Supreme Court strikes down limits on federal campaign donations
By Robert Barnes and Matea Gold, Updated: Wednesday, April 2, 10:30 AM
A split Supreme Court Wednesday struck down limits on the total amount of money an individual may spend on political candidates as a violation of free speech rights, a decision sure to increase the role of money in political campaigns.

The 5 to 4 decision sparked a sharp dissent from liberal justices, who said the decision reflects a wrong-headed hostility to campaign finance laws that the court’s conservatives showed in Citizens United v. FEC , which allowed corporate spending on elections.

“If Citizens United opened a door,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer said in reading his dissent from the bench, “today’s decision we fear will open a floodgate.”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the opinion striking down the aggregate limits of what an individual may spend on candidates and political committees. He noted that the limit on individual contributions to a specific candidate was not affected by the ruling.

“Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects,” Roberts wrote. “If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests and Nazi parades — despite the profound offense such spectacles cause — it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.”

Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Roberts. Justice Clarence Thomas provided the crucial fifth vote for overturning the limits, but said the others should have gone further to strike all contribution limits.

Breyer was joined in dissent by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The aggregate totals that the court struck down in the case — McCutcheon v. FEC --imposed a $48,600 limit on contributions to candidates during a two-year election cycle, plus $74,600 total on giving to political parties and committees.

The base limits on contributions left unchanged by the ruling allow donations to candidates of $2,600 for both primary and general elections.

The decision provides a financial boost to political parties, which have lost their dominance with the rise of super PACs and other independent political groups that can raise unlimited sums.

“Today’s court decision in McCutcheon v. FEC is an important first step toward restoring the voice of candidates and party committees and a vindication for all those who support robust, transparent political discourse,” said Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, which brought the case with Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama businessman.

But advocates for reducing the role of big donors in politics decried the ruling, saying it will further amplify the influence of the wealthy in campaigns. By striking the overall cap on how much individuals can give to federal candidates and parties, the decision opens the door to the creation of super-sized joint fundraising committees that could solicit checks for more than $3 million, they say.

“With its Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions, the Supreme Court has turned our representative system of government into a sandbox for America’s billionaires and millionaires to play in,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, in a statement.

America’s billionaires and millionaires to play in

 Frazzled wrote:
Not liking this.

 LordofHats wrote:
Not surprised. Figured this would go out eventually when limits of corps went out the window (cause corps are people don't you know). But lets be honest;

America’s billionaires and millionaires to play in

Cause it wasn't already?

 Easy E wrote:
Well, this Democracy thing was fun while it lasted. Long live Oligarchy!

 whembly wrote:
Now that I think about this... this isn't necessary a bad thing. At least, I don't think it makes things worst.

One of the big knocks on Super PACs is that their donors can legally conceal their names... donating directly to candidates’ campaigns can’t.

EDIT: wait...that's not quite right... 501c4 organizations don't have to disclose donors...

 Spacemanvic wrote:
We're actually a representative REPUBLIC d-usa.

 d-usa wrote:

 Spacemanvic wrote:
We're actually a representative REPUBLIC d-usa.

I'm going to have to block every person that makes that stupid statement and thinks that us being a republic somehow doesn't make us a democracy...

The United States is, indeed, a republic, not a democracy. Accurately defined, a democracy is a form of government in which the people decide policy matters directly--through town hall meetings or by voting on ballot initiatives and referendums. A republic, on the other hand, is a system in which the people choose representatives who, in turn, make policy decisions on their behalf. The Framers of the Constitution were altogether fearful of pure democracy. Everything they read and studied taught them that pure democracies "have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths" (Federalist No. 10).

 Spacemanvic wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 Spacemanvic wrote:
We're actually a representative REPUBLIC d-usa.

I'm going to have to block every person that makes that stupid statement and thinks that us being a republic somehow doesn't make us a democracy...

The stupidity starts when someone calls the US form of government a democracy when in fact, it is a representative republic. Despite your protestations.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Spacemanvic wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 Spacemanvic wrote:
We're actually a representative REPUBLIC d-usa.

I'm going to have to block every person that makes that stupid statement and thinks that us being a republic somehow doesn't make us a democracy...

The stupidity starts when someone calls the US form of government a democracy when in fact, it is a representative republic. Despite your protestations.

We have a Democratic-Republic, Democracy does not just mean direct democracy. It is a democratic republic because we elect our leaders.

The United States is, indeed, a republic, not a democracy. Accurately defined, a democracy is a form of government in which the people decide policy matters directly--through town hall meetings or by voting on ballot initiatives and referendums. A republic, on the other hand, is a system in which the people choose representatives who, in turn, make policy decisions on their behalf. The Framers of the Constitution were altogether fearful of pure democracy. Everything they read and studied taught them that pure democracies "have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths" (Federalist No. 10).

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Check my post again, there is an edit. And as I said we do not have a direct democracy. That does not mean we do not have democracy.

 Spacemanvic wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 Spacemanvic wrote:
We're actually a representative REPUBLIC d-usa.

I'm going to have to block every person that makes that stupid statement and thinks that us being a republic somehow doesn't make us a democracy...

The stupidity starts when someone calls the US form of government a democracy when in fact, it is a representative republic. Despite your protestations.

The United States is, indeed, a republic, not a democracy.

Accurately defined, a democracy is a form of government in which the people decide policy matters directly--through town hall meetings or by voting on ballot initiatives and referendums.

