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by xboxnolifes 6 days ago
Nobody wants to be the first one who cant pool large sums of money to influence politics, but, yes, im okay with not being allowed to spend millions of dollars to influence our politics. Our society has too much wealth inequality for that to be a good idea.
2 comments
jaredklewis 6 days ago
Can I spend money to influence voters?

Say that I hold the political that the US should provide more humanitarian aid to Gaza. If I raise a bunch of money for this cause, can I use that money to make movies about the poor conditions in Gaza? Can I buy a full page in the New York Times with information about the crisis in Gaza? Can I use the money to run ads advocating my position on Gaza? Can I use the money to buy ads that support candidates that share my position on this issue?

This is basically what super PACs do. Of course I don't want it so that you can deliver a bunch of gold bars to a senator in exchange for their vote on a bill, but was illegal before citizens united and remains illegal after.

For me, I don't see how you can reasonably enforce some rule against using "money to influence politics" without also having some central entity that gets to police everyone's political speech, and that scares me.

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johnnyanmac 4 days ago
>For me, I don't see how you can reasonably enforce some rule against using "money to influence politics" without also having some central entity that gets to police everyone's political speech, and that scares me.

We already have those. It's exactly why AIPAC keeps slipping through all legal boundaries.

Regardless, the idea here on how Hawaii (and potentially other states) going around this is very simple: they can spend on elections, but that doesn't mean the state needs to give them all their incentives.

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infamouscow 6 days ago
This would mean that all media companies in the US would be prevented from publishing anything that could be perceived as negative about any candidate running for elected office, regardless of factual basis and regardless of if it were satire.

A candidate would simply go to any circuit court judge and get an injunction against the media company. If the media company did not comply, the judge would find the officers in contempt. Marshals would then arrest and throw the companies officers in jail indefinitely until they complied.

That's what you're asking for. It's genuinely stupid. I say this as someone that would declare a national emergency on day 1 of being elected just to have the Air Force turn most media company HQs into smoldering craters.

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larksimian 6 days ago
Yes, election coverage and endorsements and politically biased media did not exist before Citizens United. None of the dozens of democracies with political spending limits have political news coverage.

You really cracked this case wide open, Sherlock.

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vitally3643 6 days ago
Slippery slope fallacies are not good foundations to make a reasoned argument on.
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xboxnolifes 6 days ago
It doesn't have to, there are tons of restrictions that could be used to improve the status quo. Limiting how close to an election these things can be released. Limiting how much money an individual can contribute. Limiting how much money a single organization can spend. We have levers, we choose not to use them.
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danny_codes 6 days ago
Except that's not how it was in 2004 before Citizens United. So.. yes, in your made up hypothetical it doesn't look good. But in reality, where we all live, it worked better than the current rules
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infamouscow 5 days ago
Yes, had SCOTUS ruled differently in Citizens United, the scope of the ruling would have likely been narrowly focused.

Every time SCOTUS makes a ruling, there are thousands of extremely talented activist lawyers that immediate begin working on legal strategies to further expand a ruling in ways they believe are favorable to their political ends. You have to understand, there are lawyers who focus on specific justices and study the idiosyncrasies of their rulings/philosophy so they can reverse-engineer legal outcomes as they desire.

In United States v. Jones, Ginsburg and Thomas ruled that attaching a GPS tracker to a car and monitoring it was a Fourth Amendment search. Thomas believes physically attaching the device is a property trespass and constitutes a search. Ginsburg believed prolonged GPS surveillance violates a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Even though Ginsburg and Thomas are polar opposites, if you understand how they rule, you can still get the outcome you want with the right case.

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