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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 10:56am PT
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But, but "sheeple."
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Lurkingtard
climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 10:59am PT
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Couldn't you pick another animal for your metaphor???...
Sheep are really good and kind animals...
I've personally never boned a bad one...
Fixed that for ya...
~~~
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 15, 2016 - 11:05am PT
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I'm curious if there is a limit to what some would allow government to dictate or provide in the carrying out of your life?
Is there a boundary there somewhere?
Few people recognize this now, but that boundary appears in Roe v. Wade. The right to privacy (nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, but, according to Justice Blackmun, subsumed in the penumbra of the Constitution) means, according to His Honor, that people have a right to be left alone. Amen to that!
I find it ironic, though, that liberals pay lip service, if not downright obeisance, to a right that doesn't appear in print, but have no trouble trampling rights explicitly guaranteed in the First, Second, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. This means, as others above have suggested, that the government, rather than the people, decides what limits government. This, in turn, means there is no meaningful limit.
John
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 11:19am PT
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John posted I find it ironic, though, that liberals pay lip service, if not downright obeisance, to a right that doesn't appear in print, but have no trouble trampling rights explicitly guaranteed in the First, Second, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. This means, as others above have suggested, that the government, rather than the people, decides what limits government. This, in turn, means there is no meaningful limit.
These kinds of arguments are totally specious. Conservatives are happy to "trample the constitution" on their issues of choice whether it be wiretapping, torture or even the right to vote. Nowhere in the 1st amendment does it say anything about money being representative of speech and yet you harp endlessly about how opposition to Citizens United is unconstitutional.
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Norton
Social climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 11:30am PT
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I find it ironic that conservatives refuse to respect the right of women to make their own decisions regarding their own bodies.
The constant, unrelenting conservative drumbeat for legislation, more government, more court action, more taking away that individual right is only one of their most abhorrent desires
Two can play the ironic game, John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 15, 2016 - 11:40am PT
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These kinds of arguments are totally specious. Conservatives are happy to "trample the constitution" on their issues of choice whether it be wiretapping, torture or even the right to vote. Nowhere in the 1st amendment does it say anything about money being representative of speech and yet you harp endlessly about how opposition to Citizens United is unconstitutional.
You're right in saying that the Constitution doesn't say money is speech. It says only that we have freedom of speech. But if it costs money to obtain expression, and expression is speech (as about 230 years of United States jurisprudence says), then an effort to limit expression is a limit on speech, and particularly so if the limit is placed because of content that could affect the outcome of an election. So in purporting to equate money with speech, you intentionally miss the point. A prohibition on payment to a politician is not a prohibition on speech. A prohibition on payment to propagate a message most certainly is.
The Constitution has an amendments provision to allow for a process to change its provisions. When the government fails to follow the amendment procedure, but rather purports to change the meaning of words, as in McCain-Feingold (purporting to regulate political communication, which the Congress alleges not to be speech because they say it isn't), the government bypasses the necessary constitutional step and arrogates to itself the ability to amend the Constitution, without the safegaurds the Constitution provides.
If the Constitution permits the government to do this, what does it prevent the government from doing? Can it shut down all broadcast except for government stations, as in the Castro/Chavez playbook? Can it prohibit paying someone to distribute campaign literature? Instead of a clear prohibition on this sort of governmental interference with speech, we must rely on the government's good graces to determine what the government may or may not do under the Constitution. That's like entering a contract that says that the other party, in its sole discretion, can decide what constitutes performance. If that's true, you have no contract, and we have no constitutional limit on government.
John
Edit: Traditional conservatives have no problem with anyone making decisions conerning their own bodies, but now we call those traditional conservatives libertarians. Conservatives have great difficulty with allowing someone to control their body in such a way as to adversely affect the body of someone else. If I choose to add alcohol to my digestive system before I drive a car, I doubt that anyone would say that the government is simply telling me what I can do with my own body.
Saying that abortion solely affects the body of the mother strikes me as false at some point. I don't know where that point is, and I'm glad that Blackmun made the decision he did, even though it's caused a great deal of legal and political mischief. I do, however, have real issues with the subsequent decisions that essentially say that any regulation that makes an abortion harder to obtain is unconstitutional, because that flies in the face of medical regulation law that always necessarily makes procedures harder to obtain if it places any restriction on them (e.g., what procedures can be performed at an outpatient-only facility, what medications are available, etc. etc.)
I think the general jurisprudence in this area still tries to strike a balance, which, however indirectly, reflects that this is an area affecting both the rights of the mother and those of the unborn, but at some point independent, person. It requires, for example, a stricter scrutiny for requlations on abortions than regulations on, say, cataract surgery. That seems right to me. What seems wrong is the facile statement that the issue only affects the rights of the mother.
John
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Jorroh
climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 12:57pm PT
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To what extent do you think that people and organizations who give politicians money, either directly or indirectly, do so to enable the dissemination of that politicians message?
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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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Mar 15, 2016 - 01:22pm PT
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You're right in saying that the Constitution doesn't say money is speech. It says only that we have freedom of speech. But if it costs money to obtain expression...
But, it doesn't. It costs money only to obtain influence. The First Amendment exists solely to prevent the government from limiting the topics on which people can voice opinions. Equating money with freedom of speech essentially says that the more money you have, the greater your right is to have an opinion. That is patently absurd and clearly not what the Framers intended. Citizen's United is clearly the worst and most politically motivated SCOTUS ruling in the history of the court.
Curt
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 15, 2016 - 02:01pm PT
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Fox News is the perfect expression of the GOP ideal of free speech! You know, the guys who rejected half of the gOP field because their ratings weren't good enough. So much for free speech, lying sonsabitches!
