Oh come on, now people, everyone in here seems to be acting shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that rich and powerful entities have sway with the government. All in all, I think it's actually gotten better with alot of the reforms. We have made some progress since the days of the Trusts when Government was openly bought; now, at least, they have to at least PRETEND to not be bought. hehe.

Gee, so much talk about those evil corporations, and so little about union influence on elections. Bias?

/not surprised

is my $3 i donated this year on my tax return not enough for these greedy bastards!!

Confewshus

but the McCain-Feingold bill wasn't solely about campaign contributions; in fact, it limited those people who could spend money or speak out in reference to SPECIFIC POLITICIANS. If the bill had remained as is, the ACLU couldn't have taken out a television Ad referring to any specific candidate - It would be like "Racism is bad. Vote for someone who isn't racist. We can't tell you who that is, though. you'll have to guess."
___________________________________________________________


Ok, You have me there. I still belive that Corporations and Non-profits should be examined, seperately, regarding how they are treated under the law.

Brianna

I'll be damn honest here. I can admit with full academic integrity that I have no idea on the long term effects of corporation and gov't. For all I know perhaps it will force truly democratic minded people to take more of a grass roots stand in lobbying organizations.

All I know is big corporations have helped my parents immigrate a long time ago, and is currently employing me a fresh college grad very comfortably. I don't think they are all bad.

Right, because we all know that the super wealthy elite have a constitutional right to buy and sell their politicians.

Someone give this article an Abyssimal tag.

offtopic, buut..

has anyone noticeed this banner ad on fark?

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/film/matrix50.html

uhhh..

i think NOT limiting the amount of money corporations spend is limiting the speech of some people. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect every citizen to have equal access to their politicians.

Yes! A strike for free speech!

TyroneSlothrop

"AT & Love has been bought out.."
"Oh! I bet it was the japanse."
"No, the japanese, it turns out, are not a company, they're a nation."
"Oh, well then it must have been the americans..."
"You're Right! Turns out the american's are a company, they bought us out and they think AT & Love is a stupid name so they're shuttin us down!"

C'mon, people, we all knew that law was bogus and unconstitutional. It only got through because the politians knew it would be struck down, but they could claim they were doing something.

This is cool. Rich people can spend more on ads if you'll hurry up and give them that capital gains tax break. See how it works? It's like priming the pump to get our economy rolling again.

Flame On!!
Rush Limbaugh
February 12, 2002

The former treasurer of the state of California, Jesse Unruh, now deceased, is credited with the following statement: "Money is the mother's milk of politics." This is so true.

Do you know that before Watergate there was no such thing as soft money? Do you know that after Watergate, with campaign finance reform, there was no such thing as soft money? Soft money was invented by creative souls as a way around the current campaign finance structure. So whatever we come up with, the same thing will happen again. There will be routes found for money to get to politicians and parties, despite the existence of whatever new laws there are banning certain kinds of money in certain situations. It's going to happen, folks. Just wait and see."


I think we all can agree with this - well, the 2 of you that were able to see past the Limbaugh name.

How do you blame Bush for this? The Supreme Court voted down a law he SIGNED!

Korovyov

I am not a law professor, but I'm cursorily familiar with Buckley v. Vallejo, and i think that a) the ruling was flawed, and b) the particulars were quite different.
It was a highly conservative ruling, favoring a kind of idiotic deregulation which didn't work for airlines, didn't work for power companies, didn't work for railroads, didn't work for phone companies, and won't work for politics.
One of the primary rationales for Buckley v. Vallejo was the concept that an entrenched financial system combined with contribution limits would keep the poorer voices permanently stifled. Doesn't it seem equally likely that an entrenched financial system combined with a complete lack of limits would increase, rather than eliminate, the disparity between rich and poor candidates?

"i think NOT limiting the amount of money corporations spend is limiting the speech of some people. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect every citizen to have equal access to their politicians."

well said. I agree completely.

ReaperCow

Kids in the Hall?

I'm here. And as long as the Republicans are in charge we'll be ok.

