But if the NYTimes publishes an editorial supporting a candidate, how is that different from someone buying the same space in the NYTimes to run an ad?
Did the times get paid to run the editorial? If they just want to run the editorial, fine, that's what they do. If they get paid to run it, that's an ad.
Not all contributions are money, though many are just as valuable.
I'm focusing on money. I want to stop people from being able to purchase political influence. If Sheldon Adelson wants to buy the entire newspaper and then run whatever he wants, fine. What I don't want to see is him giving a politician a bucket of money, or spending money to run ad or smear campaigns.
Further, you talk about campaign contributions of cash, but ignore contributions of cash to such things as issue advertising, not related or coordinated directly with a campaign. Are you proposing to outlaw that kind of speech as well?
Not at all. If someone wants to run an ad saying "guns are bad, so vote for people who want to ban them", then that's fine. If they say "guns are bad, so vote for this person", that's not fine. If they just show pictures of candidates when discussing what is good or bad about an issue, that's also not fine. If the ad is seen as supporting or attacking any specific candidate then I do not think it should be allowed.
And how do you do so without putting a faceless, unelected bureaucrat in charge of deciding what is political and what is not?
I've never met a faceless person, regardless of their job. I suppose a federal judge would work for that role, though. That is what they do, after all.
Political speech, especially, cannot be regulated without the highest level of judicial scrutiny.
I'm perfectly ok with the highest level of judicial scrutiny. I'm even ok with a department and court specifically to regulate political speech. In fact, the highest level of judicial scrutiny is exactly what political speech and political campaigns and politicians require, and today that doesn't exist. I believe that political speech is in a different class than all other speech because of how it affects every single one of us, I think it is a core issue in a representative democracy. It has swayed entire elections, people have been brought to power by gaming the system and the voters instead of by actually having the most support. Just ask President Gore.
"Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech" is, and should remain, the law of the land. Especially when it comes to political speech.
Replace the word "especially" with "except" in that, and I agree.
Don't like what someone says? Reply to them.
I agree.
Don't like how loud they say it? Say yours louder.
Today that's not possible. That's the problem. And even so, if there's one thing we need less of in politics and media in general, it is shouting matches. What we need is a volume limiter.
Get this: I identify strongly with most of the Libertarian ideals, and I still think that it is right to regulate political speech. Politicians have been fucking over anyone and everyone as long and as much as they can, and I want to see them get fucked back. I want a politician to win on their merits, not because of a clever advertising campaign, or because they outspent their opponent 100 to 1 because they got paid by oil and pharmaceuticals. I want to see Democrats and Republicans on the same stage as candidates from all of the other parties, on prime time television, and watch them try to scramble and explain to the public how they're so different from each other, and how their ideas and only their ideas can lead the country forward instead of any other candidate on that stage. I want the Ds and Rs to be shaken from their comfort position o
So are you willing to tell the New York Times they can't weigh in on an election, either?
Does "weigh in" involve the New York Times giving a politician a bucket of money? If so, then yes I'm willing to tell them that. If not, then we are not talking about the same thing. I am talking about politicians and their campaigns receiving cash. I'm also talking about people running advertisements for or against a campaign. I am NOT talking about anyone giving their opinion on who would make a better leader, I don't care if they do that on TV or radio or in a newspaper or whatever. But when that opinion becomes nationally televised by means of purchasing air time, or spread by means of purchasing space in a newspaper, or when the person speaking was paid to say that, then that is advertising and not just opinion.
And why should a million people be able to send $100 to a candidate but Greenpeace not be able to send that same $100 million from its members?
Because Greenpeace is a corporation. Where is your confusion? Let Greenpeace send their members $100 each and let those members send that money to the candidate, IF THEY WANT TO.
And how do you define "politician"?
A person seeking elected office, an elected official, an official appointed by an elected or appointed official, or any group representing or working for those people. Federal employees who were hired and not elected or appointed are not politicians. Exceptions can be made for some military ranks.
The same rules must apply to all.
Yes, the same rules regarding receiving money must apply to all politicians. These rules must be tight, and necessarily different from the rules regarding anyone else receiving money. Like I said, politicians and lobbyists have earned this new set of rules based on their conduct.
