But they cannot capture these communications between Americans with a drag net, they have to get individual warrants (presumably secret FISA warrants).
If you had actually seen the contents of this most recent leak you would have noticed that no warrants are necessary to perform a search of the database which includes the actual content of emails, IMs, and telephone conversation audio. Somehow you seemed to have missed the whole point of this leak. All of our worst fears about Big Brother have now been confirmed.
Maybe that should have been a clue for them to move closer before simply firing machine guns into a small crowd who were not firing at them. Those guys should be known as the Butchers of Baghdad.
Try to post a screen gab that shows children in the helicopter footage.
If you watch the short version they are labeled on screen. If you watch the long version the little girl / first child is mentioned at 13:29, 17:20, and 18:18 where they finally seem to realize that the little girl who was shot in the stomach was not the only wounded child. They explicitly mention that there were two wounded children at 27:38. The second child can be seen being carried to an APC by a soldier at 23:10 of the long version. The first child / little girl is only seen briefly when she is carried from the van full of bodies, but she is on the video.
There may have been two guys with rifles who were not aiming them. They were away from the main group that they slaughtered. If they had to murder someone without provocation out of pure fear and cowardice then they could have just aimed for those two. Or better yet acted like actual human being and try to take them prisoner instead of kill them.
As far as the RPG there was no RPG and there was no firefight in the area until they started massacring civilians at least. If they were so far away that they could not tell the difference between a camera and an RPG then they should have moved closer until they could make a positive ID on it. Instead they just decided to murder everyone in the area.
Well it's true that they didn't actually see the two young children until after they had shot the van full of holes with large caliber rounds, but they were in there. A little girl was shot in the stomach. I don't know what happened to the other child.
There was no reason to shoot at the van in the first place. Once you start shooting at civilian vehicles you have to assume that there might be children inside. It's a very stupid and irresponsible thing to do. And of course if they had just flown closer to get a better look they would have seen there were no RPGs. There may or may not have been a couple of guys with rifles away from the main group, but if they were rifles they were hung over a shoulder and not actively carried. They were probably just tripods or something anyway. But it's not unreasonable to carry a rifle in a war zone. It doesn't mean you are hostile. Unless they actually aim the rifle it doesn't mean anything. And you don't massacre a whole group of people just because two of them may or may not be carrying rifles. What you do is warn the guys with rifles to put them down and if they instead aim them at you then you shoot only them.
A government of laws and not men is all well and good except when a law is unjust. Then the rule of law is more like the ruly of tyranny. Something that John Adams was not a fan of. When a law is unjust and/or unconstitutional we are all above the law. The law exists to serve men. Men do not exist to serve the law. Laws are not a a substitute for morality. Just because something is illegal does not mean that it is wrong. I don't think the way that the phrase is often used, as a justification for going after Snowden for instance, is a moral principle simply because law has so little to do with actual morality.
You probably haven't even looked at the video they deliberately mislabeled "collateral murder". (which, by the way, is almost certainly clearer for you on your computer than the pilot had on their little 4" screen in the apache)
It sounds to me like you are the one who hasn't looked at the video. Try watching it again. The long version. And notice how the helicopter pilot fires on unarmed innocent people including children who clearly are not carrying any weapons. It is true that there was a guy with a camera. And no it didn't look like a rocket launcher. And there were a couple of guys some distance away from the main group who were carrying what may have been rifles, probably guards to try to protect the rest of the people in a war zone.
But that does not excuse a cold blooded massacre of unarmed civilians including children. They were even cheering and celebrating as they machine gunned innocent children. If they weren't sure they could have moved closer and waited to see if the two guys with rifles fired at them. Or at least picked up their rifles (assuming they actually were rifles) to aim at them.
That video is probably the most disgusting thing I have ever watched. It is almost impossible for me to watch the whole thing in fact. I just get too angry. Those guys should be executed. I would happily do it myself. Not only have they not been reprimanded. Their names haven't even been released. That is just wrong. Very, very wrong. They committed serious war crimes. As clear cut as any war crimes. Those particular guys were truly no better than Nazis, and I say this as a jew with ancestors in Poland.
I suppose I was naive, but I never really believed that our military behaved like that. Like vicious animals killing with enjoyment and laughing about it. Showing no honor or mercy even to children. And that is the importance of this video and in my view what really makes Manning a hero. That video needed to be released. Manning has given his life to get that video, among other things, out into the open.
