", meaning that corporate owners are usually not personally responsible for the corporation’s debts or legal misdeeds.

But they do get to influence elections from behind the veil, as to further grow their privileges, it's a slippery slope indeed.

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

#55

Post by jdlshore »

ksbd-pls-finish wrote: post #32
ratelimitsteve wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's really interesting is when you look at how much good they could do without ever actually affecting their lifestyle at all. What actually is $100 million to a trillionaire? What could he do with 1,000,000,000,000 that he can't do with 999,900,000,000?

The problem with this logic is that it equally applies to someone who owns 999,900,000,000. If someone is willing to spend money above some spendable threshold, then they will never become a trillionaire. Because they will start giving away sooner.

I’m not seeing the problem you’re describing. It has a name: the marginal utility of money. $1,000 is worth a lot to someone who has nothing, less to someone who has a million, practically nothing to someone who has a billion.

So, yes, it applies equally at lower levels, until it doesn’t.

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

#56

Post by deepfriedchokes »

atmavatar wrote: post #29
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.

That's a tough ask of a court where half its members (including the chief justice) were caught not only accepting lavish gifts from wealthy individuals who brought cases before the court, but where the outrage was that the gifts were merely undisclosed.

Any fix needs to start with impeachment and removal by Congress. I’d love to see bribes treated as treason.

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

#57

Post by alexgoodhart »

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.

People and corporations? Come on.

The US has now in one decade nearly doubled its military budget from ~$630 Billion to ~$1.2 Trillion.

ICE alone has received tens of billions in funds in the past year.

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

#58

Post by insane_dreamer »

tpmoney wrote: post #42
insane_dreamer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

except that the _consequence_ of CU was basically unlimited spending on political campaigns by SuperPACs.

the ACLU may have been right about the particulars they were arguing but they missed the bigger picture of how this would open the floodgates of campaign financing

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

#59

Post by elevation »

sensanaty wrote: post #52
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?

Except in your world the person with the most resources is the one that wins by default because they simply outspend everyone else, how is that righteous? Especially when we're not talking about individuals here, we're talking about corporations. Besides your premise is flawed to begin with, you most certainly cannot freely rent out a billboard and put anything you want on there, or a radio ad, or a book printing. Re…

> the person with the most resources is the one that wins by default because they simply outspend everyone else

As the heir apparent of the republican party, Jeb Bush raised a half-billion dollars from donors. He was politically connected, with a history of winning elections. His significantly outspent the other candidates -- and still lost. This isn't especially uncommon, money's influence alone doesn't determine elections.

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

#60

Post by tpmoney »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #58
tpmoney wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

except that the _consequence_ of CU was basically unlimited spending on political campaigns by SuperPACs. the ACLU may have been right about the particulars they were arguing but they missed the bigger picture of how this would open the floodgates of campaign financing

The CU decision didn't foreclose the government from crafting a different law to address the issue in a more narrow and content neutral way, but congress being the dysfunctional clown show that it is, hasn't. CU also didn't really open any floodgates, it left the state of the law in the same state it was 8 years earlier. It's not like the BCRA was a law that had a long and storied history, it was passed and struck down within the span of two presidential terms.
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