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Campaign Financing Cyber Loophole
goombah99 writes "The Washington Post is criticizing a little-noticed bill wending it's way through congress that would allow unlimited and unreported campaign contributions by corporations and individuals as long as it was confined to internet advertising and publicity buys. While internet spending was only $14 million last year it is growing at a rate of 30 fold over four years poising it to overtake conventional media spending."
Now all of Europe's going to be completely overwhelmed with advertisements for political parties they cannot even vote for.
30 -fold-? No way.
Unpleasantries.
I don't think that we're going to find billions dumped into internet advertising, why? Because internet campaigning isn't going to be growing at 30 fold forever.
Campaign 1: $.5 million invested online
Campaign 2: $15 million invested online.
That's 30 fold (and 14.5 million).
Campaign 1: $100 million invested, Campaign 2: $120 million invested.
That's 1.2 fold (and 20 million).
Nobody is going to target the internet with large amounts of money when it's more feasible to target the general public using television/newspaper ads. Nobody is going to say, "Hey! Look! I can donate $100 million in internet advertising" *when the money can be better utilitised somewhere else*.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
I am about as liberal as you can get. I think that the role of the government should be expanded such that it provides a very large safety net for the disadvantaged, and I think that many services that we now pay for ought to be subsidized such that those services (medical, roads, etc) are free/affordable for at least the most disadvantaged and ideally for the whole citizenry.
But I am absolutely against recent "liberal" attempts to stifle Free Speech by restricting campaign contributions. I think it is paramount to a repeal of the First Amendment to say that you cannot use your money in the way that you see fit. If a person wishes to give speeches on the corner in support of his candidate, it is wrong to take away his right to do so. If a person uses his own money to buy a soap box and megaphone to do it more effectively, it is wrong to take away his right to spend that money. If a person gives money to his candidate in order that the candidate can furnish other supporters with soap boxes and megaphones, is it right to take that right away? Where do we draw the line? Why do we draw the line?
It is not anyone's business but the IRS how I spend my money, in my opinion. If I want to blow a million dollars on TV ads for my favored candidate, the government ought not have the right to stop me anymore than they have the right to stop me from buying lollipops for the sick kids in the hospital.
How the "liberals" got caught up in this illiberal crusade is beyond me. It smacks more of anti-Republicanism than anything else. By restricting the campaign contributions of the rich, they effectively limit the amount the Republicans can take in from their supporters. That that crackpot McCain and the worthless Feingold were the people bringing the originally passing bill to the floor is no big surprise, but that we have widespread support of the erosion of our most cherished First Amendment rights among the people sworn to protect and defend our Constitution is abominable.
Good for this current bill. Let's bring back Free Speech to the citizenry.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
BU$H G1V3S J00 UP 2 3 EXTR4 1NCH3S CL1CK H3R3 2 V0T3
There is truth in humor.
... if America keeps going along these lines, it won't be long before they elect a completely incompetent President, whose only qualifications are high level connections and the ability to outspend his opponent due to massive corporate contributions.
I don't look forward toward that day, let me tell you.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
It's starting to look as though McCain-Feingold will end up hurting larger blogs, as they risk being counted as contributions during an election cycle. Manolo's Shoe Blog is probably pretty safe, but Daily Kos and Instapundit aren't. I'd bet both their bandwidth bills violate the cap, and they both tend to back specific candidates. So, this law is likely simply a clumsy way to protect blogs.
When are submitters/posters will even know the distinction!
Too bad there isn't a +1 Ironic.
And that has nothing to do with the fact that I run 200 blogs.
Internet Power Struggle Reaching Climax:/ 11/1841205&tid=95&tid=219
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10
I'm liberal like hell too.
And in principle I agree that an individual AND organization can support political parties or candidates they like, be it orally, physically or financial wise.
What's troubling however is that, this this 'rights' is being literally abused, not to 'support' but rather 'buy' a candidate or party.
Really i can't see how does an organization or business paying, yes paying, 100k to Republican and then another 100k on democrats can signify 'support'. Thats just covering the grounds.
I support the right to support political 'units', I don't support 'legalized bribing'.