A republic, on the other hand, is a system in which the people choose representatives who, in turn, make policy decisions on their behalf.

The Framers of the Constitution were altogether fearful of pure democracy.

Everything they read and studied taught them that pure democracies "have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths" (Federalist No. 10).

 Ouze wrote:
As in you cannot donate to politicians who are out of state, unless it's national? That seems problematic, freedom of association wise.

 Ouze wrote:
As in you cannot donate to politicians who are out of state, unless it's national? That seems problematic, freedom of association wise.

 sebster wrote:
If someone wrote political satire in which a character attempted to argue that the act of giving someone money is just a kind of speech, people would think that book was stupid and heavy handed, even for satire.

 d-usa wrote:
They might even tell you something by not giving you money for it

Economists Emmanuel Saez, of the University of California–Berkeley, and Gabriel Zucman, of the London School of Economics, are out with a new set of findings on American wealth inequality, and their numbers are startling. Wealth, for reference, is the value of what you own—assets like housing, stocks, and bonds, minus your debts. And while it certainly comes up from time to time, it has tended to play second fiddle to income in conversations about America’s widening class divide. In part, that’s because it’s a trickier conversation subject. Wealth has always been far more concentrated than income in the United States. Plus, research suggested that the top 1 percent of households had actually lost some of its share since the 1980s.

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That might not really have been the case.

Forget the 1 percent. The winners of this race, according to Zucman and Saez, have been the 0.1 percent. Since the 1960s, the richest one-thousandth of U.S. households, with a minimum net worth today above $20 million, have more than doubled their share of U.S. wealth, from around 10 percent to more than 20 percent. Take a moment to process that. One-thousandth of the country owns one-fifth of the wealth. By comparison, the entire top 1 percent of households takes in about 22 percent of U.S. income, counting capital gains.

 Ouze wrote:
The discussion on the finer points of what makes of a democracy or a republic are not really salient to the topic, please. We've done this without resolution previous and I don't imagine that a consensus will be reached in this thread.

Welcome to the Collective

Justice Breyer turns the First Amendment on its head.

In his plurality opinion in yesterday's free-speech case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, Chief Justice John Roberts notes an anomaly in contemporary "liberal" First Amendment jurisprudence: "If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades--despite the profound offense such spectacles cause--it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition."

We'd take the point a step further. The examples Roberts cites all involve fringe political expression. But the First Amendment also protects outré speech outside the political realm--most notably pornography, the subject of a great deal of Supreme Court jurisprudence over the past few decades, in which judicial liberals took the lead in expanding free-speech rights.

In recent years something of a consensus has emerged. When the court extended First Amendment protection to "depictions of animal cruelty" (U.S. v. Stevens, 2010) and violent video games (Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 2011), the decisions were written by Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia, respectively, for 8-1 and 7-2 majorities.

So why have the court's "liberals" adopted a hostile attitude toward political speech, which has long been understood as being at the core of First Amendment protection? In his McCutcheon dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer elaborates the theory behind this odd development.

We should note that Breyer has proved more willing than his liberal colleagues to uphold restrictions on nonpolitical speech. He was one of the two dissenters (with Justice Clarence Thomas) in Brown v. EMA, which involved a statute restricting sales of games to minors. He also dissented in U.S. v. Playboy Entertainment Group (2000), which invalidated limits on sexually explicit cable TV programming.

But in both those cases Breyer was alone among the court's liberals. In McCutcheon, his dissent gained the support of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. It's a familiar pattern: A series of high court rulings pitting campaign finance restrictions against free speech, beginning in 2007, have been decided 5-4, with the same majority as in McCutcheon and the identity of the dissenters varying only by virtue of changes in the court's personnel.

Yesterday's decision was fairly narrow. It invalidated a statutory provision limiting the total contributions an individual could make to congressional candidates, party committees and political action committees during an election cycle. But it let stand the limits on contributions to each candidate or committee. That means, among other things, that a contributor may now give to as many candidates as he wants, but only $5,200 apiece ($2,600 each for the primary and general election). Thomas argued for striking down the individual limits too, which is why Roberts's opinion did not command a majority.

In making the case for the constitutionality of restrictions on campaign contributions, Breyer advances an instrumental view of the First Amendment. He quotes Justice Louis Brandeis, who in 1927 "wrote that the First Amendment's protection of speech was 'essential to effective democracy,' " and Brandeis's contemporary Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who in 1931 argued that " 'a fundamental principle of our constitutional system' is the 'maintenance of the opportunity for free political discussion to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people" (emphasis Breyer's).

After citing Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (!) views on the shortcomings of representative democracy, Breyer quotes James Wilson, one of the Founding Fathers, who argued in a 1792 commentary that the First Amendment's purpose was to establish a "chain of communication between the people, and those, to whom they have committed the exercise of the powers of government." Again quoting Wilson, Breyer elaborates: "This 'chain' would establish the necessary 'communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments' between the people and their representatives, so that public opinion could be channeled into effective governmental action."

And here's how Breyer sums it all up: "Accordingly, the First Amendment advances not only the individual's right to engage in political speech, but also the public's interest in preserving a democratic order in which collective speech matters." [whembly: da fuq!!!]

The emphasis on "matters" is again Breyer's. We'd have italicized "collective" as the key concept. As with the Second Amendment, he and the other dissenters assert a "collective" right, the establishment of which is purportedly the Constitution's ultimate purpose, as a justification for curtailing an individual right.