I can tell you one thing. After watching that video it will be a cold day in hell before I ever approve of us going to war for any reason except to directly defend ourselves here on US territory. Between that video and the revelation of what was going on at Abu Ghraib we have shown that we cannot fight with honor. We cannot be trusted to fight a war without senseless massacres and god only knows what kind of sick war crimes. We truly are just as bad or even worse than what even the most anti-American critics have always claimed.
He quickly pointed out that it was missing a bunch of context because at that time the insurgents had been trying to score an apache kill, so the army was holding apaches back unless there was confirmed need for them
In what possible way is that supposed to excuse a massacre of mostly unarmed civilians? Those were not insurgents. They shot at least one child and two guys from Reuters. This was a clear case of massacre an entire crowd of people first. Ask questions later. This is a crime of coward chicken-hawk murderers too afraid to get close enough to their victims to confirm that they really are enemies actively engaging in combat with them. Those are some evil fucks.
You're not supposed to get away with civil disobedience
So technically Manning was not engaged in civil disobedience. Call it "principled disobedience" if it makes you feel better. There is nothing noble about welcoming an unjust punishment. People like you try to make it sound like you cannot do a good deed unless you are dead or spending the rest of your life in prison at the end of it. That's just silly.
A life sentence is probably what Snowden is looking at.
No. What Snowden is looking at is exile. He's in a country with no extradition treaty with the US. There is no reason to believe he will end up back in the US at any point. That must really bother you.
These industries are more likely to fund people sympathetic to their point of view. It doesn't indicate that the congressmen switched their votes based on the contribution or lack thereof.
They didn't switch their votes. They chose their votes on the basis of who pays their bills. If they voted otherwise their funding would be cut off. Some of us call that form of inflluence "bribery".
How would this be an advantage to the individuals involved? Why can they not just contribute individually? It won't prevent them from having tea together and discussing politics. Whatever group they form is not a citizen. So it should not be able to contribute to campaigns. Or if it is allowed to contribute then it should only be able to contribute up to the maximum cap for an individual, which should be some small amount like $50.
Which means that if Congressional candidates spend $0.50 or $1.50 trying to communicate with every individual in the district they're gonna have a $500k budget.
And if a congressional candidate does not have enough money to communicate with ever single individual? What happens then? Armaggedon? What if many of us promise to cry for hours over the injustice of this? Would that make it better? It is not necessary for a campaign to acceept large donations in order to get funded. To use your example of 750,000 voters, if even half of them donate the maximum amount allowed of say $100, then you would have 37.5 million dollars for your campaign. And you couldn't be accused of having been bought by whatever company or companies actually did purchase you. A win-win for everyone.
So you've basically got it backwards. They got $41k because they were going after the tough-on-terror voters who actually like the NSA program (support goes up from 30%ish to 40%ish if you mention it's supposed to be looking for terrorists). The others got $18k because they were going after the kind of voter who hates the NSA program.
I don't think you currently have any solid evidence that the tough-on-terror, pro-surveillance voters currently represent the majority. In fact it is currently hard to predict what the most popular stance is toward PRISM etc. Which makes it pretty easy to accept bribes from the defense industry. Whether those bribes are a direct payment for this particular vote or to encourage the congressman to vote for their issues in the future is irrelevant. It is still corruption. It is still bribery. These corporations are still getting an unfair advantage in the political process.
There's really no way to enforce such a law effectively across the board.
It doesn't matter whether it can be enforced "across the board". A law doesn't have to be enforced 100% of the time to have the intended effect.
the penalties would have to be draconian
How do you figure?
Individuals should, and must, have a right to express themselves by spending their own money on speech.
Not if that money is being used to buy a politician or unfairly affect the outcome of an election. That is bribery and whether bribery can be considered a form of speech or not it is a form of corruption that is harmful to society and should be illegal.
and the chance of the law winding up tyrannical (by coming into conflict with the first amendment.)
The idea that bribery is a form of speech is ridiculous. Bribery is an attempt at influence that does not rely on communication. If all you wanted to do was communicate you could do that for free.
