because he's the only guy actively showing us how terrible a decision Citizens United v FEC was by showing and explaining in layman's terms what you can do because of it. He literally got a former chair of the FEC to compare it to money laundering (and not favorably), and is now using it to run a "Presidential nomination campaign" in essentially the way everyone else is.
Everyone else claims to care by talking about "voter fraud" (which is code for either "Why do blacks and womens get to vote?" or "but but but RON PAUL DIDN'T WIN!"), but the problem isn't on the end of the voters, it's on the end of the people they're voting for, and the position they're being voted into.
The funny part was how incredibly difficult it was for him to get his Super-PAC. You know, how it proved the exact opposite of what he was attempting to prove. Ah, good times.
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But it wasn't difficult. That's just it. Sign some papers and BAM! Super Pac. The only difficult part of it was the FEC having to decide whether to not let him have one (which would have made them address the press exemption they have now, which lets people like Karl Rove go on Fox News and plug their own PACs), or to have one, which let him do things like he has been. Sure, me or you couldn't make a SuperPAC, but a giant corporation/presidential candidate with a team of lawyers? Totally. It would take them a day, maybe two.
From what I understand, you as an individual can donate an unlimited amount to a Super PAC, but not to a candidate's campaign directly. So Sheldon Adelson can donate $5 million to Newt Gingrich's PAC.
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Also, I don't mind so the campaign finance stuff so much because it's really hard to influence elections with money. Mitt Romney spent a fortune of his own money last time, to very little effect.
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And that PAC can spend $5 million on Newt Gingrich's campaign. So you're circumventing the law. Legally.
The point is that Sheldon Adelson can donate the $5 million himself; he doesn't need to have his company Las Vegas Sands do it. So you or I could do the same thing, if we had $5 million to donate.
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Well the problem isn't so much that the corporate money influences the elections as the fact that the promise of money causes politicians to champion the corporation's causes. As long as politicians think the money is important, the corporations still have an excessive amount of influence on policy.
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From: SmartMuffin | #002 The funny part was how incredibly difficult it was for him to get his Super-PAC. You know, how it proved the exact opposite of what he was attempting to prove. Ah, good times.
I thought the joke was they had to come up with some new excuses to prevent Colbert from so easily getting him PAC because they knew he was trolling them
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Well, shell corporations nobody has ever heard of are pretty common. People often use them to hold real estate.
I mean, you can't really circumvent the law legally. That's almost like saying you are circumventing the law (the 18th Amendment) every time you drink alcohol, legally, using the 21st Amendment.
Our law here is, you can't donate this much money to a candidate, unless someone is willing to file some forms and jump through a few hoops. Which is ridiculous, but it also suggests we could/should just scrap all the campaign finance laws completely.
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So basically, a person who wants to run for president can:
Set up a SuperPAC, which allows them to raise and spend money to influence politics, to do things like make ads and host fundraisers, create studies, etc. (optional)Get a Media Exemption, which allows the head of that SuperPAC to talk about their SuperPAC on the air, so long as it is part of a news (or in the case of Fox News and The Colbert Report, "news") program. Set up a shell corporation that people/corporations/whoever can donate to, completely anonymously. Take that shell corporation money and donate it to the SuperPAC.
And it's all legal.
edit: And he's done all of these things. He ran ads for Rick Parry in Iowa (despite Rick Perry's lack of support), ran ads speaking out against the NBA lockout that were anonymously funded (that were most certainly not funded by Mark Cuban no sir not at all), and is now going to be doing exactly what Newt, Mitt, Huntsman, and most of the others (Paul and Roemer excepted) have been doing for months.
red sox 777 posted... Well, shell corporations nobody has ever heard of are pretty common. People often use them to hold real estate.
I mean, you can't really circumvent the law legally. That's almost like saying you are circumventing the law (the 18th Amendment) every time you drink alcohol, legally, using the 21st Amendment.
Our law here is, you can't donate this much money to a candidate, unless someone is willing to file some forms and jump through a few hoops. Which is ridiculous, but it also suggests we could/should just scrap all the campaign finance laws completely.
Or we could reign them in further to make it so corporations don't have an inordiant amount of power and influence in the political process.
Or we could just get rid of the restrictions on individuals donating to candidates!
Personally, if I was a shareholder in a corporation, and it was donating large sums of money to candidates, especially candidates I opposed, I would be bothered. Corporations are supposed to make money for shareholders, and giving away money doesn't seem too profitable. And if I don't like the candidate, obviously I don't want my money spent in that way.