In this case they at least acknowledge the individual right exists. But then the First Amendment, unlike the Second, has no prefatory clause explaining its purpose; it simply says "Congress shall make no law . . ." Breyer has to venture outside the text to find a reason to read that prohibition equivocally.

It's important to note that when Breyer refers to "collective" rights, what he does not have in mind is individuals exercising their rights by voluntarily collecting themselves into organizations. In fact, the prevailing left-liberal view, most notably with respect to Citizens United v. FEC (2010), is that collections of individuals, at least when they take corporate form, have (or should have) no rights.

The only "collective" that matters to Breyer is the one from which you cannot opt out except by the extreme measure of renouncing your citizenship: "the people" or "the public" as a whole. In Breyer's view, the purpose of the First Amendment is to see that (in Chief Justice Hughes's words) "the will of the people" is done. Individual rights are but a means to that end. To the extent they frustrate it, they ought to be curtailed. You will be assimilated.

That resolves the conundrum we noted atop this column. Fringe political speech like flag burning, funeral protests and Nazi parades are so broadly unappealing as to have no effect on "the will of the people." The same is true of nonpolitical forms of expression such as pornography, violent video games and depictions of animal cruelty. (Breyer's willingness to countenance restrictions of the first two has to do with the protection of children, not of the body politic.)

Only mainstream political expression has the potential to thwart the "collective" will, and thus, in the view of Breyer and his fellow dissenters, it alone is deserving of restriction on such a rationale. That stands the First Amendment on its head. Its purpose may be to "make government responsive," as Wilson argued, but the means by which it does so is the limitation of government power and protection of individual freedom.

The Puffington Host has a revealing quote from a politician who objects to yesterday's ruling, Rhode Island's Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse:

"This is a court that knows essentially nothing about elections. It's the first court in a long time on which no one has ever run for office," said Whitehouse, comparing the five justices who ruled for businessman Shaun McCutcheon to "the ultimate amateur . . . who says, 'I know how to eat, so I can open a restaurant.' "

Whitehouse is arguing that the political process should be controlled by professional politicians. As Roberts notes in responding to Breyer's dissent: "The degree to which speech is protected cannot turn on a legislative or judicial determination that particular speech is useful to the democratic process." To do so would impose the will of politicians or judges on the people, not the other way around.

WSJ wrote:The Puffington Host has a revealing quote from a politician who objects to yesterday's ruling, Rhode Island's Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse...

 Goliath wrote:
Wait, so the ruling is effectively that money = speech?

 d-usa wrote:
We are already doing all of this. His opinion is not anything new. We restrict all forms of speech in the same way we were restricting speech in the form of money (until this decision).

Sex is speech, and we restrict the expression of it.
Violence is speech, and we restrict the expression of it.

Me giving a candidate that I support money is speech, and me blowing up the car of a candidate that I don't support is speech. But in order to protect the collective some forms of speech are not allowed, despite the first.

" 'a fundamental principle of our constitutional system' is the 'maintenance of the opportunity for free political discussion to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people"

 dogma wrote:

WSJ wrote:The Puffington Host has a revealing quote from a politician who objects to yesterday's ruling, Rhode Island's Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse...

Really? "The Puffington Host"? Try harder James Taranto.

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
We are already doing all of this. His opinion is not anything new. We restrict all forms of speech in the same way we were restricting speech in the form of money (until this decision).

Sex is speech, and we restrict the expression of it.
Violence is speech, and we restrict the expression of it.

Me giving a candidate that I support money is speech, and me blowing up the car of a candidate that I don't support is speech. But in order to protect the collective some forms of speech are not allowed, despite the first.

That's not what he's talking about...

What he's saying is that "The Community" gets to decide if your speech is helpful to "The Community's" political goals. That's what he means by emphasizing Chief Justice's Charles Evans Hughe's blurb:

" 'a fundamental principle of our constitutional system' is the 'maintenance of the opportunity for free political discussion to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people"

If it is helpful, then you have the right to free speech.

If not, you don't.

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
We are already doing all of this. His opinion is not anything new. We restrict all forms of speech in the same way we were restricting speech in the form of money (until this decision).

Sex is speech, and we restrict the expression of it.
Violence is speech, and we restrict the expression of it.

Me giving a candidate that I support money is speech, and me blowing up the car of a candidate that I don't support is speech. But in order to protect the collective some forms of speech are not allowed, despite the first.

That's not what he's talking about...

What he's saying is that "The Community" gets to decide if your speech is helpful to "The Community's" political goals. That's what he means by emphasizing Chief Justice's Charles Evans Hughe's blurb:

" 'a fundamental principle of our constitutional system' is the 'maintenance of the opportunity for free political discussion to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people"

If it is helpful, then you have the right to free speech.

If not, you don't.

The concern is over one person's speech hurting everybody else's speech. Should people have the right to more speech (and influence) than others? That is what he is talking about. He's not saying "whembly, shut the feth up. Your stupid speech to the politicians is not helping the people", he is saying that "whembly, you shouldn't be allowed to be the only person talking to everybody. Everyone gets an equal chance to talk to the politicians". That is the context of this quote.

If one person gets all the speech, then there is no reason for the politician to listen to anybody else.

 d-usa wrote:
Oh my god, it could hurt liberals? Thank God oh mighty SCOTUS for saving the liberals and for whembly who reminded me that this is a partisan issue...

