Come together on what we can all agree on

While I tend to agree that money can be used corruptively to great effect, in both buying politicians as well as buying voters, I am unable to find wording in any Supreme Court decision, relative to First amendment rights, stating that "money equals free speech".

Edit: Is there anyone at all that we could mutually agree to be unbiased and capable of presenting indisputable facts? If such a person could be found, they would be who we should elect as President.

 

now you're getting it...

 

http://www.enotes.com/buckley-v-valeo-reference/buckley-v-valeo

You're not a very good googler

 

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has said, "You can't separate speech from the money that facilitates the speech. It's utterly impossible."

To the contrary: we can if we like separate the two. It's a political issue, not an exercise in scholastic epistemology. Politics involves measure and choice. It involves choosing where we ought to draw lines. Drawing lines is an appropriate deterrence to useless absolutes. Politics involves ethics – not unlike another line we draw regarding freedom of speech. That is the ethics of not shouting fire in a crowded theatre.
Money is power. Or, more accurately, money gives one some power. A tiny amount gives one very little power. And money gives the super rich more political power than the rest of us – while we consider equality in political power ethical and therefore deny people the freedom of voting twice.
It's true that money allows news organizations more power to disseminate their views than the average citizen. With their money, people are free to create newspapers, websites, magazines or print fliers with which they express their views. This we put on one side of the free speech issue, with all of the rest of free speech that we value for our society.
The Constitution prohibits the making of "any law" that abridges "the freedom of speech." But It's a stretch to consider campaign contributions – money – as one and the same with free speech. Justice Scalia does so as a great abstract equation. We should be wary of simple equations purporting profundity: god equals nature; money equals free speech, et cetera. Such equations require a lot of explaining, to say the least.
Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it say money equals free speech. To express it as Scalia does as an absolutistic mathematics equation
is to deny the nation the freedom of a very important expression: the freedom to draw a line in political ethics.
http://www.fsmitha.com/opinion/money_speech.htm

From the other side, some disagree vigorously with Buckley, arguing that it sustained limits on campaign contributions which are protected by the First Amendment as free speech. This position was advanced by Chief Justice Warren Burger whose dissenting opinion argued that individual contributions and expenditures are protected speech acts. In recent years, Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, who were not on the Court at the time of Buckley, have unsuccessfully argued for overturning Buckley on these grounds. Despite criticism of Buckley from both sides, the case remains the starting point for judicial analysis of the constitutionality of campaign finance restrictions. See e.g. McConnell v. FEC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo

 

"A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached."

Is that what you're referring to?

 

Rj

It’s called an election

Thing is the US has an ‘elected government’ so isn’t any failure down to those that elected people into government? It seems to me you are blaming ‘government’ for being ‘bad’ when the true problem is a dysfunctional political system that allows ‘bad’ representatives into power, it would seem then to me that the solution would be to try and fix the political system so elections get ‘good’ representatives into power.

 

I have a hard time believing that you don't know what I'm talking about.

 

Just trying to get across that money does not equal free speech, but only a larger audience. The problem is not what is being said, but instead what can be purchased by and from the least regulated entity in our Nation, our government.

 

Indie

Oh but it is - if what is being promoted (and often been accepted without question) is detrimental to the system.

As has been explained many times there is a huge wealth backed propaganda machine promoting an agenda favourable to wealth. Pro-wealth think tanks, lobbyists, PR firms etc pump out supposedly ‘independent’ reports or ‘evidence’ that are then used by the wealth financed media as ‘proof’ that right wing/neoliberal/free market ideas are the best. Those ideas then become the ‘common sense’ of many ordinary people who come to forums like this and try and push that right wing agenda – only to discover that they a totally unable to defend it from criticism, because it is indoctrinated ‘evidence’ that seems to have involved no real though on their part.

One strand of that propaganda is anti-government - because they want to be strong and the government weak, they want to be unregulated by government, they want to pay less tax, and on and on.

So what you get is

"Government is not the solution to our problem government IS the problem" they push the idea that ‘government’ is the fountainhead of all woes. But the US has an ‘elected government’ so any failure of ‘government’ are in the end down to those that elected the representatives into government?

It is easy to blame faceless ‘government’ for bad laws and stupid actions but in a democracy the people responsible are not faceless they are the faces of your fellow citizens.

To me the true problem seems to be a dysfunctional political system that allows ‘bad’ representatives into power, it would seem then to me that the solution would be to try and fix the political system so elections get ‘good’ representatives into power.

What I and many others are concerned about is the power and influence that wealth seems to have within the US political system. That influence has grown over the last thirty odd years, because of free market/neoliberal ideas that wealth has been prompting through the lobbying and propaganda I’ve mentioned.

But that influence will continue if people just accept without question the pro-wealth propaganda.