Goodbye PACs, Hello JFCs

[Zander]

Donating "Money" is a form of free speech.

Deal with it.

Yes it is. Unfortunately, decisions like this that lead to the very few controlling the entire debate eventually backfires. We continue to head down a path that will lead to the end of our democracy. Greed has no limits.

Warren Buffet is greedy? Bill Gates? Greedy? We are in the golden age of philanthropy and you only see greed?

Here's an idea - Stop projecting your own values onto others.

 

[Zander]

Donating "Money" is a form of free speech.

Yes. Do you know where the "money is speech" meme comes from?

Another Supreme Court decision. Buckley v. Valeo. 1976. That was the decision which struck down some provisions of campaign finance laws, but it also upheld the limits one can donate to individuals and the reporting requirements.

It's not a "meme" anymore bub, it's now "judicial precedent".

Deal with it.

 

[AvgGuyIA]

Money is speech, so those with the most money have the loudest voices.

95% of financial gains during the economic recovery went to the richest 1%.

And the mouth-breathing gun owners in this country support the drug war and the police state, so the chance of revolution is nil.

Hey KNB. Corporations are people!

 

[ClosedCaption]

Donating "Money" is a form of free speech.

Deal with it.

Since when does something that's free cost money? Paid speech is not free speech.

I know right!?!?

Yep,

All this does is make the nobility the far right supports more powerful over the little guy. OF COURSE they're never for the little guy!

Thats the thing about it. They complain about a bullet in their foot then applaud putting more bullets in the gun that is still pointed at their foot.

Then guess what they do..Complain when the gun goes off again

lol

EXACTLY!!

Someone made a thread this week about how the Republicans do EXACTLY what they complain about. That thread was SO on point. And they got SO angry about it.

Was that you? Cause you sure encapsulated it with this post.

Yeah that was me. You can usually guage how close to home a post is when republicans get together and attempt to jump you with nothing but name calling.

 

[g5000]

Great plan! Theres a hole why not keep digging

You cannot defeat political corruption by going after the buyers or the sellers. This has been proven over and over through centuries of political corruption in every corner of the world.

You have to remove the product that is for sale, and that means limiting political power and spreading it as far and wide as possible. That also means pushing political power back to the states and localities, and away from centralized government.

Interesting.

Sounds a little like a Monarchy where you had a King bestow power on Lords and Nobles to run the land just as they wanted to so long as they paid taxes.

Sorta like a Franchise.

To bad this idea keeps getting rejected..eh?

You are about as far off the mark as it gets.

 

[g5000]

Great plan! Theres a hole why not keep digging

You cannot defeat political corruption by going after the buyers or the sellers. This has been proven over and over through centuries of political corruption in every corner of the world.

You have to remove the product that is for sale, and that means limiting political power and spreading it as far and wide as possible. That also means pushing political power back to the states and localities, and away from centralized government.

What does something like this look like? It sounds good (except the states rights issue, I'm a little paranoid of that being black and the history) but not sure how this would look.

Any examples at all?

I have frequently asked the members of this forum to stop drinking the piss which is poured for them by hack partisan sites about the laws and our government, and urged them to read the actual laws for themselves.

If you did so, you would be shocked at the frequency of federal pre-emptions of state laws there are in our federal legislation. This is a direct result of US Senators no longer being appointed by state legislators. It would be a rare Senator who would write a federal law which would pre-empt his state's laws, because he would quickly be recalled. The states write the laws protecting their citizens for a reason.

You want a specific example? Well, for one thing, we probably would not have had the great crash we had in 2008.

One of the more heinous federal pre-emptions I have ever seen was one in the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. This was an act which de-regulated financial derivatives. In that law is a pre-emption of all state laws governing casinos and bucket shops.

A bucket shop is kind of like that clip joint in the movie The Sting. In that film, the con men knew a few seconds ahead of the bettors which horse was going to win a race. They would give their "mark" the name of the winning horse the first time so that he would win. This way, the next time he bet, he bet his entire fortune. Then they gave him a losing tip. A bucket shop is like that, except with stocks and financial derivatives.

Now ask yourself, why did our Congress feel it necessary to give BANKS a federal pre-emption of state laws for CASINOS and BUCKET SHOPS?

Hmmmmm...

Right there in that tiny little pre-emption you find one of the root causes of the subsequent economic crash.


Also consider this. Which is easier: Capturing a single legislative body or capturing 50 legislative bodies? Capturing a single federal regulatory agency or capturing 50 state regulatory agencies?

The concentration of power at the top has greatly simplified the ability of special interests to legislatively tilt the playing field to their favor, to the detriment of their competitors and to every American. The problem of the unnatural concentration of wealth is not because of tax rates. It is because of what I have just outlined.


So you wonder what life wold look like if we took this over-reaching, thoroughly corrupted massive power away from the federal government?

Hmmm...

 

[LeftofLeft]

Last Presidential election, Sheldon Adelson spent AT LEAST $98 million trying to buy himself some politicians...that's like you or I donating $40.

Now they can spend even more to have Scott Walker kiss their ass when they aren't even in the room?!?! Awesome!

Why are you liberals upset? Have you checked Hollywood and Wall Street? Plenty of 1% Leftists to buy politicians too.

 

[boedicca]

yes it does.....

No it doesn't.

yes it does...jesus you people are really pushing the limits of stupid

It's people like you who are duped by Obama-Lies and deceived into "buying" things you either don't understand or would dislike if you did.

 

[g5000]

Donating "Money" is a form of free speech.

Deal with it.

Since when does something that's free cost money? Paid speech is not free speech.

This is equivocation of the word "free". Don't do that.

 

[g5000]

There is a reason someone gives a politician a lot of money, folks.

If you want to truly reform politics, you need to take away the incentive to give the politicians money. And the only way to do that is to take away the power they have over your lives.

As long as you give a political body that much power over your lives, money will ALWAYS find a way to exert that power to its benefit.

When, for the love of God, will you nanny state loving idiots ever figure that out?

 

[IlarMeilyr]

Oh blather.

Liberals LOVE to defend "free speech."

Except, apparently, when it means that the ones they loathe the most, those evil "rich" one percent types, might get to use their money to engage in free speech against the likings of the liberals.

I thought the Dems were the party of the rich and Dems have all the rich guys. Now you're reversing that? Or what?

You appear to have me confused. There are plenty of rich Dims. There are plenty of rich Republicans, too.

This is purely a freedom of speech issue boys and girls.

Spin it all you want, but you cannot change that immutable FACT.

The worst part of this decision was that there are some SCOTUS Justices who simply do not value the First Amendment in "some" cases. Liberals who bemoan this decision ought to turn in their liberal/progressive/socialist cards. Disgraceful liberals are disgraceful.

Wow thanks for that in depth commentary that was covered on page one.

Apparently not. But even if YOU imagine it was covered on page one, that's ok. It warrants reiteration so that some of your fellow lolberal dunces can have a chance to pick it up on the rebound.

It is ENTIRELY a First Amendment controlled, Freedom of Speech issue.

Justice Thomas NAILED it.

 

[ClosedCaption]

One trick pony

 

[boilermaker55]

Advertising must not work at all because..Coca-Cola spent an average of $2.5 billion USD from 2005 to 2007
They don't spend money wisely, their stock holders like to see them spend this kind of money recklessly because it is what they want them to do.
And then they turned it up for 2010 with......Coca-Cola spent more than $2.9 billion on advertising in 2010.
you see spending on advertising is a stupid thing to do.

yes it does.....

No it doesn't.

yes it does...jesus you people are really pushing the limits of stupid