Some individuals being wealthier than others, that is unequal, and those that worship equality will never quit moaning about it
Uh, were you attempting to make some kind of argument here? May I remind you that the Founding Fathers of our country were also "worshippers" of equality. When was the last time you read the Declaration of Independence? You know the whole "all men are created equal" thing? It may be hard for you to believe but they really meant that. It formed the basis for their entire system. John Locke's Natural Rights derive from the belief in the essential equality of all human beings. That is equality in rights not in being identical clones of each other. In our politics that equality is the basis of only allowing exactly one vote per person. A rich person is not supposed to have more influence than a poor person. That is a blatant injustice and corruption of the political system. Just as there is no Divine Right of Kings there is no Divine Right of Corporations or Divine Right of the Rich. No one is more equal than anyone else.
but those that place liberty higher than equality know that for the greater good (the first amendment, in the US context) that's unavoidable.
The "liberty" to influence the outcome of an election based on how much money you have? The liberty to corrupt the political system? I think the right of every other citizen to a free and fair election of their leaders trumps the freedom of some corrupt sociopathic organization to buy politicians by the dozen to serve as their minions.
Again, bribery is not a form of speech and even if it were it would be a form of speech that would have to be curtailed in order to preserve far more important freedoms. Fascism does not appeal to people who genuinely value liberty and this form of corruption inevitably leads to fascism.
They are when they are sufficiently large. That is why we need a per citizen cap on them. The rich should have no more influence over the outcome of an election than the poor. The rich are not better citizens than the poor and should only get one vote.
People, and groups of people, show support politicians by making contributions to their election campaigns.
The only thing people need to do to show support is to vote for them and to convince as many people as they can to vote for them. That is what is honest and fair. Groups are not citizens and should have no say in politics. For the same reason that they don't get to vote, they shouldn't be allowed to contribute to campaigns.
How else would you fund political campaigns?
From the labor of dedicated volunteers. Also there should be limits on how much a candidate himself can spend on his own campaign. Rich candidates should not have an unfair advantage over poor ones. You could even limit the sorts of things that public money may be spent on.
Public Financing, aka welfare for politicians??
You are assuming that a significant amount of money is needed to "finance" a campaign. If no one has any advertisement money then you have a fair playing field for rich and poor candidates and it may also lower the barrier of entry for third party candidates. You could also have some standard fixed amount paid for by taxpayers to any candidate with a sufficiently large number of signatures to run.
And how will you deal with someone who offers citizens $200 if they donate $100 to Candidate X*?
Well there is only so much you can do to discourage corruption. You could make such transactions against the law though. That somewhat limits the scale that this could practically be done on. But if you are going to pay people to donate a measly $100 to a compaign you may as well just buy their vote and be done with it.
So as a private person I want to buy an ad for a cause I believe in.
And I want a pony.
It happens to be that there are 2 major candidates, and the cause I believe in is also the main cause championed by one of those candidates. Will I be allowed to run the ad, even though in effect it is an ad for one of the candidates, even if that's not my intention?
I would argue against being able to run such an ad because it appears to be an attempt to influence an election even if that was not the true intent. It is indistinguishable from an attempt to influence an election.
How will you possibly define in law what kinds of ads indirectly benefit one candidate over another? If you can't, this is a huge loophole.
With the duck test. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's a duck. How about: "Any advertisement that would appear to a reasonable person to be an attempt to influence the outcome of an election shall be punishable by a fine of up to one milliion dollars and up to one year in prison." It's generally pretty obvious what sort of thing an advertisement is intended to sell.
What if I run a news organization and I decide to give more favorable and extensive coverage of my favorite candidate, in effect contributing to him the equivalent of millions of dollars in ads? It's hard for me to see how you can define a law to get around such things without also seriously impacting the freedom of the press to report on political stories.
Coverage is not the same as advertising. I think your example would be acceptable. As you say you cannot realistically get around this sort of thing. I don't think it is all that harmful. The one thing I would do is make it illegal for anyone else to pay the news organization to favor one side over another. If large sums of money are changing hands then that should be investigated as a possible attempt to influence an election.
Suppose I want to volunteer to help one campaign over another.
That's fine. You are free to use your time as you wish.
That's equivalent to giving them my salary,
No it isn't. There is a limit to how much you can influence an election with just your time. Donating money should be limited to a fair amount such that the rich do not have any significant advantage over the poor in terms of influencing the outcome of an election. I think somewhere between $50 and $250 per person would be a reasonable amount.
since my salary is what my labor would normally cost.
