[Peace-discuss] Fear of FEC-less ads

[Stuart Levy]

On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 01:44:58PM -0600, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> If the "serious proposal" succeeds, & a constitutional amendment declares 
> that corporations are not persons, you're still going to have to invade 
> some real person's First Amendment rights to prevent the broadcast of a 
> film that's unpleasant about Hillary.

Yes.  I have no essential problem with that.  I do have an essential problem
that many of our fictitious "persons" have billions of dollars at their
disposal, unlike most of the real persons.

Or, another route: we can each speak freely, as I support the
Constitution in saying we have the right to do, but the
problem is that some (real as well as fictitious) persons have
vastly greater *access* to the means to be heard.

This aligns with your suggestion that candidates be somehow
granted free television air time -- that could be a good start --
though free (ad-supported) broadcast TV may well be a dead end medium [*],
in which case focusing on that could be a matter of fighting the last war.
([*] Media activists watching the transition to digital TV have seriously
suggested that its life may be short.)   Also, far from all our political
communication happens in the context of elections.  What could we do to
regulate monopolies of access?

One flywheel to limit the spin of corporate speech in elections
was mentioned on On the Media today: in the UK, if I understand right,
corporate bodies can openly advocate for candidates in elections
but their shareholders must explicitly vote that the corp. should take 
that position.  That too could be a good start.

