But, people with money believe that money is a legitimate influence, and that, their influence doesn't cease to be important just because they have money. And they have money. And politicians do not shirk money and do well long term.

Come up with any regulation to prevent the influence of money and those who have money and want influence will find ways around it. Money is fundamentally power.

*Message destroyed, burned, beaten severely, and dropped off a cliff*

^ lurch tried again, below, it's all good
thylan's mostly right, even if a little pessimistic as a result.

but the thing is, we already sort of do this already.
because we cap donations. it's a compromise between what you're suggesting, and then at the other end, having no regulation whatsoever on corporate donations.

and it's been an ongiong struggle since the beginning, of course. one can easily imagine this as another heated debate between Jefferson and Hamilton, even.

with Hamilton calmly explaining how money should be one of the greatest sources of direct political will. very openly laissez-faire and aristocratic. he wanted America to be a Constitutional Monarchy, after all. wanted Geroge Washington to simply be King, and rebuild a new Britain here, and let the richest battle it out.
Jefferson's counterarguments would make more sense, to me, personally. and to you, in this case, most likely, as you're the one suggesting exclusion of corporate donation, even if only as a hypothetical.
the Federalist and Antifederalist Papers are filled with good arguments like this.

the reason we already cap corporate donations, is that a lack of such oversight is what allowed things like the Party Bosses (yes, in both parties) here in America, at the turn of the last century. guys like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_Tweed

and, more recently, like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff

We also have the absurd little "corporations are persons" issue, which is so ingrained in the legal system at present that pulling it out is going to be messy.

Since persons have the right to free speech, and spending money on publicity is a form of expression current legal precedent says that it would be "unconstitutional" to limit the right of corps to pay for speech.

I think its a rather sick stretch to think that the bill of rights was intended to apply to paper people, but that's the law as it stands. Fixing it would require a constitutional amendment, against which Billions of dollars would be spent by paper people who use the free speech right they have already paid for. It may be an intractable problem which can not be fixed until it is fixed.

I can see your point about hijacking, although that wasn't my intention. I had just finished watching that one sitting in someone's personal queue and it fit with this thread perfectly. I thought it made a good point in relation to the question. Basically, regardless of existing law, there are politicians that take contributions, well in excess of caps, from wherever the hell they want with apparently no oversight. I think our system is so corrupt that no amount of legislating is going to fix it. Creating more laws for the lawless is just ineffective. I don't think it's even possible to have anyone at the Senate or Presidential level that isn't dirty. I'll remove my last post since I don't want to mess up one of MG's posts.

thx for meeting me halfway, lurch. the clip was regarding a corporate donor, yes. i just thought it evaded the essential question he's asking:

Do you think corporate political donations be banned, and why?

so, what's your answer?

your 2nd post does give us something else to chew on: "Creating more laws for the lawless is just ineffective." so, maybe what you might propose, is that 'our system' needs stiffer penalties for political bribery?
because most of the rest was vague and nihilistic, making it sound like nothing works. but Abramoff was caught. is his 5 years & 10 months sufficient punishment, then?

"ln Roman times, when a fellow tried to bribe a public official, they would cut off his nose, sew him in a bag with a wild animal, and throw that bag in the river." - The Untouchables

I'm just really not too well versed in the intricacies of current campaign finance laws and their related punishments, honestly. So, all my comments are just personal opinion and not researched. I didn't think anyone would care so much about my personal opinion that I would have to keep coming back and elaborating. I think dGandhi makes an important point about corporations being considered persons with connected first amendment protections. I think in the case of political contributions, corporations should be viewed differently. Donations should be allowed, but with a cap. Exceeding the cap should be punished with fines for the corporation, and jail time with a possible bar from political office for the candidate.

In a way, it's like accepting gifts from corporations when you are looking for a business partner. Most corporations ban the accepting of gifts given to employees by competing organizations to prevent bias in decision making. I know someone that works in a large corporation and is responsible for choosing new IT products to be purchased. He is constantly offered limo rides, expensive dinners, and other misc gifts. By company policy, these gifts can't be accepted because they are specifically designed to give you a bias towards a particular product. So why can't campaign contributions be looked at in the same light? I'm sure that for-profit organizations aren't giving out of kindness, but for special consideration. Accepting millions in donations puts you in debt to the people that bought your office.

Even if there were such a law, it would get circumvented, by companies white-washing money through ordinary people, such that the candidate's records would show like a thousand individual people making donations (that they secretly got from a company).

Wish I'd caught this thread when it started, it's a subject I'm interested in.

dgandhi touched on the biggest problem with the "corporations are persons" line, that's about half of the problem. The other half is a Supreme Court decision called Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), better known as money equals speech though many argue with that interpretation.

A bit of info on what we're dealing with can be found at the following two links. The first is the text of Joel Gora, professor of law at Brooklyn law school, in a presentation to the Committee on Rules and Administration in 2000. He offers some insight into how the law is applied though I don't agree with him in every case that it's being applied properly.

http://rules.senate.gov/hearings/2000/032200gora.htm

Second is Ira Glasser of the ACLU presenting arguments for the same committee on the same issue with some other perspectives on what it all means.

http://rules.senate.gov/hearings/2000/032200glas.htm

In short it's a mess and open to a lot of interpretation, a decent part of the problem I think stems from the Buckley v. Valeo decision itself and we'll need to revisit that at the highest level, Supreme Court again or Federal law which clarifies the existing decision, before anything can be settled let alone will be. Reform has been tried and as often as not ruled to be unconstitutional due to that decision. Where it's not unconstitutional it seems ineffective instead.

*quality

Awarding MarineGunrock with one star point for this contribution to VideoSift - declared quality by UsesProzac.