Supreme Court Strikes Down Aggregate Limits on Federal Campaign Contributions
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Politicians get the lion's share of that money from people expecting an ROI.
Our political system literally has a mandatory bribe quota.
> but in the case of company X the lobbying ROI is a net positive for everyone, so the system can't be all bad
Please list the top 10 donors (heck, I'll be generous: any 10 consecutive donors) to any seat-holding political party of your choice, along with your opinion of whether or not the policy they're after is net-beneficial to society (+), zero sum (0), or a net loss to society (-). Alternatively, pick the +/0/- labels according to your unapologetic self-interest, since it's reasonable to vote on that basis rather than trying to work out the whole "net benefit to society" thing.
Let's focus on what lobbying IS instead of hoping (for example) that google will displace comcast from the gravy train.
Money is the ONLY speech heard by career politicians
It's worth noting, that while Breyer is often considered a liberal, he has also dissented (with similar logic) in favour of upholding a ban on violent videogames: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchant...
Additionally, ACLU did file an amicus brief in Citizens United case (although the law in question was much more unambigious restriction of speech) in favour of Citizens United and while they did not do so in this case, there does seem to be an internal split on the matter:
http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/03/the-aclu-the-mccutcheon-ca...
An analogous situation may be access to abortion: opening an abortion cleaning is not the same as getting an actual abortion, but restricting the clinics severely curtail the options available to women (I can't find the citation now, but this was the logic used in a recent decision in a federal court about an AZ law). Keep in mind that abortion is a non-enumerated right, in theory enumerated rights like free speech are held to even tighter standards.
Ezel vs. Chicago (also from a district court, but drawing on SCOTUS precedents) is also similar: while the right to open a shooting range is not equivalent to the right to bear arms, the court ruled that since a Chicago requires range practice in order to receive a firearm license, the city must allow ranges within its limits. So far there isn't a clear scrutiny standard set for the second amendment, but it seems to be converging on "heightened scrutiny" which (again) is less than the strict scrutiny standard applied to the first.
Don't get me wrong, I am not happy about money in politics, but I am not willing to jeopardize the right to free speech (or general way individual vs. collective equation is evaluated in regards to constitutional rights) to fight it.
I can offer a candidate as much money as I please, as is my right, but in the interest of providing equal protection under the law to the voters, the public may choose to prevent the candidate from accepting more than a certain amount from a single source.
Campaign contributions limits are not restrictions upon the rights of the public; they are restrictions upon the privilege of representing other people as part of the government. If you wish to retain your unlimited ability to speak as a private individual, do not enter the public sector.
The same principle, applied by the courts elsewhere, would also strike down laws preventing public servants from engaging in certain forms of political activity. After all, they have freedom of speech as well, don't they?
I think that the most likely and most damaging response to this will be a decreasing engagement by career politicians with near-the-median people and increasing engagement with wealthy patrons. The interests represented will shift accordingly.
>>> would also strike down laws preventing public servants from engaging in certain forms of political activity
This is not the same. While everybody has right to free speech, nobody has right to be a public servant. So once the person resigns from his public servant position, she has full right to speak her mind. But while occupying that position, certain restrictions - taken voluntarily as condition for this assignment - may apply as long as you want to keep that position. You have the full right to make face tattoos and avoid bathing, but if you join customer service in a bank, they may not accept you unless you look and smell in a way that don't make their clients faint. And if you are being appointed the head of the IRS, it's better that you avoid political campaigning as long as you are in that post. Not that it is easy to achieve, as it turns out, but we should at least try. When we are employed, we give up certain freedoms - freedom to choose where we are, what we do, what we say, to some measure, etc. - in exchange for money. Not all employment requires this, but some do, and it's nothing out for the ordinary. We are not employees of the Congress, however - on the contrary, the Congress are employees of the citizens.
Direct support to a campaign and political advocacy are two different things. This is why I can believe that the Citizens United case was not completely ridiculous, and that this one is beyond reason. Your right to free speech ends at the tip of your own tongue. If you give your words to someone else, he might not be able to speak them.
In the same way, if you give control of some money to someone else, they will be the ones responsible for how it gets spent, not you. They may be under different contractual and legal obligations.
As is the case for people seeking public office. They must follow rules that ordinary people will probably never even need to know.
No, not really. Giving candidate the money to buy ads and directly buying ads is essentially the same thing from any aspect that may interest us.
>>> Your right to free speech ends at the tip of your own tongue.
