The 28th Amendment?

[Rikurzhen]

Until and unless we get big money out of our election process, we will never again have an honest election.

I don't believe that's going to happen.

You do realize that this cuts deeper on the Democrats than it does on the Republican, don't you. See point #3.

 

[Rikurzhen]

How about making donations from Foreigners Illegal?

"Only US Citizens may donate to Political Parties and the Political, Electoral system. Furthermore, no bundling in any form shall be allowed".

Something like that.

Donations from foreign nationals to political campaigns or parties are already illegal.

If a law is unenforced then it's worthless. Obama isn't in prison after he accepted foreign donations in 2008 and 2012.

Well, Obama is actually not in prison because there's absolutely no evidence that he did accept any foreign donations.

The law is nearly impossible to enforce, though.

Yeah, when you purposely disable geographic location mapping on your credit card donations, then it's impossible to tell that you're receiving foreign donations.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

How about making donations from Foreigners Illegal?

"Only US Citizens may donate to Political Parties and the Political, Electoral system. Furthermore, no bundling in any form shall be allowed".

Something like that.

Donations from foreign nationals to political campaigns or parties are already illegal.

If a law is unenforced then it's worthless. Obama isn't in prison after he accepted foreign donations in 2008 and 2012.

Well, Obama is actually not in prison because there's absolutely no evidence that he did accept any foreign donations.

The law is nearly impossible to enforce, though.

Yeah, when you purposely disable geographic location mapping on your credit card donations, then it's impossible to tell that you're receiving foreign donations.

Well, that does sound like very damning evidence. Too bad it isn't the slightest bit true.

 

[Rikurzhen]

How about making donations from Foreigners Illegal?

"Only US Citizens may donate to Political Parties and the Political, Electoral system. Furthermore, no bundling in any form shall be allowed".

Something like that.

Donations from foreign nationals to political campaigns or parties are already illegal.

If a law is unenforced then it's worthless. Obama isn't in prison after he accepted foreign donations in 2008 and 2012.

Well, Obama is actually not in prison because there's absolutely no evidence that he did accept any foreign donations.

The law is nearly impossible to enforce, though.

Yeah, when you purposely disable geographic location mapping on your credit card donations, then it's impossible to tell that you're receiving foreign donations.

Well, that does sound like very damning evidence. Too bad it isn't the slightest bit true.

The Washington Post:

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. . .

In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama's accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama's finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.
​

The Wall Street Journal:

Despite public pleas from campaign-finance reform groups such as Common Cause and Democracy 21, Team Obama refused to follow Senator John McCain's lead and release names of donors who gave less than $200, even though such donors supplied about half of the $800 million the Obama campaign raised.

Perhaps one reason is that, as the Washington Post reported, the Obama campaign had turned off its Address Verification System, or AVS, at its Web site. That program should have stopped contributions coming in from citizens of foreign countries -- a violation of federal law. Clearly, the Obama campaign's decision to abandon filters had consequences -- the campaign was forced to refund $33,000 to two Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip who had bought T shirts in bulk from the campaign's online store.

The Federal Election Commission, which did receive a complete list of Obama donors, privately expressed concern that the list might include thousands of other Obama donors it suspected of contributing illegally from foreign countries. The FEC declined to pursue any of these smaller fish.​

 

[sameech]

...
In a related issue, I do not think that the founders had any interest in protecting anonymous speech. In their era voting was public and everyone in the community knew how every citizen voted. I fail to see much value in public political discourse when the author is hiding behind some organization created solely to make the source of the message opaque. At the least, I believe that if political contributions (including issue ads) are protected speech in any way, the First Amendment allows and good public policy demands accountability by requiring disclosure of the author and the funding source of the speech. Then the public could determine to what extent the message is self-serving.

I think you are wrong about that. People who were meeting in secret who would have been ruined had they only been allowed to speak openly in the years leading up to the Declaration very likely would have intended to protect anonymous speech.

 

[Little-Acorn]

1. Ban all forms of paid political advertising. If costs money to do, it's illegal; speech is not impacted.

So the only people who will be allowed to broadcast their opinions on the various candidates, will be the news media, under the guise of "reporting news". Of course, the mainstream media vastly favor Democrats, and describe them favorably nearly 10-to-1 over Republicans.

