That being said, I think it's shameful he hasn't endorsed Sanders. Lessig acts like he's the only one working on it. Whether or not you like Sanders, he is the only viable candidate whose core issue is overturning Citizens United. I realize Sanders is less known for that and more known for democratic socialism, which is probably Lessig's hesitation. However, it always bothered me how little Lessig acknowledged the only candidate on either side with any chance of initiating campaign finance reform. If he really cared about campaign finance reform, he'd be out stumping for Sanders rather than this "running for president" publicity stunt.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3icikb/we_are_larry_l...
His Reddit answer boils down to "Bernie's plan won't work but I won't say why. My plan will work but I won't say way."
I guess that's the difference between the Democratic party debates and the Republican party debates. I know that sounds like a troll, but it's not. The GOP primary debates had 17 people running, the Democratic primary had 5 (not counting Lessig). No one seriously thinks that Lindsey Graham is going to be the nominee, nor did anyone think that he could be the nominee when he ran. He's a single issue candidate (national security) and his agenda is make sure this issue is discussed during the primaries. The same thing with Santorum and Huckabee ("traditional values"). It's not a new phenomenon. Back in 1988, Pat Robertson ran with a "Christian conservative" agenda, but no one seriously thought that he was going to be president. His role was to highlight the power of the conservative evangelical Christians in the Republican party, thus causing the eventual nominee to (and the party as a whole) to pay attention to their issues. There's nothing with this tactic, and it may even be effective. But it seems like it's more prominent on the national stage in the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.
The only reason why I chose Lindsey Graham for my example, was that he's stuck in JV debates, and had I could articulate a reason for his candidacy -- as opposed to Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, or George Pataki. I honestly can't figure out why their staying the race, except for perhaps for personal marketing reasons.
Lessig seems to think that if he eked his way onto the stage of a televised Democratic debate, he'd have a chance of jump-starting a national political campaign on the issue of campaign finance.
But it's actually the reverse: you only get onto a debate stage if you already have a campaign. The polling criteria is not a gotcha. It's just the easiest way to ensure that only people with actual popular traction get stage time. The debate is not intended to be a "big intro" opportunity. There are other events for that, like the convention (Obama), or big events like the Prayer Breakfast (Ben Carson).
In part the difference in the numbers between the parties is simply that there is no clear favorite on the GOP side, while there is an overwhelming favorite on the Dem side. There are a lot of senior Democrats who have chosen to sit this one out rather than challenge Hillary.
Citizens United is probably doomed under Clinton if she's elected, no less than under Sanders. Demographically Kennedy, Scalia, or Thomas is likely to be replaced in the next five years and very likely in the next nine and CU hangs by a single vote on the Supreme Court.
Of course, reversing CU will actually make things worse from Lessig's stated perspective. With less independent money and with outside voices silenced, politicians will either be more entrenched with special interests or forced to spend even more time raising money from business executives. Unless you have a full restructuring of the system with public financing, most any plausible change isn't going to improve things.
I think that the US progressive establishment's fixation on the Citizen's United case is misguided.
I'm biased towards the idea that speech should be free, and tend to think that this should include spending money on making your view heard.
I think that effort could be better spend on attempting to fix the problem of wrong speech: if people are pushing political agendas using things that are factually incorrect that should be restricted. IANAL, but I think that this is likely to be more legally achievable in the US too: IS libel laws have a model of truth as a defense, and it seems to me this could be a framework for regulating false political speech.
But if you can explain how overturning Citizen's United wouldn't run into that problem while this idea I'd find that helpful.
OTOH, Libel in the US is already a thing. I'm saying extending those laws to make "the American people" a group that has standing, and falsehoods something that has harm. There is some existing precedent for that under libel.
It's easy to argue that corporations and unions don't deserve free speech as their directors, employees and members are all entitled to free speech individually.
However the press is different. Nobody, rightly so, wants to limit the press to say and print whatever they like (so long as it's not slander/libel) and today's press is made up of corporations.
How do we keep a free press and silence other corporations?
But I only forgot about it because I simply don't see how that matters in an real way.
Even if corporate personhood went away then (actual, real human) people would be paid to speak for a corporation, and then you hit the the 1st Amendment rights issues again.
There are proper campaign finance laws which regulate the above. Nothing is currently regulating SuperPACs at the moment, even American divisions of foreign corporations can accept money.
It's his own fault for being weak.
Repealing the First Amendment is a tremendously weighty decision, and not one whose prospect should fill anyone with optimism.
It would be quite easy to overturn Citizens United, a weak 5-4 decision borne of highly-questionable provenance, without touching the First Amendment in any way.
Come on, at least be intellectually honest.
They wanted to shadow-fund a TV ad campaign.
Clever of you to leave those facts out!
Wait, why would it be wrong to bash a politician around again?
Citizens United wasn't about speech. It was about unlimited anonymous money flooding our elections.
Nothing is wrong with criticizing a politician. That's obvious. But thanks for the clumsy obfuscation attempt.
Even the ACLU supported the Citizen's United decision. [1]
I think that's a terrible idea, and as long as Lessig is flogging it, he won't get my support.
That is exactly what I want. Why do you think it is a terrible idea? I'd eve hazard a guess that the money we save from reducing tax loop holes, bad contracts, subsidies and other pork could cover much of the cost of the public funding.
Dems said in order to participate in debate, you must poll 1% in three polls IN the six weeks prior to the debate. Depending on what polls were counted, Lessig either qualified or were one poll away from doing so.