But seriously, and explaining it again:

Nobody should be able to scream the loudest while pretending this is about freedom of speech while at the same time making sure that nobody else has their speech heard. That is the argument he is making, and it's a good one.

Right now random people from Oklahoma can go to St. Louis and decide "Here buddy *slips politician a big pile of speech*, don't listen to any other speech than mine. There is more speech where that is coming from. Don't listen to whembly, his speech is especially bad".

But right now the SCOTUS decided that everybody should be able to bribe, I mean speak to, any politician that they want to because people think that money = speech.

The other argument he is making that we routinely limit speech for the protection of society. I can't use my speech to take a crap on the majors front yard, but I can use my speech to buy him off?

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Oh my god, it could hurt liberals? Thank God oh mighty SCOTUS for saving the liberals and for whembly who reminded me that this is a partisan issue...

But seriously, and explaining it again:

Nobody should be able to scream the loudest while pretending this is about freedom of speech while at the same time making sure that nobody else has their speech heard. That is the argument he is making, and it's a good one.

Right now random people from Oklahoma can go to St. Louis and decide "Here buddy *slips politician a big pile of speech*, don't listen to any other speech than mine. There is more speech where that is coming from. Don't listen to whembly, his speech is especially bad".

But right now the SCOTUS decided that everybody should be able to bribe, I mean speak to, any politician that they want to because people think that money = speech.

The other argument he is making that we routinely limit speech for the protection of society. I can't use my speech to take a crap on the majors front yard, but I can use my speech to buy him off?

Yeah... I don't buy that.

I think this will shine some more sunlight into who's contributing to whom and by how much.

I think more a sensible compromise is to define a limit to how much you can contribute anonymously(ie, spitballing $1,000). After that, it has to be disclosed.

 whembly wrote:

He does that too much... it opens an opportunity... like you, to attack him rather than the post.

James Taranto as published by The Wall Street Journal wrote:The emphasis on "matters" is again Breyer's. We'd have italicized "collective" as the key concept. As with the Second Amendment, he and the other dissenters assert a "collective" right, the establishment of which is purportedly the Constitution's ultimate purpose, as a justification for curtailing an individual right.

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Oh my god, it could hurt liberals? Thank God oh mighty SCOTUS for saving the liberals and for whembly who reminded me that this is a partisan issue...

But seriously, and explaining it again:

Nobody should be able to scream the loudest while pretending this is about freedom of speech while at the same time making sure that nobody else has their speech heard. That is the argument he is making, and it's a good one.

Right now random people from Oklahoma can go to St. Louis and decide "Here buddy *slips politician a big pile of speech*, don't listen to any other speech than mine. There is more speech where that is coming from. Don't listen to whembly, his speech is especially bad".

But right now the SCOTUS decided that everybody should be able to bribe, I mean speak to, any politician that they want to because people think that money = speech.

The other argument he is making that we routinely limit speech for the protection of society. I can't use my speech to take a crap on the majors front yard, but I can use my speech to buy him off?

Yeah... I don't buy that.

I think this will shine some more sunlight into who's contributing to whom and by how much.

I think more a sensible compromise is to define a limit to how much you can contribute anonymously(ie, spitballing $1,000). After that, it has to be disclosed.

Not a penny should be anonymous then. If this is a freedom of speech issue, then it should be a STFU situation unless you attach your name to it.

What sort of argument is "I should be able to say what I want, but nobody should know it was me saying it..."

 dogma wrote:

James Taranto as published by The Wall Street Journal wrote:The emphasis on "matters" is again Breyer's. We'd have italicized "collective" as the key concept. As with the Second Amendment, he and the other dissenters assert a "collective" right, the establishment of which is purportedly the Constitution's ultimate purpose, as a justification for curtailing an individual right.

The assertion of a collective right does not imply that an individual right is curtailed. Indeed, I would argue that freedom of speech is necessarily collective, given that all people are accorded it and the right itself is based upon The Constitution; a document which signifies the national identity of the US.

 whembly wrote:

That isn't what Justice Breyer is saying...

He's suggesting that Free Expression should be subject to a vote of the majority of the collective, which by definition doesn't make it a right at all.

 whembly wrote:

Besides... you're a political consultant... right?

This ruling is good for you business then.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

That isn't what Justice Breyer is saying...

He's suggesting that Free Expression should be subject to a vote of the majority of the collective, which by definition doesn't make it a right at all.

That is true by necessity. You cannot live in society without subjecting yourself to the majority vote of the collective. Indeed, that is the foundation of democracy.

 whembly wrote:

Besides... you're a political consultant... right?

This ruling is good for you business then.

Anything politically controversial is good for my bottom line.

 whembly wrote:

You enjoy being pedantic dontcha.

 LordofHats wrote:
This Breyer guy sounds like he has some god damn sense.

 whembly wrote:
wut?



How can you have a free debate then?

 whembly wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
This Breyer guy sounds like he has some god damn sense.

wut?



How can you have a free debate then?

 LordofHats wrote:

 whembly wrote:
wut?



How can you have a free debate then?

He recognizes that treating spending money as speech is a hazardous standard (not to mention somewhat nonsensical in a practical sense) because it has the opposite effect. When you are in a country where wealth is horribly stratified, and you give free reign to those at the top to give as much as they want in politics, then you're not ensuring free speech/debate, you're stiffling it. Also recognizes the pants on head insanity that is treating a corporation like it has individual rights (half the gak that's wrong with with the US could probably get on the road to be fixed by getting rid of that line of wtf).