> It might be better to restrict corporations seriously by statute - national 
> charters, limited time and purpose, strict fiduciary responsibility, etc.
>
>
> Stuart Levy wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 08:53:20AM -0600, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>> Not exactly a special case in a society in which the rich are getting 
>>> richer at an accelerating pace, is it?
>>> Most of the money collected for political campaigns goes to buy 
>>> advertising, mostly radio & TV.  That was true even in the little Green 
>>> party campaign for Congress that you and I were involved in some years 
>>> ago.
>>> Why not reduce the effectiveness of money in politics by making (prime) 
>>> air
>>>  time - and other advertising outlets - free to candidates?
>> For that matter, why not consider votes to be speech (after all, they're 
>> expressions of opinion), and sell them on the open market?
>> For those who haven't been watching Joe Futrelle's facebook threads, he 
>> and
>> others have been bouncing around some ideas.  Protected corporate speech 
>> can
>> go far.  How about a flag-burning company with toasted star-and-striped
>> marshmallows as its logo?  Or, "corporate literature"... Wuthering Heinz, 
>> or
>> All Quiet on the Best Western Front, or ...  well, go and see: 
>> http://www.facebook.com/joefutrelle
>> More seriously there's a proposal from at least People for the American 
>> Way for a constitutional amendment to declare that corporations are not 
>> persons.
>> This makes an even more compelling reason to do a performance of Gilbert 
>> and
>> Sullivan's Utopia, Limited. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia,_Limited 
>> Maybe at a People's Pot Luck, or an AWARE film event, or something. (I 
>> heard
>> of this from Ron Szoke, who was listening to it one day. Favorite quote, 
>> said
>> in horror:  "He's no longer a person.  He's a corporation, and so long as 
>> he
>> sticks to his charter, we can't touch him!")
>> You can't revoke the charter of a person, but it should be possible to do 
>> so
>> for a badly-behaving corporation.
>>> John W. wrote:
>>>> On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 11:20 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu
>>>>  <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote: [I don't like this guy's 
>>>> politics
>>>> much, but I think he may be right about why there has been so much
>>>> weeping and gnashing of teeth about the SC decision in Citizens United 
>>>> v.
>>>> FEC.  The one clear if perhaps questionable contribution of the American
>>>> 20th c. to human civilization since the Neolithic was PR; the fear of 
>>>> the
>>>> NYT editorialists et al. is that this SC decision in its madly 
>>>> consequent
>>>> way may upset the apple cart.  OTOH with Clement of Alexandria in the 
>>>> 2nd
>>>> c. CE, I say, "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a thousand schools of
>>>> thought contend." (I realize the image has been used by others.) --CGE] 
>>>> That isn't what happens with PR, Carl.  No flowers are blooming when the
>>>>  corporate PR  machine spins out lie upon lie upon lie. To me this
>>>> decision equates "political speech" with "justice".  In both cases, in
>>>> the United States at least, you're entitled to as much speech and as 
>>>> much
>>>> "justice" as you can afford to pay for. Understanding Liberal Rage Over
>>>> Citizens United by Brian Garst On paper the Citizens United case has all
>>>> the makings of a solid liberal issue.  First Amendment protections,
>>>> considered sacrosanct by the left when a reporter is leaking classified
>>>> information, are strengthened for those speaking truth to power.  Both
>>>> the ACLU and AFL-CIO support the decision.  So why are prominent 
>>>> liberals
>>>>  speaking out so vehemently against it? It would be easy to chalk up
>>>> liberal outrage to a general hatred for all things corporate.  But is
>>>> that enough to overcome what otherwise seems like a tailor-made liberal
>>>> issue? After all, the ACLU said “[the prohibition on corporate speech] 
>>>> is
>>>> facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment because it permits
>>>> the suppression of core political speech.” Moreover, the corporate 
>>>> gains,
>>>> which liberals might feel benefit the right, are offset by those of the
>>>> unions and other liberal issue groups that benefit from the ruling just
>>>> the same.  The net political impact is thus neutral, suggesting that 
>>>> their opposition isn’t political in nature.  Neither is it based on 
>>>> the
>>>> merits. Rather, it is philosophical. Consider the following reactions to
>>>> the decision from the left. The New York Times editorialized the 
>>>> decision
>>>> as a “blow to democracy,” and a “disastrous 5-to-4 ruling” that 
>>>> “has
>>>> thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century.”  
>>>> Talk
>>>> about overwrought. President Obama decried the “stampede of special
>>>> interest money” that will somehow “[undermine] the influence of 
>>>> average Americans.” Senator Patrick Leahy warned that the decision 
>>>> would “change
>>>> the course of our democracy.”  And the ever-contemptible Rep. Alan 
>>>> Grayson must have been hyperventilating when he declared that “this is
>>>> the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case. It leads us
>>>> all down the road to serfdom.” As if these politicians aren’t bad 
>>>> enough,
>>>> the liberal blogosphere is even worse, as frantic left-wing bloggers and
>>>> their readers have been busy declaring an end to democracy as we know it
>>>> ever since the ruling came down. The apocalyptic – and not to mention
>>>> apoplectic – nature of their criticism suggests an answer as to why 
>>>> the
>>>> decision irks them so. Liberals think you are all idiots.  American
>>>> voters are simply too stupid to filter so much information and then 
>>>> reach
>>>> the right decision.  And as they well know, the right decision is 
>>>> unquestionably to adopt the liberal position.  They, as the learned 
>>>> among
>>>> us, know best and so ought to be the only ones allowed to tell you what
>>>> you should think and why you should think it.  That way you don’t get
>>>> confused by all those other pesky views and opinions.  One wonders how 
>>>> we
>>>> ever survived as a nation before the great heroes John McCain and Russ
>>>> Feingold came along to save us from ourselves. At the heart of the
>>>> liberal philosophy of government is a belief that people are too stupid
>>>> to fend for themselves, manage their own affairs or vote for the right
>>>> candidates.  Democracy itself will be destroyed because of a few extra
>>>> ads targeting voters before elections? Voters, it seems, just aren’t
>>>> sophisticated enough to handle that much information. Unfortunately for
>>>> the left, the Constitution recognizes rights that all citizens have,
>>>> regardless of how intelligent the editorial board of the New York Times
>>>> thinks a person from Kansas really is.  It turns out that “make no 
>>>> law”
>>>> really means that “Congress shall make no law,” even if that law 
>>>> would
>>>> advance the liberal agenda.
>>>> http://biggovernment.com/2010/01/23/understanding-liberal-rage-over-citizens-united/
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