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
Since the sentence in question was meant to be a retorical question, an exclamation mark is quite acceptable
The correct spelling is "rhetorical". I would also like to add that an exclamation mark is not acceptable in this context.
Lesson: before teaching others, learn yourself first!
"Glass houses" spring to mind.
Lesson: before teaching others, learn yourself first!
Ever heard of the word irony? Might want to look it up (if your humour hasn't been surgically removed already).
1. I can block it more easily.
2. Fewer stupid people will passively receive ads than with TV, per ad dollar spent. It's better that they waste their money online.
3. Dollars spent on ad space will be far more distributed and to substantially less rich people, effectively redistributing income. At least, the money is much less likely to end up in the pocketbooks of Big Media. Yay, capitalism and (partial) socioeconomic justice at the same time!
Why, again, would this not be an improvement?
That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
It's a waste of money to advertise to the public. It's not like the public gets to vote, as evidenced by the 2000 election.
And a 30 fold increase over four years? That's not so astounding. Virtually everything which has an initial state and a larger end state, grows 30 fold over some arbitrary period of time. I mean it would be one thing if you could say it would grow 30 fold indefinitely.
The number of MP3s I bought grew 30 fold over the last year. Once I took a sip of orange mountain dew, I liked it, so my spending on it grew 30 fold (I bought a whole can). My spending on duck grew 30 fold over the last 2 weeks. (2 weeks ago I spent $10 on duck at a chinese restaurant, just last night I spent $300 on duck for a dinner). Compared to last year, the number of box office films I've watched quadrupled!
It's amazing how long we can go on with phenomenal sounding statistics.
I can't for for the life of me see the justification for ANY exemptions from campaign financing laws. If copmpany A spends $3.50 on shoelaces for candidate B, then I want to be able to see that, and the same goes for internet advertising. It's unfortunate that whatever justification is being offered for this bill isn't mentioned in TFA. At the end of the day, any off-the-record financing simply adds weight to long-standing suspicions that everyone in Washington is for sale. That being the case, it would be nice to at least know what the going rates are.
How about rolling back the clock BEFORE we had Campaign Finance Reform. It's bad enough that this bill got pushed through in the first place, but it's even worse to patch it up and add even more layers of complexity riddled with contradiction. And if we are not carefull, we end up with another agency bought and paid for with YOUR tax dollars. It will be called...what... CFB (Campaign Finance Bureau) to monitor all this shit?
And another topic. Get rid of the IRS. The tax system is way to bloated with loopholes. Just make it a flat sales tax and get rid of the IRS at the same time.
Life is not for the lazy.
I thought /. was all about being anal. Don't tell me there's any other use for the forum!
I still have to see the first voting ballot on which you can actually vote explicitly against one candidate.
...was even more annoying pop-under ads, except that instead of enticing me to "Punch out Bush" to win a PS3 or "Punch out Osama" to win a Xbox3D, I'd be punching out someone's lights for a vote.
I'm still waiting for a coming election to be decided by the internet. We were a mere footnote in 2000, just barely alarming in 2004... Who knows what 2008 will bring.
There is simply too much glass..
Filtering of email and blocking of web ads considered a subvertive terrorist activity.
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
The public isn't supposed to vote in presidential elections. They exercise influence on those elections through their state governments, who select the electors. The electors aren't even really supposed to have their minds made up in advance, either, that's kind of a corruption of the system resulting from the unforseen rise of political parties. It still bothers me that people tend to complain only when there are vague signs of the system working as intended (i.e. when the results don't match public opinion perfectly) and not when political parties twist the system to their own benefit. Oh, well, I guess I'm about 200 years to late to really do anything about it.
Anyhow, these laws apply to congressional elections as well, which are where the money is at in any case.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Sure unlimited contributions.
make it easy for some country to drop 25 or 30 billion on the person of thier choice.
You have to sympathize with policitians everywhere, forced to lead demeaning lives on the margins of society because such a high proportion of the meagre funds they need to survive have to be concealed and cannot be admitted to. Why, a decent family man cannot even invite his friends to a cocaine and call-girl party without having to pretend that he's paying for it out of his own life savings.