Now, shell corporations aren't publicly traded, and don't have this problem. If a shell corporation is donating, you can bet that all its owners want it to donate.
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From: red sox 777 | #015 Or we could just get rid of the restrictions on individuals donating to candidates!
Terrible idea. That's the essence of bribery
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You've gotta weigh free speech against everything else. I tend to side with free speech always.
And remember, the entire point of free speech is to protect offensive speech. I think shadowy donations by shell corporations to PACs is pretty offensive to a lot of people.
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No, the money comes from somewhere, and it all gets spent on the campaign, especially with expensive TV ads. The donors do not have unlimited capital, you know.
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red sox 777 posted... You've gotta weigh free speech against everything else. I tend to side with free speech always.
And remember, the entire point of free speech is to protect offensive speech. I think shadowy donations by shell corporations to PACs is pretty offensive to a lot of people.
So money = free speech, then?
So Mitt Romney has more free speech than you and I? Or does that only apply to corporations?
I've spent some time in China before, so yes. But the way to stop corruption is to conduct business out in the open, not to make rules against it. You bet China and Russia have loads of laws on the books against corruption. Once in a while, some businessman is discovered to be corrupt in China and they are unable to hush it up in the media. Then the state does a show trial and hands down severe punishment to appease the public and try to make it look like they are not massively corrupt. But the only crime from the state's point of view here is getting caught.
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I mean, the key thing to remember about these Super PAC funds is that they are spent. That means they are not pocketed. It would be disturbing is Sheldon Adelson gave Newt Gingrich $5 million and told him to keep it. But this money is all going to be gone within a couple of weeks, spent on TV ads attacking Mitt Romney.
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I would if Ron Paul didn't want to bring back the Gold Standard, get rid of the Department of Education, and appeal SOX.
red sox 777 posted... No, the money comes from somewhere, and it all gets spent on the campaign, especially with expensive TV ads. The donors do not have unlimited capital, you know.
Except in cases like Colberts (and a few legit PACs), where the money gets spent wherever they want it to (typically on themselves) with some of it going to campaign stuff.
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SmartMuffin posted... So, I assume all of you people who are strongly against corporate money in politics are supporting Ron Paul, right?
No, because this isn't the only issue I care about, and Ron Paul is still a crazy person. If I really, really cared about this issue, like single-issue cared, I'd be in support of Roemer anyways. That's kind of his thing.
From: SmartMuffin | #029 So, I assume all of you people who are strongly against corporate money in politics are supporting Ron Paul, right?
Y
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From: red sox 777 | #015 Or we could just get rid of the restrictions on individuals donating to candidates!
Personally, if I was a shareholder in a corporation, and it was donating large sums of money to candidates, especially candidates I opposed, I would be bothered. Corporations are supposed to make money for shareholders, and giving away money doesn't seem too profitable. And if I don't like the candidate, obviously I don't want my money spent in that way.
Now, shell corporations aren't publicly traded, and don't have this problem. If a shell corporation is donating, you can bet that all its owners want it to donate.
The issue is that publicly traded corporations can anonymously donate to a shell corporation, leaving their shareholders and the general public in the dark.
Also, are donations to shell corporation completely anonymous, or just publicly anonymous? Because if there isn't ANY oversight, people can easily use illegally made money to donate to political campaigns because the entire structure of the system is a legal form of money laundering. What's stopping a "politician" who's made $500 million from importing cocaine into the US from forming a shell corporation, anonymously donating to it, donating that to his PAC, and using the PAC to purchase a private jet and employ all his family members for ludicrous salaries, all under the guise of a political campaign?
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Also, are donations to shell corporation completely anonymous, or just publicly anonymous? Because if there isn't ANY oversight, people can easily use illegally made money to donate to political campaigns because the entire structure of the system is a legal form of money laundering. What's stopping a "politician" who's made $500 million from importing cocaine into the US from forming a shell corporation, anonymously donating to it, donating that to his PAC, and using the PAC to purchase a private jet and employ all his family members for ludicrous salaries, all under the guise of a political campaign?
That would be illegal money laundering though, because the source income is illegal and the recipient knows it. The difficulty is just in proving it.
So, **** the poor, basically.
No, the government would not be doing a thing to stop poor people from speaking freely.
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red sox, are you trolling? Campaign contributions are not free speech. They are not even speech at all. This has nothing to do with the damn first amendment.
