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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.
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.
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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.
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'.
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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?
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.
hmm... A vote that is only against a candidate (-1) would be like voting FOR (+1) all of the others. Might be an interesting system. Third party candidates might see alot better chances if the large number of people who don't want to vote for either of the main two, simply vote against one of them. Suddenly they've placed a vote for ALL of the other candidates (including 3rd parties). Republicans vote against the democrat. Democrats vote against the republican. The way things are going right now, that would leave them both with pretty close to zero positive votes, and the 20 people who voted 3rd party would easily overtake them. ;)
:D
Clearly there are holes all over this. It's 4:20am!
It's way cooler to move to an island in french polynesia and forget about the whole damned thing.
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. ~
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.
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does exist, in the US even... http://www.nota.org/statebystate.htm
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
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.
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American Liberalism is entirely different to the classical form of liberalism, it's difficult for non-Americans to understand. Classical liberalism is a great deal closer to what is referred to in the US as "libertarianism". It's confusing because the two meanings of the term are so far apart that it makes very little sense.
Fun wikipedia links if you're really bored:
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.
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.
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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'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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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