This has been rumbling around in my head for a while now so I’m just going to blurt it out. I think we need major reforms in campaign funding. I would not oppose an outright ban on any organizations of any stripe whatever making political contributions right along with strict limits on individual contributions.
I disagree with the Supreme Court. I don’t think that money is speech. I think it’s a platform, a megaphone. More money means a bigger megaphone.
The Supremes are wrong about a lot of stuff, but we don’t have a vote. Stare decisis is all, as it has to be if the courts are to avoid chaos.
Perhaps we need an aristocracy. Some people think that the British government of the late 18th Century was the best ever.
Actually, we do. The Congress has the Constitutional authority under Article III Section 2 to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Were a popular movement to emerge to move Congress to do so, it would constitute a revolution in modern jurisprudence. But I grant it would take a lot and is quite unlikely.
I generally take the opposite view. Trying to regulate campaign finance will be practically harder for the federal government and will be even more prone to gaming, rent seeking and regulatory capture than federal regulation already currently is.
Personally, I would remove most of the limits (or set them a lot higher), especially the individual limits to candidates, and instead focus on transparency.
And money is not speech, but in most cases you need money to exercise speech. I don’t trust that the government can distinguish between money spent on political vs campaign vs other types of speech and I don’t support attempts to end-run free speech by regulating “political” money.
“Personally, I would remove most of the limits (or set them a lot higher), especially the individual limits to candidates, and instead focus on transparency.”
This. Get rid of most of the regulatory efforts and make everything transparent. Actually, broaden that out. For every office of Congressperson or higher lets also require tax returns and a list of everywhere that their spouses and children work or receive income.
Steve
‘Perhaps we need an aristocracy. Some people think that the British government of the late 18th Century was the best ever.’
Only in comparison with their Continental counterparts. The British Government at the time was run for the personal benefit of the peers and was incredibly corrupt as well as incompetent. Literally buying elections was the norm. Look up rotten boroughs. That was why the Founding Fathers set up the government the way they did, to try and curb the excesses of government too many of them, especially Ben Franklin, had experienced or observed.
‘Get rid of most of the regulatory efforts and make everything transparent. Actually, broaden that out. For every office of Congressperson or higher lets also require tax returns and a list of everywhere that their spouses and children work or receive income.’
A few years ago I would have agreed with this entire remark, including making the donor list public. But with doxxing and resulting threats to life, employment, and property now a popular pastime, I’m leaning back towards donor anonymity. I don’t need my former business picketed by BLM just because I wrote a nasty letter to the editor or made a non-woke post to a blog.
You rarely just blurt, Dave. It’s a thorny issue, and I find myself most closely aligned with Andy’s comment.
Where does it lead? People like me would ask that major media, currently nothing more than the propaganda wing of the Democrat Party, be stifled as well.
I think best to let the battle play out. I’m open to concrete reforms, but I think all know my over riding view: concerns such as these can only be addressed by limiting government reach. Once they have you by the balls, the only question is how hard they are going to squeeze. Vote for government (Democrat) at your peril.
I think that if we’re going to have news outlets aligned with political parties as in the UK we should have libel laws as in the UK.
Drew is spot on when labeling the MSM as nothing more than a “propaganda arm†of the democrat party. I’ve read where journalism’s bias only intensified under the Obama presidency, and has worsened throughout Trump’s reign. When joined by social media’s and search engine’s hands – twitter, Facebook, google – in monitoring, censoring dialogues, according to left/right content, it’s an overwhelming feat to access a level playing field, facilitating conservative messaging to be relayed, heard, and in Google’s case given equal showcasing on internet searches.
Rallies used to be fertile ground for Trump to converse with the people. However, even that has been stifled by COVID concerns, ratcheted up daily by compliant media bullhorns, and assisted by unusually harsh lockdowns by partisan governors/mayors deepening the negative effects of this virus.
Consequently, Biden’s advantage is simply enormous. And, should Trump be able to somehow circumvent the debris field constructed by Dems over the last 4 years, winning the 2020 election, it will be a David/Goliath type of miracle.
‘And, should Trump be able to somehow circumvent the debris field constructed by Dems over the last 4 years, winning the 2020 election, it will be a David/Goliath type of miracle.’
Beware the Shy Tory effect. Registered voters aren’t likely voters. Plus a lot of people simply aren’t responding to pollsters, partly because they don’t trust the pollsters not to intentionally or unintentionally doxx them. That’s why the big push for blast mail voting. Once most of the votes are tabulated the Democrats can figure out how many late arriving votes are needed to tip the election. See what happened to Orange County CA in 2018.
IMO The goal is if they can’t win the election outright is to delegitimize Trump’s victory. I can see the Democrats going ahead nd declaring victory anyway regardless of how the vote is going, swearing in Biden and making calls for the military to remove OMB from the White House. I very =much hope it doesn’t come down to that.
Tars, the Democrats are already strategically planting land mines to blow up an election that might go Trump’s way. They’re accusing Trump of fixing the election should a screwup of VBM (something they’ve been pushing for) go array. They’re throwing out another Russia involvement, even though Hillary and the Dems were the ones paying for Kremlin dirt on Trump, and soliciting Ukraine for the same during the 2016 election. They are projecting Trump will have to be escorted out of the WH should he lose, while it’s Hillary and the dems who have played sour grapes losers for almost 4 years. Obama described Trump as being non-serious about being POTUS, not “growing into the job,†when it was Obama who was criticized for not even meeting with his own congress, gave few press conferences and partied hardy with celebs whenever possible. Even today, Obama took money for a book he still hasn’t spent the time to write. He’s a lazy person, who came into the WH in debt, and is now worth $200 million. Trump came into the WH rich, has given his salary to charity, has lost personal net worth, with a business name that has become tarnished from continued aspersions and falsehoods being lobbed at him and his family.
I hope there is an unexpressed vote for Trump, large enough to overcome voter fraud, and any other vile negatives the dems are willing to manufacture in order to win.