Comment by jonstewart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonstewart | Hacker News Reader

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The essential problem, which Justice Kennedy seemed not to understand, is that money is not speech. The easy test to show this as nonsense is quantification, i.e., it’s clearly the case that some citizens have more money than others, but it’s nonsense to think that some citizens have more free speech than others.

One of Justice Kennedy’s clerks in 2009-2010 was Misha Tseytlin, a Federalist Society member who undoubtedly helped write Kennedy’s opinion on the Bilski case, which widened the potential for business process patents and considered by many software developers to be a terrible decision regarding the patentability of software. Despite no connection to Wisconsin whatsoever, Tseytlin was later appointed Wisconsin Solicitor General by Scott Walker and worked on many of the voter suppression initiatives in Wisconsin. He’s been party to litigation on behalf of the Wisconsin Tavern League seeking to overturn Governor Evers’s executive order on masks and public gatherings. I’m a part-time resident of the state and grew up there, and it’s distressing to me that a fringe ideologue with no connection to the state continues to do it harm.

Does this quantification argument hold for citizens that are considered public figures? While they might not have more free speech than other citizens, they certainly have a more visible platform to communicate their opinions

Public Figures != Rich.

Bezos has no more free speech than Bernie Sanders, even though Sanders is only a millionaire.

Whether or not money is speech, most of the time speech needs money.

Banning spending money on newspaper is banning the newspaper. Banning spending money on advertisement is banning the advertisement.

Under the dissenting view in Citizens United, Congress could ban the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, etc. from talking about politics. That's just absurd. Congress could have banned the Federalist Papers!

I've always tried to find a middle ground that prevented for profit corporations from spending money. But like 99% of our media is for profit corporations. It doesn't make sense to ban Amazon from political speech, unless they buy the Washington Post, in which case they can do whatever the fuck they want.

I find your reply unconvincing and disjointed. Among many other potential avenues for debate, the lowest hanging fruit seems to be noting that you’ve seemingly forgotten about freedom of the press with all your examples.

> the lowest hanging fruit seems to be noting that you’ve seemingly forgotten about freedom of the press with all your examples.

That's a deep, deep non sequitur.

Citzens United was about whether the government can stop corporations such as the NYT from talking about politics. The majority held that they cannot; freedom of the press (in the form of the fist amendment) protects them.

The minority held that the freedom of the press does not protect them. The person you are replying to noted, correctly, that under this view the NYT could be stopped from discussing politics, and your reply is, essentially, "that can't be right, the first amendment would protect them!" I agree, of course, as did, thankfully, Justice Kennedy and four of the other justices. The dissenting justices, however, seem to have forgotten about freedom of the press...

Since Citizen's United, I can think of no effective or fair way to curtail corporate speech.

But I can think of dozens of ways to amplify and nurture non-corporate speech.

Yes, the torrent of bullshit is crippling democracy. But it's also true that other important speech is still not heard.

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