Your labor is only worth that in your own field. If you get a job bagging groceries you would not get paid more than anyone else. Besides it is irrelevant what your salary is. That doesn't give you the right to exercise undue influence over an election. One man one vote. That is what a representative democracy stands for. Any attempt to corrupt that voting process or to corrupt the politicians who make the decisions should be illegal.
Is volunteering like that then allowed?
Volunteering your time should be allowed. Contributing more than say $250 to a compaign should not be. The latter can unfairly influence the outcome of an election in a way that the former cannot.
What if I'm a CEO and my salary is $30 million dollars?
Then you will be annoyed when you discover that using your money to attempt to exercise an unfair influence over the outcome of an election is against the law. You will be allowed to contribute up to the per citizen cap however.
Can I use my own car while helping the campaign, in effect giving the campaign a contribution in the form of gas and wear-and-tear?
Yes. And you will also be able to wear your clothes. Neither is realistically able to affect the outcome of an election.
Bribing a public official is illegal. If you want to support a politician there is a very easy way to do so. Vote for them. And try to convince as many people as you can to vote for them. That is all. Money has no place in this.
And Labor Unions and Teacher's Unions and the NRA are also their constituents.
No. They are not. However the individuals within those groups are free to vote for whoever they wish. That is the power of a representative democracy. The power to vote for politicians. Not the power to bribe them. Campaign contributions more than a certain amount should be illegal as the most obvious form of bribery and only individual citizens should be allowed to make such contributions. Not corporations or any other group.
I meant that each citizen should be able to contribute up to $100 for their candidate of choice and that corporations should not be able to donate anything because corporations are not citizens.
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But they cannot capture these communications between Americans with a drag net, they have to get individual warrants (presumably secret FISA warrants).
If you had actually seen the contents of this most recent leak you would have noticed that no warrants are necessary to perform a search of the database which includes the actual content of emails, IMs, and telephone conversation audio. Somehow you seemed to have missed the whole point of this leak. All of our worst fears about Big Brother have now been confirmed.
you do realize that you will have less rights overseas
Rights? Don't you mean privileges?
Maybe that should have been a clue for them to move closer before simply firing machine guns into a small crowd who were not firing at them. Those guys should be known as the Butchers of Baghdad.
Try to post a screen gab that shows children in the helicopter footage.
If you watch the short version they are labeled on screen. If you watch the long version the little girl / first child is mentioned at 13:29, 17:20, and 18:18 where they finally seem to realize that the little girl who was shot in the stomach was not the only wounded child. They explicitly mention that there were two wounded children at 27:38. The second child can be seen being carried to an APC by a soldier at 23:10 of the long version. The first child / little girl is only seen briefly when she is carried from the van full of bodies, but she is on the video.
There may have been two guys with rifles who were not aiming them. They were away from the main group that they slaughtered. If they had to murder someone without provocation out of pure fear and cowardice then they could have just aimed for those two. Or better yet acted like actual human being and try to take them prisoner instead of kill them.
As far as the RPG there was no RPG and there was no firefight in the area until they started massacring civilians at least. If they were so far away that they could not tell the difference between a camera and an RPG then they should have moved closer until they could make a positive ID on it. Instead they just decided to murder everyone in the area.
Well it's true that they didn't actually see the two young children until after they had shot the van full of holes with large caliber rounds, but they were in there. A little girl was shot in the stomach. I don't know what happened to the other child.
There was no reason to shoot at the van in the first place. Once you start shooting at civilian vehicles you have to assume that there might be children inside. It's a very stupid and irresponsible thing to do. And of course if they had just flown closer to get a better look they would have seen there were no RPGs. There may or may not have been a couple of guys with rifles away from the main group, but if they were rifles they were hung over a shoulder and not actively carried. They were probably just tripods or something anyway. But it's not unreasonable to carry a rifle in a war zone. It doesn't mean you are hostile. Unless they actually aim the rifle it doesn't mean anything. And you don't massacre a whole group of people just because two of them may or may not be carrying rifles. What you do is warn the guys with rifles to put them down and if they instead aim them at you then you shoot only them.