That is simply unacceptable, period, end of discussion.
Umm.. no? Thanks for taking the initiative to call the discussion over and everything, but it's really not.
I understand what you're saying, but none of that relates to what I originally said:
And the assertion that a console built on PC hardware is more powerful than "the current PC". There's no way that can be a serious post.
I'm talking about computing power. Not price, not convenience, not flexibility, etc. OP said that XBox 360 is more powerful than a current PC, which was what I was addressing. That's the only thing I was addressing.
I wasn't really thinking about debates, although that is one of the most obvious examples of bias in media in our current system.
It's not bias, it's money. Networks want ratings, because ratings are money. If a network gives air time to a candidate from a smaller party, then the Commission On Presidential Debates, which is controlled by Democrats and Republicans, will not allow their candidates or debates on that network. It's basic blackmail. Ignore everyone else, or else you won't get the people that bring in the most ratings. Less voices heard. Why do the Ds and Rs get the most ratings? Because they're on TV, people know them, name recognition. That's the cycle.
You really have to wonder what is going on when the Democrats and Republicans have agreed on this issue for the past 26 years. It's not about choice, it's about keeping themselves in power. The TV media plays along because they don't really have a choice if they want to keep playing the game.
I don't care if it's Koch or Soros or any other douchebag, foreign or domestic. I want them out of my election system. I don't like the idea that foreign entities can pay whatever they want in order to influence the election in my state. That does not sit well with me, I want my voice heard. The same goes for people in other states, I don't want them influencing my state elections either. Or my federal elections. I strongly believe that politicians deserve a completely different set of rules for receiving money than everyone else. Politicians have earned that distinction with the stellar work they've done the past few decades. They get one set of rules, everyone else gets another. That means that I don't want corporations or foreign entities contributing at all to campaigns. Private individuals, fine, but there should be a limit on how much they can give to help ensure that a single person cannot outspend millions of others. If a million people decide to give Gary Johnson $100 each, I don't want George Soros or anyone else stepping in to give a D or R a billion dollar check. It's not representative.
You can disprove this by telling us where to buy a living-room gaming PC for $399.
That's disingenuous. Microsoft makes money on the actual games, which allows them to discount the cost of the hardware. They sell the hardware at a loss and recoup the money with games and peripheral licensing. I'll be happy to spec out a computer with the same capabilities that you can build yourself though, since this discussion is about power and not price. And then I'll spec out one with twice the power. Then three times. I've got one in my living room right now, and it can do a lot more than the Xbox One. In fact, it can do everything that a PC can.
I'm confused about whether that is a serious post or a troll. It has to be a troll. 3 apostrophes used, all incorrectly. 3 uses of your/you're, all incorrect. And the assertion that a console built on PC hardware is more powerful than "the current PC". There's no way that can be a serious post.
You want Libertarian candidates on the ballot? Convince some to run.
I don't have to, they already do run. But they and all other smaller party candidates get little to no exposure based on the fact that the commission on presidential debates does not allow any small party candidates to debate on national TV. That's the major thing I want to get changed, I want control of the debate process out of the hands of any political party.
You are a really stupid person, you know that? You have championed the debate tactic of mis-representing someone's position, and then trashing it. Why bother with the actual substance of the debate when you can just claim that your opponent supports one thing, and trash it?
Here's a hint: if someone like George Soros wants to have his voice heard, then he is more than welcome to join the same group of people as everyone else like him, contribute his $1000 like everyone else did, and go about the rest of his day. Like everyone else. If he instead wants to spend 100 times as much as that group of people in order to drown them out, then he can go fuck himself along with your debate tactic.
Who the hell is complaining about one side? I want it all to end. In fact, I want every single person in Congress right now to be kicked out on their asses and replaced with completely new people. Every one of them. I also want some Libertarian candidates on the ballots, but one thing at a time.
Or George Soros or Michael Bloomberg or Warren Buffet each, individually, spending more on anti-gun lobbying and advertising than 4 million citizens combined?
Yeah, that's pretty fucked up, isn't it? Do you think they should be allowed to do that? I sure as hell don't, and I sure as hell never said I did. Take your straw man somewhere else.
Yes, you will allow them to say it in private all they want. Saying it in public, where it really matters, is what you have a problem with.
