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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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Mar 15, 2016 - 06:48pm PT
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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.
What's not murky is that Republicans used to have some ethics, but that ship sailed a long time ago.
Curt
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Jorroh
climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 06:51pm PT
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Here's the problem explained for you Larry, so you don't have to introduce an Eleazarian "Look Ma" fallacy.
either...
a) Employee's of corporations are spending their owners cash to support ideology that the employees support.
Not Legal....but thankfully someone (I'll bet you any money it was a Republican) inserted a nice little thing in the latest budget deal whereby employees now don't have to disclose that theft to the owners...so not legal, but hey...who's going to know.
or
b) The employees are spending that money to get legislation that is favorable for their corporation. Legal at the corporate end, but not legal, in theory at least, at the politician end.
So as it relates to corporations #2 makes zero sense.
Unions are advocacy organizations in a way that corporations are not. Not saying that you can't make the argument that unions should advocate based on the particular preferences of their members, but its definitely a separate argument.
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 07:07pm PT
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Hey Jorroh
Thanks for your perspective. I'll have to digest the difference in corporations and unions pertaining to employees donations.
I am still less troubled by Citizens United than I am with foreign donations, Imminent Domain, and asset forfeiture laws.
Cheers
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pyro
Big Wall climber
Calabasas
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Mar 15, 2016 - 08:05pm PT
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Unions are advocacy organizations in a way that corporations are not
U big Idiot Jorroh Unions are a big waste of $$$ and efficiency..
in competitive global economy Capitalist is ideal.
Jorroh must want somebody to tell you how to do ur job everyday??
Laws and HR departments solved the
"i'm a UNION worker who cant do anything until the insurance Companies responded to tell me how to do my job.. Union workers only WORK 8hrs.. such wimps.. super LOP's!"
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 08:07pm PT
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You mean, like a manager?
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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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Mar 15, 2016 - 08:42pm PT
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U big Idiot Jorroh Unions are a big waste of $$$ and efficiency..
in competitive global economy Capitalist is ideal.
Sweatshops with slave labor, prison labor, and child labor are also very efficient--if efficiency is the only goal.
Curt
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Jorroh
climber
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Mar 15, 2016 - 09:08pm PT
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Can't really tell what you're trying to say amidst the garble Pyro.
Are you saying that Unions aren't advocacy organizations?
I don't believe I said anything about Unions being good or bad ... for the very good reason that that had nothing to do with my point.
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pyro
Big Wall climber
Calabasas
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Mar 15, 2016 - 09:09pm PT
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Sweatshops with slave labor, prison labor, and child labor are also very efficient--if efficiency is the only goal
Apple is a big contributor to fox-con..
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 16, 2016 - 12:31am PT
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Laws and HR departments solved...
That's either naive in the extreme or willfully blind.
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Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
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Mar 16, 2016 - 06:43am PT
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Get money out of politics.
The only way to get the money out of politics is to get politics out of the money business.
But then again I suspect deep down you already know that. You're just butt hurt that your candidate doesn't get as much money
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Mar 16, 2016 - 06:55am PT
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Escopeta The only way to get the money out of politics is to get politics out of the money business.
What is it with you and the specious one liners? It makes literally no sense. But I suspect deep down you already know this.
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
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Mar 16, 2016 - 07:06am PT
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Anyone who says that unions are unnecessary, and that workers are free from the capriciousness of managers, doesn't know anything about work.
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Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
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Mar 16, 2016 - 08:18am PT
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Is that why we need unions? So that employees can be free from the capriciousness of managers? Good grief.
Unions in our country in non right-to-work states are nothing more than organized crime.
Employers can benefit greatly from a guild. They get f*#ked by unions.
I guess I don't know anything about work, I've only done it, without a union propping me up, for the entirety of my adult life.
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kattz
climber
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Mar 16, 2016 - 09:46am PT
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Just look at this desperate attempt to score "non-white" voters:
http://www.redstate.com/absentee/2016/03/07/bernie-sanders-says-white-people-dont-know-like-poor-video/
Sanders: "When you're white, you don't what it's like to be living in a ghetto. When you're white, you don't know what it's like to be poor".
Speak for yourself, idiot. He should just stuff some rag into that filthy medicated mouth, I swear. I really wish to see him getting a little "re-education" aka "the taste of real life" in a Soviet camp. Time to call the emergency crew and get the "grandpa" off the tribunes and into the ward, where he belongs.
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dirtbag
climber
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Mar 16, 2016 - 09:54am PT
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Harsh much?
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Mar 16, 2016 - 09:58am PT
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What color does Sanders think the people who lived in the Jewish ghettos of Nazi occupied Europe are?
Clinton needs to be asked over and over what she thinks of Sanders' statement.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 16, 2016 - 10:17am PT
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Jorroh's response, attempting to differentiate the rights of unions from those of others to advocacy, belies the real criticism of Citizens United. The critics don't like the decision because ideas they don't like get propagated. It's part of an effort to keep one side out of the argument by force of law, rather than force of logic.
John
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Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
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Mar 16, 2016 - 10:26am PT
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as well as other good things that make work better for workers.