A government of laws and not men is all well and good except when a law is unjust. Then the rule of law is more like the ruly of tyranny. Something that John Adams was not a fan of. When a law is unjust and/or unconstitutional we are all above the law. The law exists to serve men. Men do not exist to serve the law. Laws are not a a substitute for morality. Just because something is illegal does not mean that it is wrong. I don't think the way that the phrase is often used, as a justification for going after Snowden for instance, is a moral principle simply because law has so little to do with actual morality.
The judge obviously disagreed with that reasoning which is good because it is a load of horse shit.
You probably haven't even looked at the video they deliberately mislabeled "collateral murder". (which, by the way, is almost certainly clearer for you on your computer than the pilot had on their little 4" screen in the apache)
It sounds to me like you are the one who hasn't looked at the video. Try watching it again. The long version. And notice how the helicopter pilot fires on unarmed innocent people including children who clearly are not carrying any weapons. It is true that there was a guy with a camera. And no it didn't look like a rocket launcher. And there were a couple of guys some distance away from the main group who were carrying what may have been rifles, probably guards to try to protect the rest of the people in a war zone.
But that does not excuse a cold blooded massacre of unarmed civilians including children. They were even cheering and celebrating as they machine gunned innocent children. If they weren't sure they could have moved closer and waited to see if the two guys with rifles fired at them. Or at least picked up their rifles (assuming they actually were rifles) to aim at them.
That video is probably the most disgusting thing I have ever watched. It is almost impossible for me to watch the whole thing in fact. I just get too angry. Those guys should be executed. I would happily do it myself. Not only have they not been reprimanded. Their names haven't even been released. That is just wrong. Very, very wrong. They committed serious war crimes. As clear cut as any war crimes. Those particular guys were truly no better than Nazis, and I say this as a jew with ancestors in Poland.
I suppose I was naive, but I never really believed that our military behaved like that. Like vicious animals killing with enjoyment and laughing about it. Showing no honor or mercy even to children. And that is the importance of this video and in my view what really makes Manning a hero. That video needed to be released. Manning has given his life to get that video, among other things, out into the open.
I can tell you one thing. After watching that video it will be a cold day in hell before I ever approve of us going to war for any reason except to directly defend ourselves here on US territory. Between that video and the revelation of what was going on at Abu Ghraib we have shown that we cannot fight with honor. We cannot be trusted to fight a war without senseless massacres and god only knows what kind of sick war crimes. We truly are just as bad or even worse than what even the most anti-American critics have always claimed.
He quickly pointed out that it was missing a bunch of context because at that time the insurgents had been trying to score an apache kill, so the army was holding apaches back unless there was confirmed need for them
In what possible way is that supposed to excuse a massacre of mostly unarmed civilians? Those were not insurgents. They shot at least one child and two guys from Reuters. This was a clear case of massacre an entire crowd of people first. Ask questions later. This is a crime of coward chicken-hawk murderers too afraid to get close enough to their victims to confirm that they really are enemies actively engaging in combat with them. Those are some evil fucks.
You're not supposed to get away with civil disobedience
So technically Manning was not engaged in civil disobedience. Call it "principled disobedience" if it makes you feel better. There is nothing noble about welcoming an unjust punishment. People like you try to make it sound like you cannot do a good deed unless you are dead or spending the rest of your life in prison at the end of it. That's just silly.
That is a very simplistic way to look at it. Rule of law is an important moral principal as well. People that abide by it are not 'authoritarian.'
Rule of Law is not even a moral principle. It is the motto of the amoral. And yes someone who believes in that idea is likely to be authoritarian.
He had no business leaking what he did.
Yes he did
Bradley Manning, no matter where his heart was, committed treason
Not according the judge in his case.
Do we really want a military full of people who think it's okay to give away millions of pieces of data whenever and for whatever?
Yes. And furthermore we want a much, much smaller military than we currently have.
A life sentence is probably what Snowden is looking at.
No. What Snowden is looking at is exile. He's in a country with no extradition treaty with the US. There is no reason to believe he will end up back in the US at any point. That must really bother you.
Russia doesn't have any problem with the death penalty in any cases.
Wrong. Russia doesn't use capital punishment anymore.
These industries are more likely to fund people sympathetic to their point of view.
It doesn't indicate that the congressmen switched their votes based on the contribution or lack thereof.
They didn't switch their votes. They chose their votes on the basis of who pays their bills. If they voted otherwise their funding would be cut off. Some of us call that form of inflluence "bribery".