This is obviously false. If that were true, we could not have free press, or free TV, or any electronic or paper media. What we would have is what people in USSR had - they were free to talk about politics in their own kitchen, but once they said anything in public or tried any political action, they were suppressed. This is not freedom, this is a mockery of it. And Founding Fathers clearly never intended to treat freedom of speech that narrow - as a freedom to produce any sounds you like with your throat and tongue. For a functioning democracy, much broader freedoms - freedoms to publish your opinion as widely as you can and engage in discussion with as many people as you can, and exercise any political actions you can (excluding violence and other rights violations, of course) - are absolutely necessary.
>>> if you give control of some money to someone else, they will be the ones responsible for how it gets spent, not you
This is false, too. If you give somebody money and say "I want you to hire a killer to murder this guy", you both would be part of criminal conspiracy. That's how mafia bosses get jailed.
>>> As is the case for people seeking public office. They must follow rules that ordinary people will probably never even need to know.
People seeking office have same rights as everybody else - because they are everybody else. Any citizen can seek office and has right to do so. When in the office, they have to accept certain limits that come with the job, but when seeking office they are not under any obligation yet, and have absolutely equal rights with any random citizen. All those "campaign finance" laws are just a futile populistic attempt to control political discourse, and Supreme Court is routinely shutting them down as infringing people's liberties, and rightfully so.
Just from what I see here, there are contradictions. Political candidates are at once both ventriloquist dummies and freewilled adults. Donors are potentially liable for fraudulent campaigning. Challengers and incumbents should play by a different set of rules.
I'm sure that we both consider ourselves fortunate that the other is not a Supreme Court Justice.
Citizens, by birth or going through the effort of naturalization have a bond to their nation. And so we trust that collectively, the political speech from those citizens serves the long term interests of the nation. Corporations have no such bond, so an essential element that is provided with live citizens is missing.
Why is this "really, really bad?" You talk about how bad this is with a bunch of FUD language about how this is a threat to democracy and there are a bunch of problems with this decision but you never actually explain why.
I don't necessarily approach this as the worst thing that has ever happened, and not everyone here does either, so it might help to explain something you seem to assume everyone knows.
Supreme Court Strikes Down Aggregate Limits on Federal Campaign Contributions
So, at the end of the day individuals can spread their influence "a mile wide and an inch deep". But this does not imply that such individuals can spend in both unlimited depth and breadth. The primary limits (<$3K/per) remain inplace. And the article also notes that this does not impact groups.
Wednesday’s decision concerned only contributions from individuals. Federal law continues to ban contributions by corporations and unions.
Whether this is a good idea or not is debatable. But the editorialized headline doesn't help communicate the actual news.
____________
# HN submitted> "Supreme Court Strikes Down Limits on Federal Campaign Contributions"
Restricting how money is spent in political races only protects incumbents and their party. It in no way protects the right of the people to vote for whom they want. The costs involved in modern campaigns can be insurmountable with the restrictions placed on donations and expenditures. The costs have exceed inflation, the limits have not.
Never ever support such restrictions just because you don't like the message or messenger because you are merely handing someone the means to do the same to you.
A cursory read of the wikipedia article would clear this up, but the media narrative surrounding these rulings will dominate for some time.
When word concerning the plot of the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington reached the circles of Government, some officials sought, by persuasion, to discourage its distribution. ... Under Austin [(the basis for the campaign finance restriction discussed)], though, officials could havedone more than discourage its distribution — they could have banned the film. After all, it, like [the movie] _Hillary_, was speech funded by a corporation that was critical of Members of Congress. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington may befiction and caricature; but fiction and caricature can be a powerful force. Modern day movies, television comedies, or skits on Youtube.com might portray public officials or public policies in unflattering ways. Yet if a covered transmission during the blackout period creates the background for candidate endorsement or opposition, a felony occurs solely because a corporation, other than an exempt media corporation, has made the “purchase, payment, distribution, loan, advance, deposit, or gift of money or anything of value” in order to engage in political speech. ... Speech would be suppressed in the realm where its necessity is most evident: in the public dialogue preceding a real election. Governments are often hostile to speech, but under our law and our tradition it seems stranger than fiction for our Government to make this political speech a crime. Yet this is the statute’s purpose and design.
Some members of the public might consider _Hillary_ to be insightful and instructive; some might find it to beneither high art nor a fair discussion on how to set the Nation’s course; still others simply might suspend judgment on these points but decide to think more about issues and candidates. Those choices and assessments, however, are not for the Government to make. “The First Amend-ment underwrites the freedom to experiment and to create in the realm of thought and speech. Citizens must be free to use new forms, and new forums, for the expression ofideas. The civic discourse belongs to the people, and the Government may not prescribe the means used to conduct it.”