No I'm serious.

Really, stop laughing.

It was FDR who proposed "freedom from fear" which of course is ludicrous and can only be used as a pretext to take away liberty to make people "secure".

But then Bush referenced the FDR's 4 freedoms last night. Sh*t. That means we can't trust either of 'em. Damn't. Oh well, Democracy leads to tyranny anyways -- just not in my lifetime I can guarantee that I tell ya what. Live free or fark!

monkeybutler
so do we give up trying to regulate campaign contributions?

05-02-03 05:01:16 PM
ShutUpHippies

Let's see...

You liberals complain everytime you think (HAH! "Think" and "Liberal" in the same sentence) your rights under the constitution are being trampled on, but when a blatantly unconstitutional law is struck down protecting your free speech, you biatch and moan.

Having a problem figuring out what you stand for?


i don't think most people who are upset about this bill being thrown out are claiming it's not unconsitutional just that it's unfortunate that we as a nation are having such a hard time limiting the weight that coorperations currently pull in the public sector. are you trying to suggest that coorperations do not currently have too much influence on both democratic and republican politicians and thus policy? it seems to me that that would be a hard sell -- most liberals and conservatives arn't in disagreement over this fact, just over which coorperations/special interest groups should be aloud to bribe politicians (stereotypically one woudl suspect that the democrats don't wnat to limit the entertainment industry and the republicans don't wnat to let go of all the oil money) -- people are greedy, libral or conservative.

TyroneSlothrop

You win!

Billionaires for Bush ride again! Yeeehaaaaw.

Reportedly, dumbya already has $200 million in contributions ready to spend on the primaries. God only knows how much money he'll get for the main event.

On sale now! G Dumbya: Your 'quid pro quo' candidate.

Great. Another Bush presidency appointed by the Supreme Court.

MonkeyBulter

Rush prodicted with accurate cyncisim that this would get shot down, and that things have "ever been thus."

So what. How does that help, or provide for future debate. I don't have so much of a problem with his polotics as with his "Prediction of the obvious equals action" stance.

It lacks seriousness and Gravitas. We are running out of time for people on ANY side of ANY issue to act this way.

Onyx_Crown_Knight

It's really a tough issue. On the one hand, corporations and non-profit organizations have a whole lot of resources with which to lobby government, but on the other hand (especially in the case of non-profits) the reason they have so much money is that a bunch of people got together to pool their money to be more effective. Take the NRA, for example, which has over 4 million members and the average contribution is something like $50. On the one hand, as an organization they have a lot of power and money to influence politicians, but on the other, it could also be seen as 4 million people trying to influence politicians.

The worst court decision ever was to give Corporations the rights of "people" but then make it so they had none of the accountability.

Corporations are not citizens.

Onyx_Crown_Knight:

Sounds like you're a Simone Weil fan.

I understand what you're saying, but it's irrelevant. A judge ruled that corporations were people, and that's that.

Farkers,

Please practice rational ignorance and DON'T VOTE. Its for you own good.

-BD

Redrobot -- No. For instance, consider the extreme: no campaign contributions at all. How many poor people do you think could afford to run for a prominent office?

All laws limiting the spending of money during elections are bullshiat.

Shikko precident can be changed...it has happened before. It's very difficult to do however, unless there is a lot of force behind the movement.

Is it only me who HONESTLY thinks we are all screwed and the best course of action is to privately hope for an earthquake/flood/fire/ice age/locust swarm to make it all go away?

BlueDog

Farkers,

Please practice rational ignorance and DON'T VOTE. Its for you own good.

Don't you mean vote for the one that spends the most money? Because we all know that we must. Free will and judgment not allowed.

Shikko
I understand what you're saying, but it's irrelevant. A judge ruled that corporations were people, and that's that.

________________________________________________

Spare me. Defeatist retoric and excuse making. Have a pont other than rolling over becasue a man with a title said to.

Galleleo called, he want's to confernce with you and Darwin about ideas and authority.

