Marked bills - what a tease! *doublepromote

Double-Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Thursday, July 5th, 2012 2:16pm PDT - doublepromote requested by pumkinandstorm.

I've been thinking about this more, and the Roberts court kind of had a point. If corporations don't have the right to speech, then what, can the government tell the NYT what to print? How many free ads they can offer? I don't get it. It kind of had to be this way.

Really, the main issue is that individual contributions are capped, but for those of us on the side of the working man that wouldn't really help us.

>> ^bmacs27:

I've been thinking about this more, and the Roberts court kind of had a point. If corporations don't have the right to speech, then what, can the government tell the NYT what to print? How many free ads they can offer? I don't get it. It kind of had to be this way.
Really, the main issue is that individual contributions are capped, but for those of us on the side of the working man that wouldn't really help us.


It's not really one of those things where you can say "Logic follows this...therefore this." It's about the result, and if you're getting a result that's fucking the public, than your democracy is broken and it needs to be fixed.

Except that all those SuperPacs? The majority of the funds have been traced back to 22 billionaires. So the "individual cap" has been blown to smithereens.

We are in trouble, friends. There aren't enough smart people able to smell the BS in these SuperPac ads. They eat it up instead, with fork and spoon.

Obama isn't above it, either. Don't much like that he is using the same tactics. I also figure he doesn't have a choice.

>> ^bmacs27:

I've been thinking about this more, and the Roberts court kind of had a point. If corporations don't have the right to speech, then what, can the government tell the NYT what to print? How many free ads they can offer? I don't get it. It kind of had to be this way.
Really, the main issue is that individual contributions are capped, but for those of us on the side of the working man that wouldn't really help us.

@bmacs27

The problem with Citizen United isn't the right of corporations to say things.

The problem with Citizen United is that it equates curremcy with speech.

If that were true, we'd all only have as much free speech as we do digits in our bank accounts.

Money ≠ Speech

@Yogi No, you kind of are supposed to look at the logic if you are the Supreme Court. The result is really Congress' worry.

@GenjiKilpatrick The issue is how do you constitutionally keep Michael Moore (or some union) from running political content simply because he has the means to do so without allowing the government to stop the New York Times from running political content. A photo of Barack Obama on the front page could easily be construed as a "campaign contribution." It's certainly donated capital of some sort depending on the nature of the coverage. Currently there is no cleanly legislated delineation there. So yea, Yogi, they were worried about results. They were worried about the negative liberties result more so than the positive liberties result. This is one of those instances where I get that viewpoint.

Regardless, I'd like to see data that electoral success is a linear correlate with campaign spending regardless of absolute levels. I suspect there is an asymptote at some point. It might all be moot anyway.

@bareboards2 Sorry, being the grassroots viewpoint means working from the grassroots. Besides, the way to fight this is to just not be dumb, and convince a few others not to fall for baseless political pandering. Drop a pamphlet about how the world works out the window and you'd be doing it far more good than squandering what few resources you have on an action like this.

Excuse my ignorance but is a marked bill not legal tender in the US? I see notes with stuff written on them all the time over here.

Adding video to channels (Money) - requested by ant.

personally, I appreciate Lawrence Lessig's more nuanced understanding of the Citizen's United ruling.

^this is why I love the Sift. I learn such cool stuff. Thanks @Trancecoach