The straw is really flying here. No, that is NOT what I have a problem with. People can say anything they want, wherever they want. What I DO have a problem with is a single voice drowning out the voices of millions of others. Notice how I did not qualify that statement with any sort of political affiliation whatsoever. Take your divisive "you liberals" bullshit somewhere else, I'm not interested in politicizing this issue.
A private organization pays for all that and has established its rules.
Yes it has, and it's called The Commission On Presidential Debates. Guess who runs that commission? If you answered "the Democratic and Republican parties created and are in complete control of the commission", then you're correct! So guess why we only get to watch televised debates featuring Democratic and Republican candidates. Go ahead, guess. I'll wait.
Are you done guessing? Did you answer "if any network shows any other debate not sponsored by the commission, then the commission will blacklist that network from its debates?" If so, you're correct! Great job!!!
I would suggest that step 1 of that process is removing the Democratic and Republican parties from controlling who gets to debate on TV for presidential elections, what the questions are, who the moderator is, etc. That responsibility should be with a non-partisan group, not the incumbents.
Sideslash has it exactly right. The answer to speech you don't like - be it the content, or the source - is more speech explaining why it's wrong, not silencing speech you disagree with.
The problem with that is being able to counter the speech in an effective way. It's not difficult for very wealthy people to run national prime-time ads for a month. It's much harder for people who are not wealthy to do that. Allowing unrestricted donations favors the very wealthy and drowns out other voices, and that's the point. All voices deserve to be heard.
It's not about silencing speech, it's about adjusting the volume so that everyone is speaking at the same level. Then you can focus on the content.
You are suggesting that it should be illegal (by analogy) to pay money to a woman at all, whether or not there is sleeping with oneself involved. Or that there should be limits as to how much money a man can pay a woman. You want to cut out the gold digger girlfriends, and don't care whether you destroy legitimate gift giving freedoms between couples in the process (again, all by analogy). Right?
Well, if that woman is a politician, then yes. I am suggesting that politicians have to play by different rules than everyone else when they receive money.
Politicians in power will use an ill-conceived campaign finance law like this as a hammer to silence political dissent, whether it's films, newspapers, bloggers, etc.
I'm optimistically assuming that any law will be worded so that can't happen. Something like that would be obviously unconstitutional, so any law that would regulate campaign finance must be constitutional or else it's a waste of time. I haven't seen any actual bills being proposed at this point, so I can't really say either way.
But you still haven't given any reason why Sheldon Adelson's money is any different here than Famous Q. PolitiBlogger's virtual soapbox.
One of them is money. As in, currency. Hard cash. Something that you exchange for goods and services. Something that nearly everyone is trying to get.
The other one is a group of people listening.
I can try to convince a woman to sleep with me all I want. If I am influential, she will. But if I pay her for it, it's illegal.
I can try to convince a politician to do something all I want. If I am influential, she will. But if I make an explicit agreement to pay her in exchange for a vote, that is illegal.
A blogger can convince people to vote however they want, and if they are convincing then those people will vote that way. But if I offer a person money in order to go to the ballot and vote how I want them to, both of us have committed a federal crime and are subject to $10,000 in fines and up to 5 years in prison.
Money and speech are obviously not the same thing. Using money to influence an election and talking to people are also not the same thing. This is not rocket science. While spending money and donating to campaigns will always be part of the election process, there are steps we can take in order to make sure that very wealthy people do not have the combined FINANCIAL influence on the election process as literally millions of other people.
OK, if it's so desirable to "level the playing field" so some people don't influence more than others, why not censor some highly influential political bloggers?
