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If the financial crisis has taught us anything it’s that money and greed are two powerful forces that can blind us to the path’s we’re on as a society. Government’s role here is to help apply the brakes to the invisible hand of the market, to temper it with a smattering of moral framework, with the goal of protecting and supporting those that pure capitalism would ignore (and crush). This framework grows directly from our popular electorate, which acts as an objective force in the whole government gig, making sure that no one person/citizen becomes to powerful via excessive influence or wealth – the goal being that the common man can always run for office, should he want to effect change in his country.
Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections. The ruling was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy. The 5-to-4 decision represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision, which also applies to labor unions and other organizations, to reshape the way elections are conducted.
Well, fuck.
The governments role isn’t to apply the brakes to the invisible hand, it’s to establish justice, provide for the common defense, yada yada yada. So you are supporting suppression of certain kinds of political thought. The problem with any laws against free speech is where do you stop, just evil for profit corporations, evil for profit and evil non profit, evil for evil non and evil ceo’s, evil for evil non evil ceo’s and any one evil enough to make over 250k/year and anyone with a blog. It’s a false hope to expect the government will be able to completely censor the stupid spoiled drama hungry american people that buy whatever moveon or rush limbaugh are selling. I’m going to see a $20 million media blitz by AFL-CIO or Exxon as the same thing, just the loud tv that interrupts fringe
B, honestly i respect your opinion on most political things, cause while i disagree with you a good 90% of the time, at least its well thought out. But, this makes the playing field so unlevel it’d be impossible to foster real discourse, much less a functioning government.
pretty naive to think that 1)this ruling will lead to massive abuse by the republican half of the country only as implied by obama in your link above and 2)that corporate america doesn’t already use it’s power and money to alter our policy and elections. was fahrenheit 911 any different than hillary: the movie. no so why are we spending taxpayer dollars to enforce censorship. ruling or no ruling corporate america or now union america runs this country because we all like the drama of it and we let it continue.
I’m not phrasing this as a partisan issue at all – I’m sure the Democrats will abuse it just as much as the republicans AND the Libertarians. Here’s my issue – Say I’m Goldman Sachs, and I have $14billion to blow – i can go buy up every tv spot for 6 months in a given media market, effectively holding candidates hostage to whatever issues i want addressed. My assertion here is not that it’s good or bad for one party, it’s bad for the voters, bad for the overall health of the government.
perhaps the real anger should be that you probably are right, americans are influenced more by a tv commercial than by common sense. still though, just the precedent that restricting any form of political opinion is a scary thing to me. do you really trust washington to not abuse it’s power with something like this and not slowly, over time snuff out entities other than for profit and non profit. the current white house has made it very clear that they feel political blogging is detrimental to society. what do you think that means? from a free market mind though, whats the harm in a commercial bidding war between AFL-CIO and Exxon, there’s not a 401k out there that wouldn’t benefit from the added profit to the media giants that every mutual funds owns stock in.
Yes indeed, I think a bidding war by the mega-corps of the world for the advertising dollars in a given election is a fantastic idea. I’m sure that Goldman Sachs has my best interest at heart when they are writing those checks that will later influence congressional votes.
Really ?