Great point. The only way to limit contributions from the likes of the NRA but not from groups like the EFF is to focus regulations on the message or messenger itself. That kind of thinking goes completely against free speech. It is also dangerous. Your message may get preferential treatment today, but not necessarily tomorrow.
Although it should be pointed out the NRA's contributions are subject to these individual limits, per http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/contriblimits.shtml it looks like $5K per election.
Which is not a lot of money, more of a signal of approval. Which is important, because the IRS is promulgating regulations to enshrine their abuse of "Tea Party" groups, which much like the ones struck down in Citizens United would prevent it from making communications about candidates 60 days before an election (30 before a primary; see http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/Treasury,-IRS-Will-Issue-Pro... ).
It's hard to express how dangerous this is....
This is false.
http://www.businessinsider.com/congress-election-money-2012-...
People who spend more money win. So the rich and powerful can completely override the majority of people. People with no connection to a race can invest large amounts of money to secure a win. In fact, if you look around the world, the only way to make sure incumbents aren't over-protected is to restrict money. Looking at the American system, I don't see how anyone could utter the above line seriously. How has more money not protected incumbents?
Plenty often, when enough people speak up (or contribute to others' costs of speaking up). Of late, numerous anti-gun incumbents are being recalled and replaced for enacting right-transgressing legislation.
This is intuitive, and almost universally believed. But all actual data I'm aware of doesn't support this.
for example [1]
conventional wisdom, especially among progressives, is that money can buy elections. The Citizens United case was supposed to be the end of democracy since it meant unlimited corporate spending on elections. If money really did buy office, 2012 should have been great evidence for the hypothesis.
Instead 2012 looks like a case study in the powerlessness of money, in the triumph of the autonomous voter. For instance, the Sunlight Foundation reports that 2/3 of outside cash was spent on losers.
[1] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/11/money_has_littl....
The best funded campaign still convinced ~47% of voters to vote for a candidate that stated he didn't care about 47% of the country. That should be downright scary.
So what I am suggesting is that throwing a shit-ton of money promoting a horrible person worked, it brought a person who said "veterans, disabled people, seniors, you know what guys, fuck you" on even standing with someone who didn't. It just didn't convince enough people.
Other things you're forgetting:
1. Only 62.3% of eligible voters even voted. So its not like half the country sided with him, its more like half of half (.47 * .623 = 29%). This also ignores all the people that disagreed with him that weren't eligible to vote, which is likely a LOT since it includes the undocumented and youth -- which theoretically fall into the category he doesn't care about. Right there alone you have a better explanation than "money".
2. Most people probably never even found out about Romney's comment, because they never find out about anything. You seem to be politically motivated and informed, you're making the mistake of assuming most other people are too.
3. You ignore that many people have deal-breaker issues and will give their guy a pass on literally everything else, ON BOTH SIDES. If I could somehow scientifically prove that a candidate would completely eliminate unemployment and poverty, he'd probably still lose a significant portion of the vote if he was overly pro-choice or pro-gay marriage. Same goes if he was pro-life or anti-gay marriage.
4. Both sides basically have half the media working for them spinning regardless of how much money they have. So in an environment where the media is constantly blowing out of proportion what "the other guy said" and going to absurd lengths to rationalize what "our guy said", it is not unexpected that the voting population becomes exhausted and skeptical about these events (this is a rational response btw).
5. People have their personal identities tied up in their political positions. Its not just this Romney comment, most times people prefer to defend their wrong positions than deal with the existential crisis that they were "wrong". This has way more to do with politics being treated as a team than as something external to yourself. You speak of a rational voting base? A rational voting base would have no party affiliation whatsoever, it makes no sense. You should be voting each time based on what is offered to you. Instead they see their party as their family. In the same way that if your dad said something unkosher you would take pains to understand what he "meant" while others would not, so too do people of a party try to rationalize what their candidate said vs what the other candidate said.
And so on. I'll reiterate that I'm making no comment on whether campaign finance is good or bad, just suggesting that Romney losing by "not enough" is just not a solid argument.
It makes no reference to any accounting for the popularity of the candidates before and after ad campaigns, the competitiveness of their districts (for House campaigns), incumbent status, and so on.