Because I am concerned with money, not actual speech. People can say whatever they want to say. It's not about leveling all playing fields everywhere in every domain, it is about restricting the influence of MONEY in politics. Limbaugh and O'Reilly and Jon Stewart can say whatever they want to say to their audiences, and if they can convince them to vote a certain way, fine. That is not even in the same arena as Sheldon Adelson giving Gingritch $11 million dollars to single-handedly boost his presidential campaign, or Rupert Murdoch trying to fund a presidential campaign for David Petraeus. It's not people talking that I'm worried about, it is people buying. Specifically, wealthy individuals buying elections. I think it's wrong and incompatible with a democracy. The influence of political bloggers has zero to do with this discussion.
the problem is that suppressing certain kinds of donations means preventing people from "getting the word out" about something important to them
Outright disallowing donations is one thing. It's another to place limits on how much they can give. 196 people shouldn't be allowed to donate 80% of the money that goes to super PACs, that is simply buying political influence by those who can afford it. If the donation limit was capped at $1000 per person, for example, then that would change things. Mayday PAC is a good example - the word is out, and it doesn't require people to donate a million dollars each. People can still get the word out, but the power should be with groups of like-minded people rather than very wealthy individuals. Sheldon Adelson said it best:
"I'm against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections," he shrugs. "But as long as it's doable I'm going to do it."
The $11 million he gave to Gingritch is 0.044% of his $25 billion worth. That's the same as a person worth a million dollars donating $440. It doesn't matter to him, but it drowns out everyone else who can't afford to give $11 million. It also drowns out people like those who support Mayday, who combined can only muster a little over $2 million (so far, anyway).
There's no point in referencing statistical outliers. The 26th amendment took 3 months and 8 days to ratify. Seven amendments have taken less than a year.
There's a plausible argument to be made that the 1st Amendment requires that a government can't make it illegal to donate money to their political opponents.
The fact that money is classified as speech but prostitution is illegal doesn't match up. Paying for political influence should not be legal.
So... we all know that is "not OK", but why exactly is it "not OK"?
Because there are different rules for the different parties, simple as that. They need the same set of rules, as do the Libertarian, Green, Justice, etc parties. As it is now, anyone who is not a D or R isn't allowed to debate on TV for president, because the people in charge of regulating presidential debates are Ds and Rs, and those are their rules. We don't even need to resort to hypotheticals to figure out why this is a problem. It's not even an issue of free speech, it's an issue of everyone having the same set of rules. Right now the system is heavily weighted in favor of incumbents.
Slashdot Mirror
But if the NYTimes publishes an editorial supporting a candidate, how is that different from someone buying the same space in the NYTimes to run an ad?
Did the times get paid to run the editorial? If they just want to run the editorial, fine, that's what they do. If they get paid to run it, that's an ad.
Not all contributions are money, though many are just as valuable.
I'm focusing on money. I want to stop people from being able to purchase political influence. If Sheldon Adelson wants to buy the entire newspaper and then run whatever he wants, fine. What I don't want to see is him giving a politician a bucket of money, or spending money to run ad or smear campaigns.
Further, you talk about campaign contributions of cash, but ignore contributions of cash to such things as issue advertising, not related or coordinated directly with a campaign. Are you proposing to outlaw that kind of speech as well?
Not at all. If someone wants to run an ad saying "guns are bad, so vote for people who want to ban them", then that's fine. If they say "guns are bad, so vote for this person", that's not fine. If they just show pictures of candidates when discussing what is good or bad about an issue, that's also not fine. If the ad is seen as supporting or attacking any specific candidate then I do not think it should be allowed.
And how do you do so without putting a faceless, unelected bureaucrat in charge of deciding what is political and what is not?
I've never met a faceless person, regardless of their job. I suppose a federal judge would work for that role, though. That is what they do, after all.
Political speech, especially, cannot be regulated without the highest level of judicial scrutiny.
I'm perfectly ok with the highest level of judicial scrutiny. I'm even ok with a department and court specifically to regulate political speech. In fact, the highest level of judicial scrutiny is exactly what political speech and political campaigns and politicians require, and today that doesn't exist. I believe that political speech is in a different class than all other speech because of how it affects every single one of us, I think it is a core issue in a representative democracy. It has swayed entire elections, people have been brought to power by gaming the system and the voters instead of by actually having the most support. Just ask President Gore.
"Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech" is, and should remain, the law of the land. Especially when it comes to political speech.
Replace the word "especially" with "except" in that, and I agree.
Don't like what someone says? Reply to them.
I agree.
Don't like how loud they say it? Say yours louder.
Today that's not possible. That's the problem. And even so, if there's one thing we need less of in politics and media in general, it is shouting matches. What we need is a volume limiter.