I don't agree with corporations being considered citizens. How is a group of citizens (already counted as such) able to group together and create an uber-citizen? This uber-citizen has WAY more pull in politics than do the ACTUAL citizens. How the hell is that right? But, then again, corporations don't really have the accountablity that normal citizens have. Just the pull. Sounds fair to me.

I think from now on we should just have a reality show to determine who gets elected. We could have some washed-up, B-list celebrity be the host, and all of the candidates would have to do demeaning things in order to win. It could be like "Who wants to be a President..umm,...Presidentaire!"

Oh, and a bit that seems to have escaped a few posters: this was not done by SCOTUS, but by a three-judge panel -- Karen LeCraft Henderson, Colleen Kotar-Kotelly and Richard Leon.

brazil
free will and judgement are allowed they just don't seem to come around much. If you know nothing else about an election bet on the guy who spent the most money.

Does this include contributions to Fark?

Zeletsrevenge:
THANK YOU!

No knees jerking over here, ye rabid. I realize that a corporation is merely a tool, not an embodiment of evil in the same way that, i dunno, a secretary of defense can be.

Unfortunately, the basic legal structure regarding corporate accountability, nonprofit formation, etc., is heavily in favor of the wrong kind of criminal capitalism.

Case in point; What is the purpose of a legal system in which the man I see at the gas station has been in and out of prison three times for possessing $30 of marijuana, but Richard Nixon was never within a mile of a correctional facility? What the hell does it mean when a man runs out of money for his family, robs a liquor store without hurting anybody, and gets twenty-five years, and it's unlikely that Andrew Fastow will celebrate five birthdays behind bars?

Brazil

Not at all. I mean just don't vote. Your vote has a zero percent probability of deciding the presidential election. All resources expended on voting or becoming knowledgeable about the candidates are wasted resources.

did anyone see the ad the hitler administration made targeted at that voinright dude? shrubya doesnt even want other republicans to have their say, either.

i too, am waiting for these "locusts".

hehe - I love how the Supreme Court is now "SCOTUS". This is ironic due to the fact that we get the word "Dunce" from Jons Duns Scotus, some guy who lived in england a while back and was actually really smart, but then people started using his name ironically in reference to really stupid people. Sort of like "Oh, good one, EINSTEIN!"

This should be easy.
The voters list = the eligible donors list.

Government of/by/for the people.
End of discussion.

Onyx_Crown_Knight "SHUT......UP That's nice trollboy. Go have another Mountain Due, the grown-ups were talking."

"I can't wait for us to install this type of democracy in Iraq"
"Good to see the courts standing up for the little guy....and by little guy I mean huge multinational corporations."
"This court decision was b(r)ought to you by the good people of Halliburton"
"Big businesses will always control the government and her policies"

ect.

Highly mature. You "grown ups" are really raising the bar on this one.

Yeah, but did you see the racecar made of cheese?

So, is there a statute of limitations concerning contributions to Drew's Beer Fund?

Diogenes
what they were saying is that you have the right to say ANYTHING be it $4 or $4000000, they never said the higher dollar amount was a more potent expression

it's all so silly to begin with - and always was. A candidate can raise money from every single employee of a corporation but the corporation can't give HIM money, it can only give money to the party to use on the candidate's behalf, which he is perfectly legal to ask for provided he doesn't do it from government property though it's perfectly legal for him to make the exact same phone call from a phone booth across the street or from his campaign headquarters.

Now, the corporations wouldn't have been able to give directly to the party, so the parties were busy setting up "shadow" party operations that COULD accept the cash, but now appearantly it's back to being ok if they give it to the party, but still not the candidate himself even though the candidate asks for it and it is spent on his behalf.

The only way to do it is to say any entity can give any amount to whoever they farkin please but it has to be reported immediately (which, with the internet isn't difficult) and it should be an issue in the campaigns and media. If Candidate X is bought and paid for by the widget makers and Candidate Y is bought and paid for by the anti widget makers, so be it, but let voters take that into account when they vote.

As it is and as it was both are just plain rediculious.

alas, the country continues to march down the road that will lead to more people wanting to blow it up.