How would this be an advantage to the individuals involved? Why can they not just contribute individually? It won't prevent them from having tea together and discussing politics. Whatever group they form is not a citizen. So it should not be able to contribute to campaigns. Or if it is allowed to contribute then it should only be able to contribute up to the maximum cap for an individual, which should be some small amount like $50.
Which means that if Congressional candidates spend $0.50 or $1.50 trying to communicate with every individual in the district they're gonna have a $500k budget.
And if a congressional candidate does not have enough money to communicate with ever single individual? What happens then? Armaggedon? What if many of us promise to cry for hours over the injustice of this? Would that make it better? It is not necessary for a campaign to acceept large donations in order to get funded. To use your example of 750,000 voters, if even half of them donate the maximum amount allowed of say $100, then you would have 37.5 million dollars for your campaign. And you couldn't be accused of having been bought by whatever company or companies actually did purchase you. A win-win for everyone.
So you've basically got it backwards. They got $41k because they were going after the tough-on-terror voters who actually like the NSA program (support goes up from 30%ish to 40%ish if you mention it's supposed to be looking for terrorists). The others got $18k because they were going after the kind of voter who hates the NSA program.
I don't think you currently have any solid evidence that the tough-on-terror, pro-surveillance voters currently represent the majority. In fact it is currently hard to predict what the most popular stance is toward PRISM etc. Which makes it pretty easy to accept bribes from the defense industry. Whether those bribes are a direct payment for this particular vote or to encourage the congressman to vote for their issues in the future is irrelevant. It is still corruption. It is still bribery. These corporations are still getting an unfair advantage in the political process.
There's really no way to enforce such a law effectively across the board.
It doesn't matter whether it can be enforced "across the board". A law doesn't have to be enforced 100% of the time to have the intended effect.
the penalties would have to be draconian
How do you figure?
Individuals should, and must, have a right to express themselves by spending their own money on speech.
Not if that money is being used to buy a politician or unfairly affect the outcome of an election. That is bribery and whether bribery can be considered a form of speech or not it is a form of corruption that is harmful to society and should be illegal.
and the chance of the law winding up tyrannical (by coming into conflict with the first amendment.)
The idea that bribery is a form of speech is ridiculous. Bribery is an attempt at influence that does not rely on communication. If all you wanted to do was communicate you could do that for free.
Some individuals being wealthier than others, that is unequal, and those that worship equality will never quit moaning about it
Uh, were you attempting to make some kind of argument here? May I remind you that the Founding Fathers of our country were also "worshippers" of equality. When was the last time you read the Declaration of Independence? You know the whole "all men are created equal" thing? It may be hard for you to believe but they really meant that. It formed the basis for their entire system. John Locke's Natural Rights derive from the belief in the essential equality of all human beings. That is equality in rights not in being identical clones of each other. In our politics that equality is the basis of only allowing exactly one vote per person. A rich person is not supposed to have more influence than a poor person. That is a blatant injustice and corruption of the political system. Just as there is no Divine Right of Kings there is no Divine Right of Corporations or Divine Right of the Rich. No one is more equal than anyone else.
but those that place liberty higher than equality know that for the greater good (the first amendment, in the US context) that's unavoidable.
The "liberty" to influence the outcome of an election based on how much money you have? The liberty to corrupt the political system? I think the right of every other citizen to a free and fair election of their leaders trumps the freedom of some corrupt sociopathic organization to buy politicians by the dozen to serve as their minions.
Again, bribery is not a form of speech and even if it were it would be a form of speech that would have to be curtailed in order to preserve far more important freedoms. Fascism does not appeal to people who genuinely value liberty and this form of corruption inevitably leads to fascism.
Campaign contributions are not a bribe.
They are when they are sufficiently large. That is why we need a per citizen cap on them. The rich should have no more influence over the outcome of an election than the poor. The rich are not better citizens than the poor and should only get one vote.
People, and groups of people, show support politicians by making contributions to their election campaigns.
The only thing people need to do to show support is to vote for them and to convince as many people as they can to vote for them. That is what is honest and fair. Groups are not citizens and should have no say in politics. For the same reason that they don't get to vote, they shouldn't be allowed to contribute to campaigns.
How else would you fund political campaigns?