Get this: I identify strongly with most of the Libertarian ideals, and I still think that it is right to regulate political speech. Politicians have been fucking over anyone and everyone as long and as much as they can, and I want to see them get fucked back. I want a politician to win on their merits, not because of a clever advertising campaign, or because they outspent their opponent 100 to 1 because they got paid by oil and pharmaceuticals. I want to see Democrats and Republicans on the same stage as candidates from all of the other parties, on prime time television, and watch them try to scramble and explain to the public how they're so different from each other, and how their ideas and only their ideas can lead the country forward instead of any other candidate on that stage. I want the Ds and Rs to be shaken from their comfort position o
You'll also have to prove that the NSA actually searched your phone.
So are you willing to tell the New York Times they can't weigh in on an election, either?
Does "weigh in" involve the New York Times giving a politician a bucket of money? If so, then yes I'm willing to tell them that. If not, then we are not talking about the same thing. I am talking about politicians and their campaigns receiving cash. I'm also talking about people running advertisements for or against a campaign. I am NOT talking about anyone giving their opinion on who would make a better leader, I don't care if they do that on TV or radio or in a newspaper or whatever. But when that opinion becomes nationally televised by means of purchasing air time, or spread by means of purchasing space in a newspaper, or when the person speaking was paid to say that, then that is advertising and not just opinion.
And why should a million people be able to send $100 to a candidate but Greenpeace not be able to send that same $100 million from its members?
Because Greenpeace is a corporation. Where is your confusion? Let Greenpeace send their members $100 each and let those members send that money to the candidate, IF THEY WANT TO.
And how do you define "politician"?
A person seeking elected office, an elected official, an official appointed by an elected or appointed official, or any group representing or working for those people. Federal employees who were hired and not elected or appointed are not politicians. Exceptions can be made for some military ranks.
The same rules must apply to all.
Yes, the same rules regarding receiving money must apply to all politicians. These rules must be tight, and necessarily different from the rules regarding anyone else receiving money. Like I said, politicians and lobbyists have earned this new set of rules based on their conduct.
That is simply unacceptable, period, end of discussion.
Umm.. no? Thanks for taking the initiative to call the discussion over and everything, but it's really not.
I understand what you're saying, but none of that relates to what I originally said:
And the assertion that a console built on PC hardware is more powerful than "the current PC". There's no way that can be a serious post.
I'm talking about computing power. Not price, not convenience, not flexibility, etc. OP said that XBox 360 is more powerful than a current PC, which was what I was addressing. That's the only thing I was addressing.
I wasn't really thinking about debates, although that is one of the most obvious examples of bias in media in our current system.
It's not bias, it's money. Networks want ratings, because ratings are money. If a network gives air time to a candidate from a smaller party, then the Commission On Presidential Debates, which is controlled by Democrats and Republicans, will not allow their candidates or debates on that network. It's basic blackmail. Ignore everyone else, or else you won't get the people that bring in the most ratings. Less voices heard. Why do the Ds and Rs get the most ratings? Because they're on TV, people know them, name recognition. That's the cycle.
You really have to wonder what is going on when the Democrats and Republicans have agreed on this issue for the past 26 years. It's not about choice, it's about keeping themselves in power. The TV media plays along because they don't really have a choice if they want to keep playing the game.
I don't care if it's Koch or Soros or any other douchebag, foreign or domestic. I want them out of my election system. I don't like the idea that foreign entities can pay whatever they want in order to influence the election in my state. That does not sit well with me, I want my voice heard. The same goes for people in other states, I don't want them influencing my state elections either. Or my federal elections. I strongly believe that politicians deserve a completely different set of rules for receiving money than everyone else. Politicians have earned that distinction with the stellar work they've done the past few decades. They get one set of rules, everyone else gets another. That means that I don't want corporations or foreign entities contributing at all to campaigns. Private individuals, fine, but there should be a limit on how much they can give to help ensure that a single person cannot outspend millions of others. If a million people decide to give Gary Johnson $100 each, I don't want George Soros or anyone else stepping in to give a D or R a billion dollar check. It's not representative.
You can disprove this by telling us where to buy a living-room gaming PC for $399.
