The System

[southernhybrid]

And.....assuming the survey is valid, most Americans want a Constitutional Amendment to do away with Citizens United, not that I expect that to happen.

https://publicintegrity.org/politic...itizens-united-with-constitutional-amendment/

Three-fourths of survey respondents — including 66 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Democrats — back a constitutional amendment outlawing Citizens United.

The study also indicates that most Americans — 88 percent overall — want to reduce the influence large campaign donors wield over lawmakers at a time when a single congressional election may cost tens of millions of dollars.

That most Republican and Democratic voters want to amend the Constitution to limit big money’s role in politics is notable because it’s the “most drastic step that can be taken,” said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy’s Program for Public Consultation, which conducted the study.

To me, it appears as if the decision was a bad one. We can call it a defense of free speech but in reality, it's all about the influence of money in politics. There were quite a few earlier decisions that didn't allow corporations or unions for that matter to have so much financial influence in politics. It certainly allows for corruption. We've always had freedom of the press, but to me, it seems as if SCOTUS twisted that concept when it made the decision in the Citizens United case.

 

[Jarhyn]

If you think that's bad public policy, you can lobby for a constitutional amendment that will cut back on the degree to which our government guarantees free speech; the disconnect between what the government guarantees and what the people want it to guarantee is precisely what the amendment process was created for.

In a better world, free speech would be called speech and spending money on marketing and lobbys would be called bribery and be illegal.

But since we have lawyers and lawyer talk we can no longer tell the difference between speech and money. Even though one is sound waves coming out of an individuals mouth and the other is money coming out of your wallet.

Free speech is speech spoken for free.

Otherwise it's paid speech.

 

[RVonse]

I found another short opinion regarding the problem with Citizens United verdict. I assume that we will never agree on whether or not this was a good decision. I'm still in the "not" category.

https://publicintegrity.org/politics/the-citizens-united-decision-and-why-it-matters/

So if the decision was about spending, why has so much been written about contributions? Like seven and eight-figure donations from people like casino magnate and billionaire Sheldon Adelson who, with his family, has given about $40 million to so-called “super PACs,” formed in the wake of the decision?

For that, we need to look at another court case — SpeechNow.org v. FEC. The lower-court case used the Citizens United case as precedent when it said that limits on contributions to groups that make independent expenditures are unconstitutional.

And that’s what led to the creation of the super PACs, which act as shadow political parties. They accept unlimited donations from billionaires, corporations and unions and use it to buy advertising, most of it negative.

The tell (whether we are lawyers or not) citizens united is a failure is that pay to win politics has increased rather than decreased being a clear threat to democracy.


In any other field, when you do something causing a worse situation you stop or reverse what you have done. Citizens United needs to be reversed.

 

[Bomb#20]

Thanks for your responses, Bomb. I'm not sure that I agree with all of your points. It does seem a bit weird that the liberal justices would have been against something that simply protected free speech. I guess it's all about how we interpret things as individuals.

You seem to be putting a lot of weight on the "liberal" label. Stevens and the court wing he led were generally called "liberal", and I guess they were if we're grading on the curve; but CU v FEC wasn't the first time Ginsburg and Breyer added their names to an authoritarian John Paul Stevens opinion.

 

[Bomb#20]

And.....assuming the survey is valid, most Americans want a Constitutional Amendment to do away with Citizens United, not that I expect that to happen.

https://publicintegrity.org/politic...itizens-united-with-constitutional-amendment/

Whether a constitutional amendment is a good idea depends on exactly what it says -- the devil is in the details. I have no doubt that it would be possible to write a constitutional amendment that would decrease campaign spending without being a disaster for free speech; but I strongly doubt that that's what Congress would pass and send to the states for ratification.

I tracked down the survey. The U. of Maryland researchers told the survey participants:

"The proposed Constitutional amendment would say Congress and the states may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others seeking to influence elections."​

Who decides whether limits are "reasonable"? It seems likely to me that most survey participants heard that proposal and reacted to it based on their own ideas about what limits are "reasonable". Some participants might have had different reactions if the researchers had mentioned to them that in its previous attempt to address this problem, Congress decided it was reasonable to set the limit for a small non-profit at zero dollars and the limit for Fox News at infinity dollars.

 

[Bomb#20]

In a better world, free speech would be called speech and spending money on marketing and lobbys would be called bribery and be illegal.

Whom was Hillary: The Movie an attempt to bribe? If the government hadn't suppressed it, the only politician who would have benefited is Barack Obama.

But since we have lawyers and lawyer talk we can no longer tell the difference between speech and money.

Of course we can. If you speak the government can't make you disclose your identity. But if you pay someone to speak for you then the government can make the speaker tell us who paid him.

 

[Bomb#20]

In a better world, free speech would be called speech and spending money on marketing and lobbys would be called bribery and be illegal.

But since we have lawyers and lawyer talk we can no longer tell the difference between speech and money. Even though one is sound waves coming out of an individuals mouth and the other is money coming out of your wallet.

Free speech is speech spoken for free.

Otherwise it's paid speech.

If only Katharine Graham had stood on a soapbox in Meridian Hill Park and read the Pentagon Papers aloud to all who cared to listen instead of paying a thousand employees to run off five hundred thousand copies, it would be a better world.

 

[Bomb#20]

The tell (whether we are lawyers or not) citizens united is a failure is that pay to win politics has increased rather than decreased being a clear threat to democracy.

In any other field, when you do something causing a worse situation you stop or reverse what you have done. Citizens United needs to be reversed.

You appear to be assuming that if the SCOTUS had instead ruled that First Amendment rights do not apply to corporations, everything would have gone on as before and nothing else would have happened causing a worse situation or being a clear threat to democracy.

 

[ZiprHead]

In a better world, free speech would be called speech and spending money on marketing and lobbys would be called bribery and be illegal.

But since we have lawyers and lawyer talk we can no longer tell the difference between speech and money. Even though one is sound waves coming out of an individuals mouth and the other is money coming out of your wallet.

Free speech is speech spoken for free.

Otherwise it's paid speech.

If only Katharine Graham had stood on a soapbox in Meridian Hill Park and read the Pentagon Papers aloud to all who cared to listen instead of paying a thousand employees to run off five hundred thousand copies, it would be a better world.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I tracked down the survey. The U. of Maryland researchers told the survey participants:

"The proposed Constitutional amendment would say Congress and the states may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others seeking to influence elections."​

Who decides whether limits are "reasonable"? It seems likely to me that most survey participants heard that proposal and reacted to it based on their own ideas about what limits are "reasonable". Some participants might have had different reactions if the researchers had mentioned to them that in its previous attempt to address this problem, Congress decided it was reasonable to set the limit for a small non-profit at zero dollars and the limit for Fox News at infinity dollars.

Bad idea. The word "reasonable" is sign that the law is almost certainly bad. Only use it if you have no other way to define what's right or wrong.

 

[bilby]

The word "reasonable" is sign that the law is almost certainly bad. Only use it if you have no other way to define what's right or wrong.

That sounds reasonable