Say you're a rich billionare ready to give millions to a campaign (example ensues). Politicians can listen to the 99 poor/middle class people in the room who can give them a couples thousand, maybe six figures, or they can spend their time trying to please you and get your million. Obviously, being a pragmatic person, the politicians is going to say feth all to everyone else and focus on pleasing you so that he can get all that money and spend it on trendy PR stunts to keep the other 99 people in the room satiated. Meanwhile all his real political decisions are being focused on what you want because your the purse handing him his office.

Of course, my opinion is that things already are this way and this decisions isn't really changing that much. The rich have always had a disproportionate amount of power in politcs and that'll never change, but over the past century, power has accumulated in the top end of society with increasing frequency (in this sense comparisons to ancient Rome are probably applicable).

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
This Breyer guy sounds like he has some god damn sense.

wut?



How can you have a free debate then?

How are we supposed to tell each other that we love each other if we can't feth wherever we want?

 d-usa wrote:
Fething is speech. It's a way to express my love to my wife. Why should society get to infringe on my 1st Amendment right by passing laws that say that I can't feth her on the lawn in front of the grade school?

 whembly wrote:

I think his reasoning is very dangerous... here's why:

If you read the Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights, and consider each instance of "the people" as not referring to individual citizens but this amorphous "Collective™" noun.... it explains a lot of the leftist thought process (note, I'm not saying Liberals here).

Again, Breyers is stating that "the people" is the "Collective", not individuals.

THAT should scare you.

Did Nebraska pass some marijuana laws recently?

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Fething is speech. It's a way to express my love to my wife. Why should society get to infringe on my 1st Amendment right by passing laws that say that I can't feth her on the lawn in front of the grade school?

Who said fething is protected under the 1st Amendment?

<.<

>.>

You sure you're not high on something? Delirious from sleep deprivation?

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Fething is speech. It's a way to express my love to my wife. Why should society get to infringe on my 1st Amendment right by passing laws that say that I can't feth her on the lawn in front of the grade school?

Who said fething is protected under the 1st Amendment?

<.<

>.>

You sure you're not high on something? Delirious from sleep deprivation?

You truly think that green pieces of cotton-paper are speech and spend the last couple of pages telling us how incredible dangerous it is to prohibit the free speech of green cotton-paper in the interest of society and that you cannot wrap your mind around the concept that we would ever prohibit any form of speech for the protection of society at large.

But when given numerous examples of speech and expression being already regulated for society you act confused and indifferent.

Bran Dawri wrote:
The USA has been an oligarchy in all but name for quite some time now...

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Fething is speech. It's a way to express my love to my wife. Why should society get to infringe on my 1st Amendment right by passing laws that say that I can't feth her on the lawn in front of the grade school?

Who said fething is protected under the 1st Amendment?

<.<

>.>

You sure you're not high on something? Delirious from sleep deprivation?

You truly think that green pieces of cotton-paper are speech and spend the last couple of pages telling us how incredible dangerous it is to prohibit the free speech of green cotton-paper in the interest of society and that you cannot wrap your mind around the concept that we would ever prohibit any form of speech for the protection of society at large.

But when given numerous examples of speech and expression being already regulated for society you act confused and indifferent.

*sigh*

We won't see eye-to-eye here because I'm NOT talking about a "yelling 'FIRE' at a movie theater" kind of thing.

I'm talking about the idea that "The Collective" gets to decide if your speech is helpful to "The Collective's" political goals.

The Collective mean the majority in power. (ie, Congress, Justices, etc...)

If it is helpful to the Collective's political process, then you have the right to free speech.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I'm sick and tired of people saying that money is speech. I'm sick and tired of people saying corpertaion are people. I say we limit all contribution s to $5K to one, $20K total.

 d-usa wrote:


He's not saying that more people speaking should get to decide who gets to speak.

He is saying that a few people screaming the loudest shouldn't get to drown out the majority that is speaking at a reasonable volume and that everybody should get equal speech.

 d-usa wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I'm sick and tired of people saying that money is speech. I'm sick and tired of people saying corpertaion are people. I say we limit all contribution s to $5K to one, $20K total.

I'm sticking to my original thought. Keep the current limit per candidate, and only be allowed to donate to candidates that are actually on your ballot. If they don't represent you and you can't vote for them then stay the feth away from them.

That will never happen, but a man can dream

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:


He's not saying that more people speaking should get to decide who gets to speak.

He is saying that a few people screaming the loudest shouldn't get to drown out the majority that is speaking at a reasonable volume and that everybody should get equal speech.

And all I'm advocating is to tread "carefully" with this line of thought.

Again... the danger of this argument is that the same thing could be used to censor major media corporations such as the NYT, Hollywood, Old Alphabet News Channel, and so on... Because... when Hollywood/MSNBC/et. el. spends bijillions of dollars each year advancing a liberal agenda, the general public will not be heard.

 whembly wrote:
Again... the danger of this argument is that the same thing could be used to censor major media corporations such as the NYT, Hollywood, Old Alphabet News Channel, and so on... Because... when Hollywood/MSNBC/et. el. spends bijillions of dollars each year advancing a liberal agenda, the general public will not be heard.