That's disingenuous. Microsoft makes money on the actual games, which allows them to discount the cost of the hardware. They sell the hardware at a loss and recoup the money with games and peripheral licensing. I'll be happy to spec out a computer with the same capabilities that you can build yourself though, since this discussion is about power and not price. And then I'll spec out one with twice the power. Then three times. I've got one in my living room right now, and it can do a lot more than the Xbox One. In fact, it can do everything that a PC can.
My faith in humanity is so low these days.
I'm confused about whether that is a serious post or a troll. It has to be a troll. 3 apostrophes used, all incorrectly. 3 uses of your/you're, all incorrect. And the assertion that a console built on PC hardware is more powerful than "the current PC". There's no way that can be a serious post.
You want Libertarian candidates on the ballot? Convince some to run.
I don't have to, they already do run. But they and all other smaller party candidates get little to no exposure based on the fact that the commission on presidential debates does not allow any small party candidates to debate on national TV. That's the major thing I want to get changed, I want control of the debate process out of the hands of any political party.
Sure do. Have you not been paying attention to anything I've said? Have I qualified any statement with a political affiliation?
You are a really stupid person, you know that? You have championed the debate tactic of mis-representing someone's position, and then trashing it. Why bother with the actual substance of the debate when you can just claim that your opponent supports one thing, and trash it?
Here's a hint: if someone like George Soros wants to have his voice heard, then he is more than welcome to join the same group of people as everyone else like him, contribute his $1000 like everyone else did, and go about the rest of his day. Like everyone else. If he instead wants to spend 100 times as much as that group of people in order to drown them out, then he can go fuck himself along with your debate tactic.
Who the hell is complaining about one side? I want it all to end. In fact, I want every single person in Congress right now to be kicked out on their asses and replaced with completely new people. Every one of them. I also want some Libertarian candidates on the ballots, but one thing at a time.
Or George Soros or Michael Bloomberg or Warren Buffet each, individually, spending more on anti-gun lobbying and advertising than 4 million citizens combined?
Yeah, that's pretty fucked up, isn't it? Do you think they should be allowed to do that? I sure as hell don't, and I sure as hell never said I did. Take your straw man somewhere else.
Yes, you will allow them to say it in private all they want. Saying it in public, where it really matters, is what you have a problem with.
The straw is really flying here. No, that is NOT what I have a problem with. People can say anything they want, wherever they want. What I DO have a problem with is a single voice drowning out the voices of millions of others. Notice how I did not qualify that statement with any sort of political affiliation whatsoever. Take your divisive "you liberals" bullshit somewhere else, I'm not interested in politicizing this issue.
A private organization pays for all that and has established its rules.
Yes it has, and it's called The Commission On Presidential Debates. Guess who runs that commission? If you answered "the Democratic and Republican parties created and are in complete control of the commission", then you're correct! So guess why we only get to watch televised debates featuring Democratic and Republican candidates. Go ahead, guess. I'll wait.
Are you done guessing? Did you answer "if any network shows any other debate not sponsored by the commission, then the commission will blacklist that network from its debates?" If so, you're correct! Great job!!!
What if 1 person decides that he wants to speak louder than all of Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the WWF combined?
http://termlimits.org/
I would suggest that step 1 of that process is removing the Democratic and Republican parties from controlling who gets to debate on TV for presidential elections, what the questions are, who the moderator is, etc. That responsibility should be with a non-partisan group, not the incumbents.
Sideslash has it exactly right. The answer to speech you don't like - be it the content, or the source - is more speech explaining why it's wrong, not silencing speech you disagree with.
The problem with that is being able to counter the speech in an effective way. It's not difficult for very wealthy people to run national prime-time ads for a month. It's much harder for people who are not wealthy to do that. Allowing unrestricted donations favors the very wealthy and drowns out other voices, and that's the point. All voices deserve to be heard.
It's not about silencing speech, it's about adjusting the volume so that everyone is speaking at the same level. Then you can focus on the content.
You are suggesting that it should be illegal (by analogy) to pay money to a woman at all, whether or not there is sleeping with oneself involved. Or that there should be limits as to how much money a man can pay a woman. You want to cut out the gold digger girlfriends, and don't care whether you destroy legitimate gift giving freedoms between couples in the process (again, all by analogy). Right?