It would be much more dignified if US politicians were allowed to nail a simple "Bill of Fare" to the front door of their office suites. This would itemize the services on offer - "Have your business rivals arrested - $10 million", "Pollute a wilderness area - $67 million", "Hunt and Shoot Wetbacks for Sport - $39 million", etc. - but the quid pro quo is that it would no longer be legal in any way to accept undocumented contributions.
We'd then all know where we stand, and politicians would be given back the one thing they crave above all else - respect.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
The U.S. government is for sale to whomever has money: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Sneaky legislation is just one small part of the corruption.
"You also have the right to be arrested for trespassing or obstructing a public thoroughfare or creating a nuisance."
Not really.
A 'right' always implies you have a choice concerning that particular right. It is something you can agree to, or not. Thus, a right always implies one has the right to waive that particular right (for instance, the right to be silent: one can waive that right, and talk as much as one wants). Since one can not waive an arrest, it is not a right, at least from the viewpoint of the one being arrested.
Lesson: When extrapolating, you may want to look beyond the first function you can think of. It's not very strange that a new-found medium of advertising gets exploited very quickly, only to stop growing as quickly once the advertisers realize that there is nothing more to be gained from it.
You mean like having Free Speech Zones for people who oppose you politcally?
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
"I hear there's rumors on the Internets (sic) that we're going to have a draft." - Bush 10-8-04
The internets is a wonderful thing, don't spoil it with partisan political attack ads. Now watch this drive!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
does exist, in the US even... http://www.nota.org/statebystate.htm
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Nope! You see, humor is essentially elitist. It divides any population in two rather distinct groups. Those that get it and those that don't. The fun is of course inversely proportional to the size of the latter group.
We therefore thank you for your contribution. It increases our pleasure considerably! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Government: We think we should count blogs as political contributions and regulate them under the existing election laws.
Slashbots: BWAAAAAA! DON'T YOU REGULATE MY BLOGS!
News reporter: Political blogs are big money, and there may be a loophole that will allow massive donations to political parties in the form of Internet advertising that won't be regulated by the election laws.
Slashbots: BWAAAAAA! Meaney politicians will flood the net with ads. THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD DOOOO SOMETHING!
Make up your minds, people. Either blogs are NOT regulated, and the People With Money And An Agenda will use them, or blogs get regulated. Sauce for the goose, good for the gander.
www.eFax.com are spammers
http://users.erols.com/dweeb/ebocracy.htm
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
When are they going to close the campaign contribution loophole introduced by Michael Moore. You know, you release a huge movie that's a major negative campaign ad against Bush, yet it doesn't count because it's making Michael money.
This a VERY bad thing, and I'm and in the UK. I couldn't care less about the slanted American views on Politics, but i'm going to be bombarded by Ads all the same.
I'm my humble opinion (also horrifically slanted) these kind of donations are a kind of regulated bribary (perhaps not quite as direct as bribary) and I do not think it is a very good idea to have a system set up allowing corporations to give large sums of money to political parties! Anyway, i'd be prepared to bet that there are a good number of very wealthy people holding their breath for this to come through.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
How does this piece of legislation relate to the FEC's attempt to restrict campaign speech on political blogs, previously covered here:
/ 23/1226250&tid=153&tid=95&tid=219
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09
?
(Note that Slashdot got the summary of the bill entirely wrong -- it was actually designed to amend the FEC Act of 1971 to exempt the Internet)
Does anyone have any more information about this? Do both 'parties' want this?
Even if campaign finance thru the infobahn is regulated, wouldn't this be almost impossible to track/stop anyway?
A few thoughts...
Company A wishes to donate (influence/buy) to Political party B so they pay political website C (possibly not hosted in the US) a large amount of money for banner ads.
or.. suppose a large search company decides to favour one party over another, they could 'alter' their rankings. Either to lower the actual sites, or to show more FUD results. If a few bloggers can affect search results i'm sure a company with a few million dollars at stake could do the same.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
There's a part of me that is as usual disappointed in the usual extension of big money into politics, but, in 2004, I and thousands of others ran very partisan blogs. It would be nice if those of us on the far left and far right that are nuts enough to pretend that our respective polical parties care about anything to at least reach a compromise and cash in on the political advertising cow on both sides of the aisle!