Instead of a free marketplace of ideas, we get a marketplace in which major Hollywood moguls, CNN's Zucker, MSNBC's Griffin has hundreds of thousands of times the ‘speech power’ of the average American.

And... we wouldn't want that now...right?

 whembly wrote:

I'm talking about the idea that "The Collective" gets to decide if your speech is helpful to "The Collective's" political goals.

 LordofHats wrote:
I don't even understand what you're arguing anymore Whembly.

 whembly wrote:
Again... the danger of this argument is that the same thing could be used to censor major media corporations such as the NYT, Hollywood, Old Alphabet News Channel, and so on... Because... when Hollywood/MSNBC/et. el. spends bijillions of dollars each year advancing a liberal agenda, the general public will not be heard.

Instead of a free marketplace of ideas, we get a marketplace in which major Hollywood moguls, CNN's Zucker, MSNBC's Griffin has hundreds of thousands of times the ‘speech power’ of the average American.

And... we wouldn't want that now...right?

You realize this is what Beyer is saying, right? He's saying that this decision and the current trend of how SCOTUS is approaching the issue of campaign spending is giving major corporations and rich individuals more speech than everyone else and that it's dangerous to the essence of democracy.

Ignoring that Hollywood has no liberal agenda (that myth really just needs to end), this is exactly what my example was saying.

You take a rich individual or a corporation which under US law is an individual and you give them free reign to spend in politics, and you're giving them more speech than everyone else who has less ability to spend and thus less ability to actually 'speak' to politicians. This isn't useful to the collective. It's counter to the interests of the people as a whole and is bad for democracy.

That's what Breyer is saying.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

I'm talking about the idea that "The Collective" gets to decide if your speech is helpful to "The Collective's" political goals.

As I said before, that is already the case. If everyone in the US supports the repeal of the 1st Amendment, then the 1st Amendment will be repealed. This is the nature of all politics, but especially democratic politics.

Moreover, LordofHats is correct. What you're worried about is so outlandish that it beggars belief, especially given that this decision continues a trend begun by Citizen's United which diverts more power to the very wealthy and to corporations.

But, on the plus side you probably won't have to worry about 501(c) segment of the tax code much longer, because that will be on the chopping block soon enough.

 whembly wrote:
Uh... you don't think Hollywood slants towards the progress agenda? News organizations like NYT? MSNBC? CNN???

Based on his past rulings... no, imo that's not what he's saying.

The majority in power, ie the Collective, is not EVERYONE

 whembly wrote:

Here's the problem with that statement. The majority in power, ie the Collective, is not EVERYONE.

 whembly wrote:

What would you do to mitigate this then?

 whembly wrote:

If it encourages more disclosure... I'd be fine with that.

 LordofHats wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Uh... you don't think Hollywood slants towards the progress agenda? News organizations like NYT? MSNBC? CNN???

Hollywood pushes the "lets make some money by playing to popular hot topics/fears/ideals of the audience" agenda. The only way to argue Hollywood has a specific political agenda, is to ignore the vast majority of movies it churns out, 70-80% of which are solely created to spark popular appeal and make money.

Based on his past rulings... no, imo that's not what he's saying.

You're own linked article covers this. Breyer has a nuanced position on free speech. He is concerned about the current string of decisions in campaign spending because he finds it detrimental to the public good. We can discuss what he's actually saying in his dissenting opinion on this case, or we can discuss some faux position he isn't even advocating.

The majority in power, ie the Collective, is not EVERYONE

Yes it is. Breyer is talking about the People. I'm the People. You're the People. Dogma is the People. D-USA is the People. Microsoft is the People too, because under US law Microsoft is a person (unfortunately that doesn't make Mircosoft murderable >.<. We are all the collective, and recent SCOTUS decisions have damaged the collectives ability to speak in favor of specific members of that collective.

Again. We can talk about what Breyer is saying, or we can talk about something else entirely.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

What would you do to mitigate this then?

Differentiate between legal and natural persons.

 whembly wrote:

If it encourages more disclosure... I'd be fine with that.

It won't. In fact it will directly work against it. Axing the spending restrictions in 501(c) would enable wealthy individuals and corporations to hide their political contributions from the public, and prevent the FEC from regulating individual contribtuions.

 LordofHats wrote:
This how knowing who gives money to whom will work out;

*Bob* "Oh my god! Bill Gates gave money to Obama in 2012!"

*Frank* "Seriously? WTF Bill."

*Jerry from HR is sitting in the corner and rolls his eyes* "And what are you two dimwits going to do about it?"

...

*Frank * "Joey gave Obama money too!"

*Bob* "Joey the Intern?"

*Jerry* "Get him!"

No rich person/corporation will ever 'pay' for giving money to a politician. Joe schmo on the other hand probably will.

but what can be done to mitigate this without impacting political speech in general?

Brendan Eich ex-CEO of Mozilla ain't "Joe Schmo".

No... he's saying "the People" as distinctly different as "individuals".

Breyer does not accept that free expression is a natural right. Instead, he recognizes it as a right only insomuch as it furthers the end of what he would characterize as a properly-functioning government.

That's the major distinction here, and that's why I'm fussing over it.

But what Breyer's reasoning to support is opinion is dangerous and I'm glad that he's in the minority.

 whembly wrote:

I think I'd agree with you.

 whembly wrote:

So, you saying organizations like the NRA, Walmart, Planned Parenthood, Accorn shouldn't be allowed to contribute to their favored candidates?

 whembly wrote:

How would you address this? This is in your neck of the woods after all.