Well, if that woman is a politician, then yes. I am suggesting that politicians have to play by different rules than everyone else when they receive money.
Politicians in power will use an ill-conceived campaign finance law like this as a hammer to silence political dissent, whether it's films, newspapers, bloggers, etc.
I'm optimistically assuming that any law will be worded so that can't happen. Something like that would be obviously unconstitutional, so any law that would regulate campaign finance must be constitutional or else it's a waste of time. I haven't seen any actual bills being proposed at this point, so I can't really say either way.
But you still haven't given any reason why Sheldon Adelson's money is any different here than Famous Q. PolitiBlogger's virtual soapbox.
One of them is money. As in, currency. Hard cash. Something that you exchange for goods and services. Something that nearly everyone is trying to get.
The other one is a group of people listening.
I can try to convince a woman to sleep with me all I want. If I am influential, she will. But if I pay her for it, it's illegal.
I can try to convince a politician to do something all I want. If I am influential, she will. But if I make an explicit agreement to pay her in exchange for a vote, that is illegal.
A blogger can convince people to vote however they want, and if they are convincing then those people will vote that way. But if I offer a person money in order to go to the ballot and vote how I want them to, both of us have committed a federal crime and are subject to $10,000 in fines and up to 5 years in prison.
Money and speech are obviously not the same thing. Using money to influence an election and talking to people are also not the same thing. This is not rocket science. While spending money and donating to campaigns will always be part of the election process, there are steps we can take in order to make sure that very wealthy people do not have the combined FINANCIAL influence on the election process as literally millions of other people.
OK, if it's so desirable to "level the playing field" so some people don't influence more than others, why not censor some highly influential political bloggers?
Because I am concerned with money, not actual speech. People can say whatever they want to say. It's not about leveling all playing fields everywhere in every domain, it is about restricting the influence of MONEY in politics. Limbaugh and O'Reilly and Jon Stewart can say whatever they want to say to their audiences, and if they can convince them to vote a certain way, fine. That is not even in the same arena as Sheldon Adelson giving Gingritch $11 million dollars to single-handedly boost his presidential campaign, or Rupert Murdoch trying to fund a presidential campaign for David Petraeus. It's not people talking that I'm worried about, it is people buying. Specifically, wealthy individuals buying elections. I think it's wrong and incompatible with a democracy. The influence of political bloggers has zero to do with this discussion.
the problem is that suppressing certain kinds of donations means preventing people from "getting the word out" about something important to them
Outright disallowing donations is one thing. It's another to place limits on how much they can give. 196 people shouldn't be allowed to donate 80% of the money that goes to super PACs, that is simply buying political influence by those who can afford it. If the donation limit was capped at $1000 per person, for example, then that would change things. Mayday PAC is a good example - the word is out, and it doesn't require people to donate a million dollars each. People can still get the word out, but the power should be with groups of like-minded people rather than very wealthy individuals. Sheldon Adelson said it best:
"I'm against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections," he shrugs. "But as long as it's doable I'm going to do it."
The $11 million he gave to Gingritch is 0.044% of his $25 billion worth. That's the same as a person worth a million dollars donating $440. It doesn't matter to him, but it drowns out everyone else who can't afford to give $11 million. It also drowns out people like those who support Mayday, who combined can only muster a little over $2 million (so far, anyway).
There's no point in referencing statistical outliers. The 26th amendment took 3 months and 8 days to ratify. Seven amendments have taken less than a year.
There's a plausible argument to be made that the 1st Amendment requires that a government can't make it illegal to donate money to their political opponents.
The fact that money is classified as speech but prostitution is illegal doesn't match up. Paying for political influence should not be legal.
So... we all know that is "not OK", but why exactly is it "not OK"?
Because there are different rules for the different parties, simple as that. They need the same set of rules, as do the Libertarian, Green, Justice, etc parties. As it is now, anyone who is not a D or R isn't allowed to debate on TV for president, because the people in charge of regulating presidential debates are Ds and Rs, and those are their rules. We don't even need to resort to hypotheticals to figure out why this is a problem. It's not even an issue of free speech, it's an issue of everyone having the same set of rules. Right now the system is heavily weighted in favor of incumbents.