From the labor of dedicated volunteers. Also there should be limits on how much a candidate himself can spend on his own campaign. Rich candidates should not have an unfair advantage over poor ones. You could even limit the sorts of things that public money may be spent on.
Public Financing, aka welfare for politicians??
You are assuming that a significant amount of money is needed to "finance" a campaign. If no one has any advertisement money then you have a fair playing field for rich and poor candidates and it may also lower the barrier of entry for third party candidates. You could also have some standard fixed amount paid for by taxpayers to any candidate with a sufficiently large number of signatures to run.
And how will you deal with someone who offers citizens $200 if they donate $100 to Candidate X*?
Well there is only so much you can do to discourage corruption. You could make such transactions against the law though. That somewhat limits the scale that this could practically be done on. But if you are going to pay people to donate a measly $100 to a compaign you may as well just buy their vote and be done with it.
So as a private person I want to buy an ad for a cause I believe in.
And I want a pony.
It happens to be that there are 2 major candidates, and the cause I believe in is also the main cause championed by one of those candidates. Will I be allowed to run the ad, even though in effect it is an ad for one of the candidates, even if that's not my intention?
I would argue against being able to run such an ad because it appears to be an attempt to influence an election even if that was not the true intent. It is indistinguishable from an attempt to influence an election.
How will you possibly define in law what kinds of ads indirectly benefit one candidate over another? If you can't, this is a huge loophole.
With the duck test. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's a duck. How about: "Any advertisement that would appear to a reasonable person to be an attempt to influence the outcome of an election shall be punishable by a fine of up to one milliion dollars and up to one year in prison." It's generally pretty obvious what sort of thing an advertisement is intended to sell.
What if I run a news organization and I decide to give more favorable and extensive coverage of my favorite candidate, in effect contributing to him the equivalent of millions of dollars in ads? It's hard for me to see how you can define a law to get around such things without also seriously impacting the freedom of the press to report on political stories.
Coverage is not the same as advertising. I think your example would be acceptable. As you say you cannot realistically get around this sort of thing. I don't think it is all that harmful. The one thing I would do is make it illegal for anyone else to pay the news organization to favor one side over another. If large sums of money are changing hands then that should be investigated as a possible attempt to influence an election.
Suppose I want to volunteer to help one campaign over another.
That's fine. You are free to use your time as you wish.
That's equivalent to giving them my salary,
No it isn't. There is a limit to how much you can influence an election with just your time. Donating money should be limited to a fair amount such that the rich do not have any significant advantage over the poor in terms of influencing the outcome of an election. I think somewhere between $50 and $250 per person would be a reasonable amount.
since my salary is what my labor would normally cost.
Your labor is only worth that in your own field. If you get a job bagging groceries you would not get paid more than anyone else. Besides it is irrelevant what your salary is. That doesn't give you the right to exercise undue influence over an election. One man one vote. That is what a representative democracy stands for. Any attempt to corrupt that voting process or to corrupt the politicians who make the decisions should be illegal.
Is volunteering like that then allowed?
Volunteering your time should be allowed. Contributing more than say $250 to a compaign should not be. The latter can unfairly influence the outcome of an election in a way that the former cannot.
What if I'm a CEO and my salary is $30 million dollars?
Then you will be annoyed when you discover that using your money to attempt to exercise an unfair influence over the outcome of an election is against the law. You will be allowed to contribute up to the per citizen cap however.
Can I use my own car while helping the campaign, in effect giving the campaign a contribution in the form of gas and wear-and-tear?
Yes. And you will also be able to wear your clothes. Neither is realistically able to affect the outcome of an election.
Bribing a public official is illegal. If you want to support a politician there is a very easy way to do so. Vote for them. And try to convince as many people as you can to vote for them. That is all. Money has no place in this.
And Labor Unions and Teacher's Unions and the NRA are also their constituents.
No. They are not. However the individuals within those groups are free to vote for whoever they wish. That is the power of a representative democracy. The power to vote for politicians. Not the power to bribe them. Campaign contributions more than a certain amount should be illegal as the most obvious form of bribery and only individual citizens should be allowed to make such contributions. Not corporations or any other group.
I meant that each citizen should be able to contribute up to $100 for their candidate of choice and that corporations should not be able to donate anything because corporations are not citizens.
Laws affect everyone. So, can they receive any money at all?
Of course. Up to $100 USD per candidate. Anything more is a bribe.