 LordofHats wrote:

but what can be done to mitigate this without impacting political speech in general?

Spending limits (Now unconstitutional TM)

 dogma wrote:
Kill one of the conservative SCOTUS Justices? That's pretty much the only way.

 Ouze wrote:
Actually I don't think he can, I was misinterpreting something.

 Ouze wrote:
This issue is confusing at best, frankly, at least to me.

My first reaction is to say, well, unrestricted money into politics is corrupting, self evidently so.

On the other hand all the remedies to that problem really do seem to infringe upon an individuals right to associate with whomever they would like to. And, as pointed out earlier, money isn't the final arbiter of a win, anyway.

It's a tough issue, in my opinion. I don't think I can pick a stance.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dogma wrote:
Kill one of the conservative SCOTUS Justices? That's pretty much the only way.

Could Obama could pack the court while Congress is in recess?

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

I think I'd agree with you.

But, of course, that will never happen as it would require Congress to pass a law (which would immediately be cast as an attack on job creators) overturning almost 200 years of precedent.

 whembly wrote:

So, you saying organizations like the NRA, Walmart, Planned Parenthood, Accorn shouldn't be allowed to contribute to their favored candidates?

I'm saying the contributions of legal persons should be regulated differently from those of natural persons. This does not mean they shouldn't be allowed to contribute at all, but that laws should exist which prevent them outstripping natural persons in terms of gross contributions.

But, again, this will never happen.

 whembly wrote:

How would you address this? This is in your neck of the woods after all.

Kill one of the conservative SCOTUS Justices? That's pretty much the only way.

 LordofHats wrote:

but what can be done to mitigate this without impacting political speech in general?

Spending limits (Now unconstitutional TM)

And the winner is...LordofHats.

 d-usa wrote:
I was thinking that the filibuster change specificay excluded the SCOTUS.

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
I was thinking that the filibuster change specificay excluded the SCOTUS.

Yeah... you're right about that. Currently.

But if it can be changed with normal appointments, I'd posit it could be changed for SC appointments.

 whembly wrote:

For sake of argument, how would you regulate this? "X" amount per name person and "X" amount per organization?

 whembly wrote:

O.o

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

For sake of argument, how would you regulate this? "X" amount per name person and "X" amount per organization?

That's a good question, though the answer is obvious.

I would overturn Citizen's United, and overturn the McCutcheon decision.

 whembly wrote:

O.o

Obviously I was being facetious, but the fact of the matter is that the balance of The Court would need to swing left because any law passed by Congress which curtailed corporate rights (itself a herculean undertaking) would immediately face legal challenges, and subsequently end up on the SCOTUS docket; where a conservative Court would probably rule against it.

Also consider that Ginsburg is probably going to be the first to die, or retire, likely doing so under a Republican administration.

 whembly wrote:

And that would get rid of the need for the SuperPACs... right?

 BarBoBot wrote:

Unions donate billions of their members union dues, why can't the every day citizen donate whatever they want too?

 dogma wrote:


The elimination of SuperPACs would require overturning the SpeechNOW case.

Symposium: Opposing more speech — a disturbing & recurring reality
The McCutcheon v. FEC ruling and the identity of the Justices aligned in it on one side or the other should surely have come as no surprise to Court-watchers. The case is both an easier one than Citizens United and a far less far-reaching one, both in theory and potential political impact. There was never any reason to expect those members of the Court who joined the Citizens United majority to vote to sustain a provision of law that, at least on some readings, would have trouble passing a reasonable basis test – i.e., if a $2600 contribution by Shaun McCutcheon to sixteen candidates did not corrupt them, why would similar contributions corrupt the twelve other candidates he wished to support?

What seems to me most surprising and disturbing about the ruling, though, is not to be found in the predictably much assaulted (and I believe sound) majority opinion but in the dissent. For there, for the first time, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan join with Justice Stephen Breyer’s minimization of long-recognized and well-established First Amendment interests by maintaining that, after all, the side seeking to overcome those interests had at least as strong a First Amendment argument on its side. In McCutcheon, that argument is based on the notion that the avoidance of whatever is defined as “corruption” strengthens the First Amendment. With the First Amendment thus placed in some sort of supposed equipoise (since “First Amendment interests lie on both sides of the legal equation”) the case becomes an easy one. It is, in my view, but in a different direction.

In his book Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution (2006), Justice Breyer offered an overview of the First Amendment which posited that its primary purpose was not to protect speech from government control or limitation but “to encourage the exchange of information and ideas necessary for citizens themselves to shape that ‘public opinion which is the final source of government in a democratic state.’” A statute limiting independent spending on political speech is thus defensible against a First Amendment challenge and indeed serves First Amendment interests since it “facilitate[s] a conversation among ordinary citizens that will encourage their informed participation.” In his dissenting opinion in McCutcheon, Breyer takes that a step further, concluding that “the First Amendment advances not only the individual’s right to engage in political speech, but also the public’s interest in preserving a democratic order in which collective speech matters.” (emphasis in original). The First Amendment, he maintains, must be understood as promoting “a government where the laws reflect the very thoughts, views, ideas and sentiments, the expression of which the First Amendment protects.”