Big rich donors giving unlimited donations to political blogs such as mine? Who could possibly turn down a free meal!
This is my sig.
More likely it's a way to protect trolls and astroturfers; from what I see this is the huge growth market in internet advertising--especially for political candidates. Here's a few fun things you can try:
--MarkusQ
I know this sounds evil, but is it by chance an effort to solve the "blog problem"?
I would argue that it's important because it's essential for democracy. It allows ideas to be introduced and challenged, accepted or rejected, on a level playing field.
"Freedom of speech" doesn't mean you're free from me speaking louder than you because I'm persuasive enough to get get several other people to join me (pool funds, whatever). The constitution's guarantee of free speech refers to your freedom from interference by the government. That's why the campaign finance laws limiting speech are such a bad idea - they involve the government judging when and how you can express your opinion about something... something that's exactly contrary to the founder's strong words on the subject.
Does it really serve freedom in the larger sense to allow people to act in ways that subvert an essential component of liberal democracy?
How does two people getting together to say something against what you have to say equal subversion? It's exactly the point - it's free association and speech, exactly as guaranteed under the constitution. If you can't manage to get enough people to see your point, and thus attract the same communications horsepower as the people you oppose, then you need to re-examine the merits of your position. Unpopular, minority opinions do get through the larger noise when they are compelling enough. See voting rights and similar issues as examples.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I think this would bring some honesty back into the system. In reading the donor list you will often find that one person will have himself, his wife, their teenage children, his first and second cousins, their maid, and the dog all donate the maximum amount. Others will have every employee of their company donate the maximum allowable amount. I sincerely doubt their emplyees are truly paid that much. Others will pay $50000 to have dinner with a candidate and listen to a speech. A system which would allow honesty and demand transparency would be a great improvement.
If you follow John Locke, you could certainly make a case that money, being an abstracted form of property, is an extension of the individual as all other property is. In this view, the autonomy of the individual is restricted if the way that the individual spends money is restricted. Consequently, one can argue that spending limits on elections is a restriction of the autonomy of the individual and therefore is an illiberal idea.
But if you follow Rousseau you would counter that what is abstract is not real. In this view money, and the other artificial mechanisms that follow money such as inheritance, are really restrictions of the autonomy of other individuals and lead to a world where artificial inequality is far greater than the inequality bestowed on humanity by nature. In this view, spending limits on elections is a very liberal idea.
Liberalism is a very wide movement. Virtually all of American politics fits withing the realm of Liberalism except for those that want to return to a monarchy or impose theocracy. Granted, American liberalism tends to be right of center compared to the rest of the world, but you can find arguments for most American political positions (whether "conservative" or "liberal") in the writings of the great liberal thinkers like Grotius, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and so on.
I realize that most Slashdotters don't like the concept of free unregulated speech in America. But there is a constitutional process that one needs to go through to eliminate it legally. Constitutional amendements can be repealed through the democratic process.
Please, if you are going to support the McCain-Fiengold bill, and campaign finance reform, first go through the democratic process and have the first amemndment repealled. Then the government will have the legit power to regulate political speech. But until you do such, anti-free speech laws will always be a bit questionable.
And if you don't want the first amendment repealed, THEN WHAT PART OF "CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW" DONT YOU FUCKERS UNDERSTAND?!?!?!?
I'm going to skip my diatribe on how low these fucking scum are. But I think the McCain Feingold Act doesn't go far enough. In order to completely eliminate the $ factor in politics, there should be a strict, equal limit on what a politician can spend on a race. State congressman? $20,000. Gongressman? $50,000. President? $1,000,000. That's it. No loopholes. No third party interest groups.f m?ID=1765
Of course, this will never, eVAR happen, as these egomaniac dirtbags, like that fucker Tom DeLay who I pray goes to prison for life, will fight to the death over anything like this.
Free Pr0n http://excaliburfilms.com/partner/mainaffiliate.c
Make a law that every Legal Entity (corporations are a legal entity, as are joe, jim, and mike) can contribute a maximum of $20 to each candidate. That way, the single man down on the corner can buy just as much influence as the mega-corp.... at least on paper.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
UNREPORTED.. *SHOULD* be the focus of your attention,.. not UMLIMITED.