This is the real goal of the so-called "Campaign Finance Reform" movements. To cut out everyone except the news media. For obvious reasons.

You didn't actually believe they wanted fairness, did you?

 

[sameech]

Unfortunately the only real way to stop this would be to require public financing of campaigns which would disfavor third party candidates. There is no ideal solution.

 

[oldfart]

...
In a related issue, I do not think that the founders had any interest in protecting anonymous speech. In their era voting was public and everyone in the community knew how every citizen voted. I fail to see much value in public political discourse when the author is hiding behind some organization created solely to make the source of the message opaque. At the least, I believe that if political contributions (including issue ads) are protected speech in any way, the First Amendment allows and good public policy demands accountability by requiring disclosure of the author and the funding source of the speech. Then the public could determine to what extent the message is self-serving.

I think you are wrong about that. People who were meeting in secret who would have been ruined had they only been allowed to speak openly in the years leading up to the Declaration very likely would have intended to protect anonymous speech.

Perhaps you forgot that the Sons of Liberty who held those clandestine meetings fought a war to create a government where free speech might be protected. Once they had such a government, there was no need for secrecy in such matters; the discussion was removed from revolutionary incitement to the political process. The SoL moved on from plotting revolution to electoral politics. A cornerstone of the politics of the first century of the Republic was open voting, the "secret ballot" was a later innovation.

 

[jwoodie]

How about making donations from Foreigners Illegal?

"Only US Citizens may donate to Political Parties and the Political, Electoral system. Furthermore, no bundling in any form shall be allowed".

Something like that.

Donations from foreign nationals to political campaigns or parties are already illegal.

I think you missed the point: Corporations and Labor Unions are not Citizens.

 

[boedicca]

How about making donations from Foreigners Illegal?

"Only US Citizens may donate to Political Parties and the Political, Electoral system. Furthermore, no bundling in any form shall be allowed".

Something like that.

Donations from foreign nationals to political campaigns or parties are already illegal.

If a law is unenforced then it's worthless. Obama isn't in prison after he accepted foreign donations in 2008 and 2012.

Well, Obama is actually not in prison because there's absolutely no evidence that he did accept any foreign donations.

The law is nearly impossible to enforce, though.

Yeah, when you purposely disable geographic location mapping on your credit card donations, then it's impossible to tell that you're receiving foreign donations.

Well, that does sound like very damning evidence. Too bad it isn't the slightest bit true.

Nonsense. That is exactly what the Obama Campaign did in 2008 and 2012. They disabled basic verification controls. And then Obama did the same thing with ObamaCare.

 

[sameech]

...
In a related issue, I do not think that the founders had any interest in protecting anonymous speech. In their era voting was public and everyone in the community knew how every citizen voted. I fail to see much value in public political discourse when the author is hiding behind some organization created solely to make the source of the message opaque. At the least, I believe that if political contributions (including issue ads) are protected speech in any way, the First Amendment allows and good public policy demands accountability by requiring disclosure of the author and the funding source of the speech. Then the public could determine to what extent the message is self-serving.

I think you are wrong about that. People who were meeting in secret who would have been ruined had they only been allowed to speak openly in the years leading up to the Declaration very likely would have intended to protect anonymous speech.

Perhaps you forgot that the Sons of Liberty who held those clandestine meetings fought a war to create a government where free speech might be protected. Once they had such a government, there was no need for secrecy in such matters; the discussion was removed from revolutionary incitement to the political process. The SoL moved on from plotting revolution to electoral politics. A cornerstone of the politics of the first century of the Republic was open voting, the "secret ballot" was a later innovation.

Perhaps you forgot that Jefferson thought overthrowing the existing government every generation was a good thing.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Unfortunately the only real way to stop this would be to require public financing of campaigns which would disfavor third party candidates. There is no ideal solution.

There's a lesson to be learned from the Canadian experience. They do have significant public funding of their election campaigns. Their conservative government moved to end that because, being smart fellows, they saw that more conservatives across the great land of Canada donated regularly to the Conservative Party and that hardly any liberals or NDP members did the same, so by gutting public financing, the Liberals and the NDP would have their finances wiped out.

This raises an interesting question. If the members of a party don't feel strongly enough about supporting the party, then why on Earth should taxpayers foot the bill. Getting people to put their money where their mouth is is actually a pretty damn good idea.