Dems then “clarified” rules as being 1% in three polls AT LEAST six weeks prior to the debate.
HuffPo op-ed from Lessig's campaign manager: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-jarding/the-democrats-ha...
[1] http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-president...
Unfortunately, even if they would've allowed him in the first debate, he totally murdered that chance by saying he will quit as soon as he fixes this issue. Even if he really wanted to do that, he would be lucky if he solved that issue in one mandate, making it completely unnecessary to announce before even the first debate that he would quit during his first mandate.
So it seems Lessig isn't a great politician, but I still think he's a great activist for this issue.
In other words, Lessig didn't need to win in order to win. (Whether he actually won, in the second sense, is a different question...)
If the government can restrict any and all money spends on political speech, it can suppress all meaningful political speech. This is the absolute core of the First Amendment.
How can the 1st Amendment be protecting the voice of the poor if they have no avenue of expression? And when their views are beaten down by the few rich. That is not at all in the spirit of the first amendment or of democracy.
How? What do you mean "the government can guarantee equal speech"? Do you mean they should disallow some speech from dominating other speech? Who decides what to censor, and how is that done, for example, on the internet? Is that not a form of censorship itself?
> How can the 1st Amendment be protecting the voice of the poor if they have no avenue of expression?
How can you say they have zero avenue? They can rally within their community with no money at all. MLK and other civil rights activists made some of the biggest changes in this country through their speech alone, and they never even held office. He may have even received donations or media support from companies employing large numbers of black people. Would you say that is unfair too?
I also want us to find a better way to end corruption in politics. I just don't think it is so simple, and free speech and the ability to spend your hard earned money on what you want, regardless of whether you're poor or wealthy, is the core of the first amendment. I'm not sure about Joe Shmoe CEO + board deciding to donate company earnings, which are not all their own, to a super PAC or secretive non-profit of their choosing. That's ~20 people deciding where the money of 100s of hard working people goes.
Is it easy to fix that? Are laws themselves enough, or do we also need to be able to enforce them? What happens when some business claims their money was not spent in support of a political campaign, but it supports a foreign company who is advertising online?
And even if it did, which, again, it really does not, it wouldn't do it by the avenue of declaring that "money is not speech" and thus that there are no restrictions on the government preventing people from spending money on speech.
While many of us do not like all the money in politics how people assemble to pool that money should not be the concern. The concern should be and always should be how politicians routinely ignore the rule of law and Constitution and twist the words to deliver the outcome they desire.
If anything, they would love restricting who can put money into politics as all their personal avenues of funding are protected.
Your right, spending money isn't speech. However, preventing someone from buying an advertisement to display a message and they are denied because its deemed 'political' is definitely limiting someones free speech. It doesn't matter if the message is 'America Rocks', 'Shop at this new store here', or 'John McCain sucks please stop voting for him'; if your gonna limit some but not others because the message is deemed political then you no longer have free speech.
Unlike regular political actions committees, which can donate to candidates and must report who they receive donations from in turn, Super PACs are not required to report their sources of income.
This essentially means that people are free to spend unlimited amounts of their own money talking about their favored political candidate, though they can't donate unlimited amounts to the politician's campaign.
I don't have a strong personal stance on this issue, but I consider the ruling fundamentally fair. If I want to spend an unlimited amount of my own money buying advertising space to raise awareness around global warming, I can do that. That's speech, and large-scale speech takes money. I should be able to do the same thing to support a political candidate.
The presidential election isn't won in the town square, where everyone can hear him gather to speak simultaneously. That might work for mayoral elections of small towns, but it does not work for a nation of 318 million people. And besides, who is going to pay to rent an auditorium for a town hall meeting?
The citizens deserve to hear their elected leaders and candidates speak, and it requires a considerable amount of money to reach such a large audience. (Note that donating air-time or website space or advertising for a candidate is tantamount to donating money.)
What is the serious alternative? Political candidates are limited in their ability to get their message out, based on where they can travel (no money for transportation), and the people they can speak to directly in person? How will democracy function at scale? Presidential candidates are pilgrims, traveling the country by foot? They'll have a hard time reaching a few hundred thousand people at best.
If we did not allow political contributions, and we did allow candidates to spend their own money on their campaigns, then only wealthy billionaires would become successful national politicians. Indeed, many successful politicians are extremely rich, like Mitt Romney (estimated net worth: $250 million), and candidates like Donald Trump rely largely on their wealth. Small-time candidates would have zero chance against them if contribution were not allowed, even while billionaires are spending their personal fortunes.
Now, to be a fair, a purely representational democracy could perhaps function on this basis. The people in a local area elect their local leader, who travels to the capital of a territory to mingle with other local leaders, and from them elect a higher leader, and so on, such that at each level campaigning is all word-of-mouth. But that's an idea that I think will fail in reality at the scale of the USA.
The budgeting problems of campaigns are not my concern. The ability of a few wealthy elites to completely dominate the political conversation simply by having more money, and therefore more speech, is.
You do in fact have the right to speak to a large audience, if you can find one willing to listen.
Has links to the actual opinion and dissents as well as the arguments made before the court.
How many of the folks who argue against the Citizens United ruling have actually read it and understand the legal basis for it?
And the argument is that money isn't speech.
Do you suppose that nine Supreme Court justices might have considered and already dismissed your three-word argument in their lengthy decision on the subject?