Question: Representative democratic government is more successful and less corrupt
if all financial contributions are _____ and open for public inspection.
a) UNREPORTED
b) UNLIMITED
c) REPORTED
d) LIMITED
e) The answer is (c)
BTW, there is no law that requires you to vote for the person that spent the most in their campaign.
I'll just cut/paste a comment from someone who responded to a remark almost as stupid as yours:
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1650
And if I can't have that, I demand the ability to stand in the public street and block traffic. I don't care about people who are trying to drive to where Hillary is going to be, it's my puppet display that should trump all other forms of expression, even if an ambulance carrying your heart-attack-having grandmother is stopped because of me.
What's that? Maybe there should be a permitting process for the use of public space so that Hillary and her supporters can apply for and get use of it for her rantings, and I can use if for my rantings too, when it's my turn? Oh wait - we already have that system, and it works just fine. That doesn't seem to influence the people that want to smash the windows of a Starbucks store to somehow retaliate against The Man for having a permitting process, but there's no satisfying some freedom-minded people, I suppose (unless they get to smash something owned by millions of people's 401k investments).
See, you're a hypocrite plain and simple. You know full well that anti-bush protestors aren't trying to exercise free speech. They're trying to deny bush supporters free speech. And if someone tried to do that to a person you actually like, you wouldn't support it. Nothing more than a hypocrite.
And in 3 years, when hillary is president, you will unashamedly reverse your position and say, "well since George Bush did it, it's ok that hillary does it" Hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite
I understand the average Slashbot all too well - witness the "Flamebait" moderation on my original post.
I expect several more "Overrateds" and at least one "Troll" before the day is out.
I have had the temerity to point out a logical inconsistency in the slashbot groupthink - this is thoughtcrime and double-plus-ungood and I must be rightmodded.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Nuff said.
This is why Rumsfeld standing up pontificating about how America is a symbol of democracy to the rest of the world is such a joke.... except we don't know whether to laugh or cry.
So now we know what Google's lobbyist has been up to.
Be heard || Be herd
Nothing stops a corporation from donating a million dollars to Swift Boat Vets or Moveon.org. They in turn campaign for or against a canidate. There, you've just avoided campaign finance reform. All of that doesn't take in to consideration that trying to limit political speech by anyone, corporations or not should be illegal anyway. If Soros wants to give 3 million to Hillary for President he should be able to. Same goes for Dobson to Gulianni or what have you.
No kidding. I was a Missouri resident at the time, and when a St. Louis judge illegally declared that polls in his predominantly Democratic district were allowed to stay open two hours later than elsewhere in the state, it was a strong reminder that my vote was only as important as that judge felt it was.
Surely that's what you were referring to, right? Because nobody's naive enough to believe that either party has a monopoly on dirty tricks, right?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It's all about money. So, there is one tax I wouldn't mind seeing: Any contibutor to political finance on ANY level must pay immediately an amount equal to their contribution to the US Treasury. Firstly, I believe that will stop many contributors, as people HATE paying taxes Secondly, we will all benefit from those that do contribute. Support "in kind" should also be taxed similarly. Thus, if I wish to donate $20, it's going to cost me $40 at that level I might not worry, but when I want to "buy" the government with $1m, I'm going to think twice before I donate another $1M to the treasury. Should work, after all, Governments LOVE creating new taxes!
For example, do we really want our elections to be for sale to the highest bidder (more so than they already are, that is)? An unlimited amount of money poured into a campaign can effectively buy a certain outcome, given how susceptible the general population is to advertising.
I think that is part of the problem. If the average voter hears one message one time and hears another message 10 times, is he going to vote for the message he hears the most regardless of its contents? If that is the case, why on earth are we even having elections? Elections are supposed to pick out the superior leader to represent the people, but if the people can be suckered in so easily by just seeing the same message a few times, doesn't that strongly suggest that democracies are worthless?