That's an interesting observation, considering that the other networks have spent 84% of their pre-Super-Tuesday news coverage of Republican candidates on Trump, but don't let fact spoil your narrative.
The First Amendment exists solely to prevent the government from limiting the topics on which people can voice opinions. Equating money with freedom of speech essentially says that the more money you have, the greater your right is to have an opinion. That is patently absurd and clearly not what the Framers intended. Citizen's United is clearly the worst and most politically motivated SCOTUS ruling in the history of the court.
So the First Amendment only protects impotent speech? I do agree that the dissent in Citizens United is one of the most overtly political and lawless opinions in the history of American jurisprudence, but what's clear to me is obviously murky to others.
John
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Jorroh
climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 02:42pm PT
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Funny to see John trying to tiptoe around the facts like a tap-dancing hippo.
The larger the donor, the more likely that that donation is given in return for specific legislation.
As numerous studies show, legislation reflects the wishes of the majority of voters to a miniscule extent, and the wishes of large campaign donors to a very significant extent.
IF money represented nothing but speech, fine ... and whether that "speech" is effective or not ... who cares?.... but it doesn't just represent speech
What matters is that that money translates directly into legislation.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 15, 2016 - 02:52pm PT
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Jorroh, no one did away with limits on donations. The limit Congress enacted was on expression, not donation. The First Amendment explicitly protects speech, which the courts interpret to include expression. The distinction matters.
John
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Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
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Mar 15, 2016 - 03:52pm PT
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What matters is that that money translates directly into legislation.
And how wonderful would it be if we were able to diminish the overall role and budget control our government maintains to a significant enough degree that the large donors wouldn't be able to expect the payback via legislation.
If you lay out a picnic, you get ants. If you take away the power, there is no reason for the corruption and bribery via the campaign donation process.
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 04:53pm PT
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Escopeta posted:
If you take away the power, there is no reason for the corruption and bribery via the campaign donation process.
“The ever expanding power of the federal government, the absorption of many of the functions that states and cities once considered to be the responsibilities of their own, must now be a source of concern to all those who believe as did the Irish Patriot, Henry Grattan: ‘Control over local affairs is the essence of liberty.’”
John F. Kennedy
On money in politics:
1. Many here say that donations are only made to buy access and favors. Well, looks like our political class in DC is selling.
2. How does anyone know that the money isn't donated to an ideology of a candidate that the donor favors? Isn't that why most of you favor Hillary or Bernie? You like the ideology of the candidate.
3. The money goes to buying advertising, nothing more, nothing less. Kinda like your own personal NY Times editorial page, eh?
In a world of buyer beware, you can accept or reject "free speech", AKA advertising, wherever and whenever you want.
4. No matter what, money is the mother's milk and always will be. Obama knows it, Hillary knows it and their donors at Goldman Sachs know it.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Mar 15, 2016 - 05:12pm PT
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I think many would agree that the problem of so much unlimited money in politics isn't the free speech / dissemination of information it provides but the special interest favor it incurs.
I think you have to follow the wording of the law but why there is something that is so potentially damaging to the country you either have to interpret the law in a pragmatic way, or vote against the better interest of the country if you have to but make it clear in the decision that you had to decide this way and think the law should be changed.
With citizens united they conservative side of the court was happy to go along with the interpretation of the law that benefited republicans more.
I also wonder about the rights of Americans vs. the rest of the world. e.g. does China have the right to spend a billion dollars in American politics and get to possibly change the course of an election to be beneficial to them at the expense of ordinary Americans?
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Gary
Social climber
Where in the hell is Major Kong?
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Mar 15, 2016 - 05:17pm PT
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And how wonderful would it be if we were able to diminish the overall role and budget control our government maintains to a significant enough degree that the large donors wouldn't be able to expect the payback via legislation.
Diminish government and they don't need to buy it off to get their way. We tried that before and it didn't work. Remember those delightful Robber Barons?
Get money out of politics.
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Jorroh
climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 05:19pm PT
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RE. point 2 ... you're saying that employee's of corporations are spending their owners cash to support ideology that the employees support?
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dirtbag
climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 06:09pm PT
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He says he'll make America great again--what could go wrong?
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 06:12pm PT
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Jorroh
No more so than what unions do.
I am no expert on law, these are just my opinions, FWIW
I don't necessarily see this as a black and white issue.
I think it's complicated, but ultimately the money goes to advertising.
As I say, like your own NY Times editorial page.
Access to candidates after in office is up to ethical discretion of the new office holder. Don't know the laws on that either. But most of us voters are not lawyers, eh?
I think "the Fet" brings up an interesting point on foreign money which I find more worrisome.
Someone else mentioned the SCOTUS decision on this as the worst ever.
Personally I find the SCOTUS Imminent Domain decision and the Orwellian asset forfeiture laws to be far worse. These are government attacks on personal property of US citizens without due process.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 06:16pm PT
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John posted You're right in saying that the Constitution doesn't say money is speech. It says only that we have freedom of speech. But if it costs money to obtain expression, and expression is speech (as about 230 years of United States jurisprudence says), then an effort to limit expression is a limit on speech, and particularly so if the limit is placed because of content that could affect the outcome of an election. So in purporting to equate money with speech, you intentionally miss the point. A prohibition on payment to a politician is not a prohibition on speech. A prohibition on payment to propagate a message most certainly is.
Please explain how anything you just said doesn't apply to the 4th amendment. Also, the government censored the crap out of people up until Harry Flynt. "Money is protected electoral speech" was only decided in 1976, a couple centuries shy of your statement.
Also, the context in which Citizen's United was decided was that there would be transparency. Roberts specifically said that so long as people knew where the money came from there was no question of corruption. Of course, to achieve this view one has to completely ignore the utter lack of transparency that exists.
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