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?