Instead of picking the best leader based upon the collective intelligence of the people, we have simply developed a game that picks leaders. If alls that democratic politics is, is a game that does not harness the collective intelligence of the population (if there even is any), then why even bother with these silly rule around funding? Why not simply remake the game so that it at least picks good leaders, instead of picking who is better at managing their advertisement funding? Hell, with this line of logic you would think that democracies are better off simply giving the entire population some sort of personality and intelligence test, and taking the people who score the highest to be their leaders. At least this game would select for intelligence and leadership qualities.
If the only thing it takes to make the game of democracy break, someone wake me up when someone figures out a better way to select leaders other then democracy. Democracy is broken. The only consolation is that every other form of governance is just as broken or even worse off.
Disco Stu: Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue - aaaaaaay!
live(free) || die;
Undisclosed political contributions (above a very low level) are absolutely inexcusable.
Want to have to file a form with the fed declaring how much you spent on your home computer and ISP services - or go to jail - because you once made a posting about a candidate during an election cycle?
That's what "disclosed spending" is.
The "Internet Loophole" exists solely to keep the internet unregulated.
A little regulation is like a little loss of virginity, or a little fire in a fireworks plant. Let the "campaign finance" restrictions TOUCH the internet and the match is lit.
The result will be the same sort of red tape that keeps you from effectively campaigning for your preferred candidate in any other medium. And the same sort of internet free-speech arms race as you are now seeing in China.
The consensus in Washington, so far, is that the Internet is more valuable while it's free. That will change if enough NEARLY effective campaign attemps occur on it, leading to sitting politicians who believe internet free speech is their enemy. Then they will use "campaign finance" laws against it as they have always been intended to be used - to suppress grass-roots campaigns. And we'll be in the fight of our lives. Or forced once again to knuckle under.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Political adverts all over TV, billboards, etc; corporations buying their own politicians; elections being won by the PR machines; legislation going to the highest bidder... I'm not saying the system here in the UK is wonderful, but at least those things aren't big problems here.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
do we really want our elections to be for sale to the highest bidder (more so than they already are, that is)?
And that's what "campaign finance" laws do: Keep opposing voices silenced by red tape, while the deep-pockets specialists have the time and resources to build the infrastructure, map the minefield, and get their message out despite the laws.
Did you notice that the main effect of the last round was to eliminate most of the non-internet-based grass roots campaigning and leave the field to the likes of the billionaire Soros (moveon.org), the unions, AARP, and the establishment news media?
An unlimited amount of money poured into a campaign can effectively buy a certain outcome, given how susceptible the general population is to advertising.
And that's utterly false - as long as hordes of SHALLOW-pockets folk can talk to each other freely, without having to jump through government hoops and file red-tape forms or risk jail.
Did you notice that, despite moveon.org and their ilk, the side they're supporting is still losing? Or that one of the main things that scuttled some of their propaganda barrages was grassroots truth-squad activity, such as the blogosphere's lightning-fast analysis and trumpeting of the forged documents - which eventually took out Rather and blackened the CBS eye?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Does the presidential election count?
Sounds like the effort to ban blogs hasn't gone away. Write a letter-to-the-editor to your local paper and ink newspaper, and it's "free speech" and "free press". Write a personal opinion piece and post it to your personal blog hosted on your personal server, and suddenly it's a "monetary campaign contribution" that must be regulated.
Put a bumper sticker on your car and it's free speech. Put a banner on your site and it's a monetary campaign contribution.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
even more as a result of a law like this. It is already happening. local TV news [at least one in my area so far] have a short nightly segment scanning for news or problem/solution items like spam handling that TV audiance has a use for. Aside from the technology fostering ever richer content crossover between web and TV, there is simply too much bandwidth on the web and its too easily skimmed for TV-worthy content. I expect PAC money will be directed to game the system once this law is on the books.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
The actual internet work will probably take the form of campaign SEO. That is building links between blogs, campaign, party and issue web sites.
http://www.lcurve.org/
If you don't understand this, you don't understand free-as-in-commercial speech.
... was that I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
What was that? Something about it being illiberal to start land wars in Asia...? Whoa, check out that chick on MTV!
Thank you HOSTS file and Adblock. Hopefully I won't have to see any political advertising.
I don't traditionally mind politics... but relentless advertising (propaganda) is another story.