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red sox 777 posted... I admit I didn't read the Citizens United opinion so I could be wrong, but I thought that's what the Supreme Court based its ruling on- free speech.
Having reviewed the ruling, the case only applied to corporations broadcasting their own independent advertisements. I'm fine with that. A corporation endorsing a candidate is free speech. A corporation paying for its own advertising campaign is free speech. Once you hand over cash to a third party though, you are now outside the bounds of "speech".
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Once you hand over cash to a third party though, you are now outside the bounds of "speech".
So what, you want the government to create laws that forbid corporations from giving any money away to someone who might use it for political purposes?
I fail to see what could possibly go wrong with that!
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SmartMuffin posted... Once you hand over cash to a third party though, you are now outside the bounds of "speech".
So what, you want the government to create laws that forbid corporations from giving any money away to someone who might use it for political purposes?
I fail to see what could possibly go wrong with that!
No, just to politicians or political action groups. You want to advertise for a candidate, do it yourself. There's literally no reason to do otherwise, except to make bribery easier to cover up.
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The fact that they have to trust you with their money? They can't legally hold you accountable if you pocket it instead.
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1. You weren't created for the sole purpose of providing money to PACs
2. You have a traceable identity, so you can be held accountable for your actions.
Neither means you WON'T donate money provided to you by a corporation, but they allow the public to more easily trace the money and make informed decisions regarding any further business they pursue with you. Because of that, you may be more discouraged from acting as a simple conduit for any corporation that may want to donate to any particular political campaign. You have a moral compass. A corporation does not.
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From: redrocket | #043 The fact that they have to trust you with their money? They can't legally hold you accountable if you pocket it instead.
Right, that was just an example. But they could give it donate it to some "charity" that claims to just be interested in helping the poor but is actually a political front group *cough*southernpovertylawcenter*cough*
You have a moral compass. A corporation does not.
How can you claim that an individual person has a greater moral compass than a collection of individual persons. If anything, the opposite is true.
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How can you claim that an individual person has a greater moral compass than a collection of individual persons. If anything, the opposite is true.
Wouldn't this statement mean that the current government is more likely to be moral than Ron Paul >_>.
Honestly though, I'm not a fan of most political campaigns in the first place. My votes are based on positions held, not who had the least mud flung at them.
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SmartMuffin posted... From: redrocket | #043 The fact that they have to trust you with their money? They can't legally hold you accountable if you pocket it instead. Right, that was just an example. But they could give it donate it to some "charity" that claims to just be interested in helping the poor but is actually a political front group *cough*southernpovertylawcenter*cough*
Last I knew, Southern Poverty Law Center didn't run political adds endorsing candidates for office. Feel free to correct me if you can. While this is a potential problem, it just calls for holding NPOs to a stricter level of accountability.
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Wouldn't this statement mean that the current government is more likely to be moral than Ron Paul >_>.
Uh, no. The current government takes every opportunity to entrust MORE power to the executive and LESS to the Congress (which represents the people). Dr. Paul will not engage in such things.
it just calls for holding NPOs to a stricter level of accountability.
So you want new regulations prohibiting corporations from giving to political campaigns AND new laws prohibiting NPOs from doing so? Exactly how much MORE bureaucracy is all of this going to take? What are you doing, designing a stimulus program or something? Who died and made you Paul Krugman?
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SmartMuffin posted... Wouldn't this statement mean that the current government is more likely to be moral than Ron Paul >_>. So you want new regulations prohibiting corporations from giving to political campaigns AND new laws prohibiting NPOs from doing so? Exactly how much MORE bureaucracy is all of this going to take? What are you doing, designing a stimulus program or something? Who died and made you Paul Krugman?
First of all, NPOs need to be strictly monitored regardless to make sure they are not abusing the trust given to them by the public on account of their special status.
More broadly...
I'm with you 100% on downsizing bureaucracy. Absolutely 100%. But I strongly feel that even as a libertarian, there are some bureaucratic functions that are so fundamentally necessary to the operation of a democratic government that they cannot be skimped on. At the very top of this list is any function that ensures the integrity of elections. Because protecting freedom is the most important function of government, and you cannot even start to have freedom if your elections are not free. If your government itself is corrupt, you have nothing. Also, like everything else that isn't the military, SSI, or medicare, the bureaucracy needed to ensure fair elections is a drop in the bucket, the tip of the iceberg compared to those three elephants.
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