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| That's not what Citizens United was about by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 03/31/2017, 3:17pm PDT | ||||
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Mischief Maker wrote:Your second statement puts paid to the first. How is contributing to a political campaign, which allows someone to support the activities of a person who is supportive of their interests, not free speech? Maybe in a small town you can run for city or town council on little or no money, just running for a minor office in a city or county with over 100,000 perople could be expensive. Even running for a low-level office such as a state senator costs money and the cost to run for higher office can be astonishing, But let's look at this from another angle. If some person wants to say something and tell the public, would it be legal for them to spend $50 to have leaflets printed and have someone hand them out? What about spending $500 to set up an interactive website? If they then decide to spend $3,000 and have their leaflet printed as a full-page ad in the New York Times or the Washington Post should that be illegal because they're spending more money? Should someone be allowed to contribute to a campaign of someone whose platform is based on ideas they agree with? And if so, why is it that one should be limited to how much money they want to contribute? And why is there a limit? What are the reasons for that amount, and what are they based upon? So if I were someone rich it's okay for me to spend X number of dollars on political contributions but not X+1 because that level is illegal. Why? What studies were done to determine that contributing at the specific level made illegal were more likely to cause political corruption? Or whatever reason that it was thought necessary to limit political contributions to that level? What evidence was used to provide this figure other than someone "pulling it out of their ass"? In Traffic Engineering, the speed limit for a particular road in an area is supposed to be set at the 85th percentile, such that 85% of the drivers using that road are going at or below the speed limit. When you have exceptions that make the speed lower than 85%, those should be defined by good engineering reasons, such as hairpin turns, blind spots, avalanche danger etc., and not because the state needs more money from speeding tickets. Objective evidence is supposed to be used, not mere arbitrary settings, whims or political considerations of what people "ought" to be doing. During the Video Game Restriction Cases, where states required video games to be restricted from purchase by minors or labeled, the courts routinely struck down these ordinances because there was no objective evidence at all that depictions of violence were harmful to children, which supposedly was the reason these restrictions and/or bans were enacted. There was no reason for the bans and restrictions other than someone "pulled it out of their ass." Mischief Maker wrote:You never read the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, did you? This has nothing to do with what it was about. Citizens United involved a case where that organization had created a film about Hillary Clinton (the film having a negative opinion of her), and they wanted to make it available on pay-per-view on television to recover their costs. But because Federal law prohibited corporate paid election-related communications during an election it would have been illegal for them to do so because of the restrictions on spending money by a corporate entity having to do with political issues. Had this been a professional wrestling program, a movie about any subject except politics, a game show, soft core porn not obscene, or something frivolous, there would have been no issue and no legal right to ban their film. But because they were expressing their opinions about a political candidate it was now illegal for them to show it. Think about this for a moment. Because this movie presented a political opinion created by a corporation - because they spent money to make the film - the law made it illegal to show it. Note that nobody would have dared try to pull this sort of crap on CNN, HBO, The Washington Post, Universal Pictures, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, or any other corporate media outlet if they were doing the same thing at the same time because they wouldn't have stood for it, and would have sued, too. And essentially everyone would have seen such an attempt to silence the media as unconstitutional. But because Citizens United wasn't a normal "member" of the "mainstream media" it was thought their right to free speech could be infringed, and they could be silenced. |
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