Ok, from REC's original post: am about as liberal as you can get. I think that the role of the government should be expanded such that it provides a very large safety net for the disadvantaged, and I think that many services that we now pay for ought to be subsidized such that those services (medical, roads, etc) are free/affordable for at least the most disadvantaged and ideally for the whole citizenry.
:)
Jho
*WOAH*!!!!!!!! WOW! I'm speechless. I really am. That's some really freakin' scary BS man. If our country went anywhere near that, I'd book to Mexico. For real. I could go to Canada, but they already have this stuff there! What part of FREE does this equal? Again, I am forced to ask, wtf ever happened to personal accountability? But I'm not flaming here... cuz I respect your right to feel that way, and I even admire it. I just don't think it accounts for human nature (take New Orleans for example).
But then I saw his article close up with this signature: Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
I have seen a lot of things in my life, but I don't think I've yet met a Liberal Democratic Evangelical Christian!!!! I sat here for several minutes trying to pick my jaw up off of the floor on this one. ReformedExCon, you are a very interesting enigma.
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
The potential for unlimited donations by paying for candidates' internet advertising opens an enormous loophole for corporations, unions, and the rich to unduly influence the electoral and legislative process. I don't believe that there is much point in trying to regulate it - Just as no code is absolutely secure, no law is absolutely airtight. Companies and CEOs pay their lawyers millions and tens of millions of dollars to find the cracks that allow them to continue funnelling money to Congress. The amount of effort that would be necessary to make the effort to evade the law beyond the return on investment is beyond what we can afford to expend.
If we can't stop it, the next best thing is to make it obvious what's going on. Rather than dicking around trying to regulate campaign financing which really only regulates the average person who can't afford to evade the law, simply require that all candidates for office report who payed them for what and make it available via the internet.
OpenSecrets.org is a good start. But some things need to change. Let's take a look at, oh say, a certain Texas house representative: First, make the 6.6% Undisclosed go away. Then increase the granularity of the information available. Name major business, PAC, and single-issue donors (Say, those whose donations are > N% of the total) so we know specifically who is brib^H^H^H^Hsupporting the good representative. Finally, provide a breakdown of personal donations based on income. Specifically, a pie graph depicting money donated from people with incomes under $50K, from people between 50 and 100K, etc for 100-200K, 200K-1M, 1M-10M, and 10M+ yearly income donors. This information would be provided to OpenSecrets by the candidates themselves, who would in turn have to collect it from donors.
OpenSecrets.org should also be given an amount of money proportional the amount spent by the candidates (say, 5% or 10% thereof) to advertise itself in a nonpartisan way so we can be sure that the information they collect is in fact used.
This way, we'll be able to accurately correlate donations with legislation and know, rather than guess, who is in fact a corporate whore. This will also compel corporate and union donors to keep themselves in check, lest their candidate be branded a sellout to special interests or the rich. Rather than trying to regulate greed, trick it into regulating itself.
Publicly financed campaigns seem to be the answer to the majority of concerns most people express. The American dream is that anyone can run for office and become a congress critter or president. Publicly financed campaigns would mean that regular every day people would have the chance to compete with those who have even the shiniest of silver spoons, like Bush.
With the added carrot incentive that if you don't run on clean public money, then it's because you've had to sell your vote to your contributors rather than keep it for your promises to the voters.
Sure, continue to use the stick to keep out corporate contributions, but also use the carrot to make the American Dream a reality when it comes to serving your country.
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
But I am absolutely against recent "liberal" attempts to stifle Free Speech by restricting campaign contributions.
The problem is that it's not PEOPLE donating the money, it's large corporations. Corporations do not vote, and therefore, do not have a say in the election. Unfortunately, it's these very corporate contributions that seem to be a driving force in much of the legislative process. This leaves the citizens (remember them?) out in the cold. The fact that they vote is becoming more a formality than anything else- the typical politicans' priorities lie with those who fund his/her warchest.
"No taxation without representation!"
Yet corporations are taxed, but not represented. They can't even vote. If I didn't know any better, I'd say they could be considered slaves. But that's a ridiulous comparison, after all, corporations are made up of citizens (remember them?) which benefit when the corporation or organization benefits.