Of course, we should always make work better for the workers. #hammerandsickle
Edit: "so don't paw at me with your dirty little guild"
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Mar 16, 2016 - 11:22am PT
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Jorroh's response, attempting to differentiate the rights of unions from those of others to advocacy, belies the real criticism of Citizens United. The critics don't like the decision because ideas they don't like get propagated. It's part of an effort to keep one side out of the argument by force of law, rather than force of logic.
John
I respect the focus on logic in this statement. But I don't think the logic is correctly modeling the problem. The problem is not whether all viewpoints should be aired, but how much airtime each of those viewpoints receives. An election is a debate about our desired identity and policies, with those identities and policies embodied in candidates. Equating money with speech puts a different amount of time on the "debate clock" for each candidate (talking in the big picture here- not the specific time used in the context of any specific televised debate). Whoever gets more time on the clock, to share their message longer and with a broader audience, is most likely going to win. It's just like football. If you spend more time controlling the ball (where the ball in this metaphor is the public attention and awareness), you are most likely to win. Of course there are exceptions if you have simple black and white issues where no amount of spin can change universally observable facts. But that's not very common in this world, especially where more and more of the public can't recognize what is a verifiable fact and what is not.
So this is a problem of how money and the largest media outlets influence the national dialog for our collective determination of our desired identity and policies.
I don't think there are easy answers to these questions. For example, having a simplistic answer like "equal access to all viewpoints" might result in having 60 minutes of national televised time to discuss the merits of neo-Nazism and killing all dark-skinned immigrants at equal par with discussing democratic socialism or benevolent dictatorship.
But the way we do things now, with essentially no limits on money and no transparency regarding the source of messages, and no integrity or reference for facts-- this is leading us down a dark road.
Some things that do seem to have easy answers:
1) For a PAC to receive a contribution, it must be from an individual USA citizen or from a corporation with a PAC permit.
2) For corporations to get the PAC permit, there is a vetting process where all ownership interests are traced to USA citizens, and these individual's names are published in a public forum accessible to all.
3) There should be a national registry of PACs with links to this information, and all advertisements must include a prominent label with the name of the PAC and the link to this public registry information.
I don't think that's enough, but I'm not sure how to go further without empowering rich folks to oppress poor folks. For example, the following seem like good ideas:
1) There should be a governing body to regulate names for the PACs, to arbitrate claims that PAC names are misleading regarding the agenda of the group. Penalties would include mandatory payment by the PAC for advertising time at the same prime hours and media outlets they used for their advertisements, to disseminate the naming change and rationale.
2) There should be a governing body to regulate factual accuracy for the PACs- to arbitrate claims that PACs are disseminating false information. Penalties would include mandatory payment by the losing PAC for advertising time at the same prime hours and media outlets they used for their advertisements.
These last two items seem like a good idea to catch bad guys, but the bad guys can use these to tie up the good guys in legal proceedings to stifle their actions, essentially giving high probability of victory to whomever has more money just like in regular civil court cases today. Note I am not explicitly tying evil with rich, and good with poor. But it does create another battlefront for the ideas of the bad and rich to oppress the ideas of the good and poor, with more government spending wasted trying ineffectively to arbitrate it.
And even if we had the transparency laws in place and enforced, we would still see "black money" laundered, such as a USA citizen acting as a broker to receive a commission for using their name on a PAC donation from an anonymous or non-domestic source. We would need a system of laws and enforcement for money-laundering in PACs like we are presently doing to hunt down international terrorists. In my mind, the PACs should be pursued with the same vigor.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 16, 2016 - 12:45pm PT
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Scott, I think the upside of doing things the way we do them is that really stupid ideas won't raise the money to support the dissemination of those ideas.
When I think of California elections, I can think of several initiatives that died because no one was willing to contribute to their passage. I can't, however, think of one such initiative that I did not consider out of the mainstream.
I can also think of several California initiatives where the side that was outspent five-to-one or ten-to-one still won handily. Political ads affect outcomes, but they don't necessarily determine them.
The real problem that I see isn't that we spend too much money on political ads, but that the ads - and the media's coverage of elections generally - are far too shallow. I can put together an effective lie that runs for 15 seconds. An effective rebuttal, showing that the other ad is a lie, and therefore its perpetrator a liar, may take ten minutes. Where is the media in objectively covering issues?
Instead, we concentrate on the trivial, and usually only that of our opponents. Hillary Clinton says that we didn't lose a man in Libya. This is obviously is misstatement. The mainstrem media simply doesn't report it. The conservative media reports it as an out-and-out lie, rather than the sort of verbal typo we all make at one time or another.
My point isn't so much the bias in the reporting, it's that this sort of gaffe is all they report on. What about substance? If they reported on Trump's policy prescriptions rather than on his outrages, I doubt we'd have more than five minutes of coverage a month on him.
All of this is a very long way of arguing the classic defense of free speech: "The cure for bad speech is more speech." The problem with limits on campaign ads is that it attempts to cure bad speech by less speech. This flies in the face of traditional free speech jurisprudence, and its underlying philosophy.
Maybe the ultimate solution is for corporations that want to express opinions to get together and buy media outlets. Then the campgain finance "reforms" proposed won't affect them, and they can say whatever they want, protected by the freedom of the press that the libs so admire. The problem, though, is that few people listen to those arguments that differ from their existing positions.
John
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