[Gormo]

Only individuals are allowed to donate to political campaigns, and the FEC sets maximum contribution limits per individual that are far below $100,000.

For this election cycle, the maximum campaign donation is $3,300, the cap for a committee donation is $2,000, etc. See: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate...

I'm curious as to where you are seeing unrestricted donations. I'm also curious as to the reasoning by which you think this would undermine democracy, given that the election result is still being determined by the voters, and the candidates seek money primarily to use in their attempt to persuade voters.

[tivert]

>> Unrestricted campaign donations is a huge issue in US politics. It allows for the repeated undermining of democracy in favour of rich people's interests. It is anti-democratic to the core.

> Only individuals are allowed to donate to political campaigns, and the FEC sets maximum contribution limits per individual that are far below $100,000.

> For this election cycle, the maximum campaign donation is $3,300, the cap for a committee donation is $2,000, etc. See: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate...

It's pretty obvious he probably wasn't referring specifically to hard-money campaign donations, but referring to the post Citizens United situation. That's pretty clear, if you don't read the comment pedantically and over-literally.

So a rich guy can give unlimited amounts to a candidate's Super PAC, an those have ways around the restrictions on coordinating with the campaign itself.

[Gormo]

I don't know if that's obvious, and I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt and explicitly state their positions before I presume that they are simply regurgitating erroneous media hype.

Despite much misinformation to the contrary, Citizens United had nothing whatsoever to do with campaign donations and was standard first-amendment jurisprudence striking down an attempt by a federal agency to exercise prior restraint on speech.

[tivert]

> Despite much misinformation to the contrary, Citizens United had nothing whatsoever to do with campaign donations and was standard first-amendment jurisprudence striking down an attempt by a federal agency to exercise prior restraint on speech.

Only when viewed over-literally. If you take a perspective akin to "duck typing," it's both.

But even if you're totally right, this whole digression on the term "campaign donations" is a nitpick that doesn't undermine the OP's point. Which was billionaires spending unlimited money on politics is anti-democratic (in a similar, but less extreme, way as total one-party control of the media is).

[Gormo]

Well, I don't agree that it's both in the slightest. The FEC attempted to justify prior restraint on speech by making a spurious argument that speech is equivalent to money and is therefore within the scope of its power to regulate campaign contributions. The court ruled that no, speech remains speech regardless of whether money is spent to facilitate it, and is always under first amendment protection.

Further, the problem with unlimited campaign donations -- i.e. actual transfers of funds into the hands of candidates -- is that it creates a situation in which a given candidate might become materially dependent on a specific individual or organization to the point that it creates an entrenched quid-pro-quo relationship that would control the exercise of their duties in office.

But in this case, the complaint of "billionaires spending unlimited money on politics" doesn't describe an instance of that problem at all, because the money is being spent in an attempt to persuade voters, not create patronage relationships with the candidates themselves.

The elections are still up to the voters, and to describe people using their resources to publish their opinions in open discourse as "anti-democratic" is exactly backwards -- creating an apparatus that can preemptively restrict what political information voters are allowed to see is about as anti-democratic as it gets.

> (in a similar, but less extreme, way as total one-party control of the media is)

The closest thing to "one-party control of the media" being threatened here is a situation in which a state body (ultimately under the control of incumbent politicians) is allowed to preemptively curate what information may be distributed by the media. This is the exact thing that the Citizens United ruling put a stop to.

[rayiner]

Except Citizens United, the actual entity, was a relatively small non-profit. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has 3-4x the revenue and over 20x the assets.

[azemetre]

I believe the answer is “What are Super PACs” Alex.

[dragonwriter]

> I'm curious as to where you are seeing unrestricted donations.

SuperPACs, one of the main engines of US spending on politics.

[Gormo]

"SuperPAC" is a loaded term used to refer to independent advocacy groups that spend money to publicize their own political positions; direct coordination or transfers of funds to any actual political campaign is prohibited to them, so referring to these as campaign donations is not really accurate.

[dragonwriter]

Since the 2012 cycle, groups nominally independent of the candidate have formed single-candidate superPACs for almost every major candidate in every election, and the coordinate message and activities with the formal campaign committees indirectly via public messaging, even if they avoid other coordination (they certainly try to avoid being caught in other coordination.)

Legality aside, not considering donations people make to these single-candidate SuperPACs as just as much “campaign donations” for all practical purposes as those made to candidate committees is willful blindness.

[tivert]

Nevertheless, they coordinate:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/10-ways...

[Gormo]

An that's already illegal, so there's already a basis for legal action against SuperPACs that engage directly as part of candidates campaigns. So what else are you proposing?

[tivert]

> An that's already illegal so there's already a basis for legal action

Is it? It looks to me like they're exploiting loopholes, which is legal.

The article's from 2015, and I understand that stuff is still going on (e.g. Ron DeSantis's campaign and SuperPAC coordinating through open letters discussing strategy).

> against SuperPACs that engage directly as part of candidates campaigns.

Who said anything about "directly"? I've noticed you doing that a lot in this thread: missing the meaning, twisting it, then quibbling with your reinterpretation.

[Gormo]

> The article's from 2015, and I understand that stuff is still going on (e.g. Ron DeSantis's campaign and SuperPAC coordinating through open letters discussing strategy).

If this is actually happening, again, it's already illegal.

> Who said anything about "directly"?

The only thing the law applies to is behavior that directly violates precisely-mapped rules. I don't know what alternative you're proposing, other than to allow subjective, ever fluctuating criteria to determine who is and is not acting within the law -- if so, that is just not the way our society works.

The idea of allowing the state to preemptively control public discourse because some people might occasionally break the law and get away with it -- a risk with all laws in all cases -- is both based on a dysfunctional approach to law (that increasingly encumbers the general case to address worst-case outliers until the general case no longer functions), and also has the terrifying implication of allowing incumbent politicians to manipulate public discourse for their own factional benefit.