BTW, campaign finance reform also limits the contribution of individuals. So large parties with many supporters (Rs and Ds) can raise a lot more money than smaller parties with fewer supporters (everyone else).
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
... also consider reading Vattel and Pufendorf. Both aren't mentioned much in the states, but their thinking has influenced a good deal of the way most European politicians look at foreign affairs.
Both Grotius' The Free Sea and Vattel's The Law of Nations are freely available online. But I'd start with Locke's Second Discourse on Government and Rousseau's Second Discourse. Both present very different liberal views of property rights.
By focusing on my comment about 30 fold you are missing the point. Actually your numbers sort of help make the point. It is not going to require a 30 fold increase to make online campaigning significant. it will require much less than that. The point is that it's already grown 30 fold so it has the potential to grow enough that it becomes the dominant medium. to do that does not require 30 fold growth be realized. But that is the current growth rate so it's going to get to a significant level quickly.
That said levaing this loophole open allows all sorts of shenanigans. For example one might think that the internet is a pull medium not a push medium so one can't really bother me with so many ads. But imagine the following ad:
WIN A FREE IPOD: just send get 5 more freinds to sign up and send campaign literature to five of their freinds!
Or
WIN A FREE IPOD: hold a dean for america block party.
That is going to be push advertising at it's very best and targeted form. And that kind of quality media will easily soak up the bux.
But it can get even more unethical. Imagine linked buys. Imagine compaines that try to steer clickers to their web media with purchases of advertising outside the internet. Say a company puts up a billboard and that says
GW Bush he's for america and he's for you. GO to xxx.com and enter "GW Bush" for a free cheesburger coupon.
Now this company gets to charge huge dollars for their clicks and also gets high dollars because of the hich click rate. They cost a lot because their overhead is higher. But it's still considered internet media purchases since the candidate had nothing to do with buying the Cillboard--that was corporate advertising for a web site. Wink Wink.
So now we have internet bucks leaking back into conventional media. And it just snow balls from there. How many columnists write on both the internet and paper. Many papers even connect their print/online advertising media: advertise in one and you get a free ad in the other.
So it comes down to a tension between two public goods: the right of free speech and equal access to election offices. the courts have many times decided that free speech means you can say what you want, but you can't always say it where and when you want, and it doesn't mean you can't be arrested after you say it. You just can't be stopped pre-emptively with very limited exceptions (imminent danger arguments).
For example, Presidential Eugene Debs was put in prison for treason under the sedition act (the act the patriot act was modeled on) for speakling ill of the president and munition maufacturers during a time of war. That was specifically called out in the sedition act as treason. So you free speech defintely is not free of consequences and limitations. (by the way that law existed for more than half the duration of this nation so it's not a brief abberation). More recently we have the phenomena of razoe wire enclosed "free speech zones" at presidential rally's. Objecitonable but legal. More benignly if you start ranting in the middle of your favorite restaurant or the senate floor you will be tossed out if not arrsested. You cant just speak when you want to.
So restrictions of money-as-speech are certainly not an infringement of free-speech since that goes more to opportunity than to content. Content is freely allowed, opportunity is not. thus campaign spending limits are not in conflict with free speech.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The policy should sting those with nothing but time to give as well as those who sell their time for money and give money.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So the US is fascist but the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were not? (they called themselves democratic states too, but government power exceeded private power so you should be good with them)
Seems like any state that is not a police state is a fascist state by that definition (assuming they setup a 'democracy' of some sort).
Of course that's exactly what I'd expect from that red villan FDR.
I like knowing there is enough private power out there to kick the government to the curb anytime they get far enough out of line to unite the private power against them. That is the essance of freedom.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I find it ironic that damn near every Slashdot story these days has someone whinig about "slashbots", "groupthink", etc...
And they're generally modded UP. Maybe the groupthink is actually biased towards the idea that it exists.
Personally, I'm still of the opinion that in a group of 900,000+ people, some may differ in opinion on some subjects (shocking!), and sometimes, there's a majority opinion (scandalous!).
Next thing you know, someone will claim that exactly 50% of the population loves Microsoft, and the other 50% hates them. Any other possible result must be due to groupthink. It's simply impossible that the world could work otherwise.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.