These statements are not totally at odds with the First Amendment. But they are deeply disquieting. It is true that by restricting the ability of the government to control, let alone limit, speech, the First Amendment surely assists in preserving “democratic order.” But giving the government, in the name of advancing democracy, significant power to limit the amount of speech about who to vote for [color=red]risks much that the First Amendment was adopted to protect.[/color] And what, after all, does Justice Breyer mean by “collective speech?” In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts persuasively objects to relying on the “generalized conception of the public good” set forth in the Breyer dissent, taking issue with the very notion of “collective speech” as being contrary to “the whole point of the First Amendment” of not permitting the will of the majority to carry the day by preventing speech of which it disapproved.

It is difficult to read the McCutcheon dissent without recalling two of the Court’s landmark First Amendment rulings of the past. Both were unanimous. Both would be at risk if the First Amendment were somehow viewed as anything but a limitation on the government’s power to limit speech, even in the supposed service of “preserving democratic order,” vindicating “collective speech,” or the like.

Consider Mills v. Alabama, in which the Court held unconstitutional an Alabama law that barred, on election day only, the solicitation of votes “in support of or in opposition to any proposition that is being voted on” and was the basis for the conviction of a newspaper editor for writing an editorial urging the adoption of a proposal to change the form of city government. Passed at a time when most communities had, at most, one newspaper, its constitutionality was sustained by the Alabama Supreme Court on the ground that the law “protects the public from confusive[sic] last-minute charges and countercharges” on election day, “when as a practical matter, because of lack of time, such matters cannot be answered or their truth determined until after the election is over.” Put differently, in the service of assuring “informed participation” of the public, Alabama sought to protect it from the dangers of unfettered, unanswerable last-minute speech. Of course, Mills held the statute unconstitutional, regardless of its supposedly pro-democratic intent of protecting a potentially confused and misled public.

Even more directly threatened by applying the core theory of the dissent would be the Court’s ruling in Miami Herald v. Tornillo. What, after all, is more democratic, more consistent with public participation in the creation of public policy, than a right-of-reply statute which assures that if a candidate was attacked on the basis of his personal character or official record by a newspaper, that he should have the chance to respond? The Florida statute at issue had been passed when newspapers, often solitary ones in their communities, reigned supreme as the dispensers of information to the public. Advocates of the law urged, in language the McCutcheon dissent might well find congenial, that (as Chief Justice Warren Burger put it) as a result of a communications revolution, “the power to inform the American people and shape public opinion” rested in the hands of a few wealthy corporations. Why not, then, advance the cause of democracy by providing attacked candidates with a right to respond? Once again, and notwithstanding the plausibility of the factual basis asserted for the statute, the Court unanimously struck it down on the ground the governmental coercion in this area was inconsistent with the First Amendment.

Plainly, one’s view of McCutcheon may be influenced by one’s expectations as to its likely impact on our political system. That Republicans celebrated it and Democrats denounced it says much about who expects to profit from it and nothing about its First Amendment implications. From the latter perspective, the ruling is a victory but one which cannot but raise concern about the future. The division between the Roberts and Breyer opinions is vast. Of course, jurists on both sides of the divide care about both freedom of speech and democracy. But at least on this issue, only one side believes that the best protection for democracy is more rather than less speech. That is a disturbing and recurring reality.

Floyd Abrams is a member of the Executive Committee and Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP’s litigation practice group. Among other First Amendment cases, he prevailed in his argument before the Supreme Court on behalf of Senator Mitch McConnell as amicus curiae, defending the rights of corporations and unions to speak publicly about politics and elections in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) and was co-counsel in the Pentagon Papers Case (1971), in which his arguments and those of Professor Alex Bickel also prevailed. He is the author of Friend of the Court: On the Front Lines with the First Amendment (2013) and Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment (2006).

 whembly wrote:
I came across something that made me think of this thread...

If folks want to act seriously to take wealthy groups, massive lobby industries and billionaires out of the political game, Congress can override the recent Supreme Court's decision.

They should pass an amendment repealing Wickard v Filburn‘s impact on the interstate commerce clause. That decision shifted massive political power from the states to Washington DC by defining practically everything as interstate commerce... including non-commerce (in Wickard's case, excess wheat for personal consumptions). Killing Wickard would shift most regulatory power back to the states, and take the corruption out of Washington DC as the issues would become too small for these large lobbying and wealthy investment.

Even then, if these groups would start investing in the 50 states... wouldn't that at least be a better setup?

squidhills wrote:

 whembly wrote:
I came across something that made me think of this thread...

If folks want to act seriously to take wealthy groups, massive lobby industries and billionaires out of the political game, Congress can override the recent Supreme Court's decision.

They should pass an amendment repealing Wickard v Filburn‘s impact on the interstate commerce clause. That decision shifted massive political power from the states to Washington DC by defining practically everything as interstate commerce... including non-commerce (in Wickard's case, excess wheat for personal consumptions). Killing Wickard would shift most regulatory power back to the states, and take the corruption out of Washington DC as the issues would become too small for these large lobbying and wealthy investment.

Even then, if these groups would start investing in the 50 states... wouldn't that at least be a better setup?

Maybe I'm remembering stuff all wrong (and I can't be arsed to look it up myself because I'm at work right now... shhhh ) but would'nt restricting Congress' ability to regulate interstate commerce have a negative affect on some of the Equal Rights laws? I'm pretty sure some of those got pushed through by creatively interperetting "interstate commerce". I do know that some people were using interstate commerce to defend the Constitutionality of the ACA (though the argument is void now that SCOTUS declared it a tax).