It also says
> Also interesting is that this doesn't even include outside independent spending, like money from Super PACs.
as if to imply outside spending (a) is totally proportional to direct campaign spending and (b) has the same effects, to the same degrees, as direct campaign spending, neither of which is necessarily true.
> People who spend more money win.
The shoddy evidence you cited directly contradicts your absolute.
EDIT: toned down wording of the last sentence
A system where the person with the most money wins is a level playing field?
I'm very happy I'm not playing your silly game.
In an ideal system, all voters would digest accurate information and make informed decisions, but we know this is not the case. Media has bias and political ads are misleading... plus people don't have the time or impetus to spend vast amounts of time 'sorting the wheat from the chaff.' Many people aren't even skeptics... which is a requisite for being able to filter the signal through that noise.
Yes, there is a strong free speech argument for donating money to campaigns, but make no mistake... oligarchs would (maybe already do?) run our country without any restrictions in place. Go read about Thomas Jefferson and the history of the estate tax before you try to argue this ideology because it is simply wrong and a danger to democracy.
I think that the one thing that efforts at campaign finance limitations has done is underline that wealth is fungible power, and that restricting the manner in which it is premitted to be applied to politics does very little to limit the influence it has in politics.
It is not an uncommon belief that laws like BCRA were designed to entrench incumbents.
"The history of campaign finance reform is the history of incumbent politicians seeking to muzzle speakers, any speakers, particularly those who might publicly criticize them and their legislation. It is a lot easier to legislate against unions, gun owners, 'fat cat' bankers, health insurance companies and any other industry or 'special interest' group when they can't talk back." Jan Baran, a member of the Commission on Federal Ethics Law Reform
And yet objectively, my vote is worth exactly the same as someone who is voting only to keep gay marriage illegal, let's say. I don't know if the policical discourse changes much except for that thin sliver of 'moderates' and swing voters... as emphasized in elections of late. People do change their ideologies--I've seen it. But it's a minority.
Can you name one federal government body in the US that takes its job more seriously, or understands its limits and bounds more thoroughly, than the SCOTUS?
Go ahead and try to find one. The SCOTUS is not perfect, it's made mistakes in the past, but please understand that you have a nation of people looking to them to make reasonable applications of law in extremely intricate situations.
Read the SCOTUS transcripts sometime of a polarizing issue and pay particular attention to the questions that the justices who oppose your own viewpoint will raise. They're deliberate, and precise, and unyielding to sensationalism. I think you'll be surprised to find much less judicial agenda than you seem to think SCOTUS is guilty of.
Practically speaking, as long as some needed transparency is in place, is there much of a real difference to how things are currently run?
Also, the rash of 5-4 decisions in the supreme court lately bothers me. Was there ever a time where the supreme court was this polarized?
People like Sheldon Adelson will still continue to contribute huge sums of money to candidates, he'll just be able to do it directly now.
I don't think it's particularly polarized. If Antonin Scalia is your benchmark for a "polarizing" figure, the # of 5-4 cases where he was in the majority appear to have been trending downward:
http://scdb.wustl.edu/analysisOverview.php?sid=1301-TICTAC-7...
Based on last year's statistics (http://scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/agreement_O...), even between the two Justices who disagree with each other the most (Ginsburg and Alito), they agree on the same judgment in 58% of cases.
I threw this together a couple years ago to demonstrate how a foreign company, if they wished, could donate funds which in the eyes of the law would be "untraceable" (even if it really is obvious).
It also just shows how quickly money gets "disguised". I should have put something in there about limits, but I forgot at the time.
I believe this is actually the first 5-4 decision in the current term, which has been going since October: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_term_opinions_of_the_Supre...
There have been a lot of 9-0 decisions, and several 6-3.
Moreover, cases often address multiple questions and a 5-4 decision can be handed down even when many or most of the questions answered were subject unanimous or nearly unanimous agreement. By the same token, a unanimous or near-unanimous decision could have been reached in spite of radically diverging rationales from the various justices.
Ruling here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf
Crux of argument:
First Amendment protections do not depend on the speaker’s “financial ability to engage in public discussion.” ... Distinguishing wealthy individuals from corporations based on the latter’s special advantages of, e.g., limited liability, does not suffice to allow laws prohibiting speech. It is irrelevant for First Amendment purposes that corporate funds may “have little or no correlation to the public’s support for the corporation’s political ideas.” Austin, supra, at 660. All speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech.
That and related points go on in detail for 57 pages.
Just because some don't exercise their rights doesn't mean they can suppress the rights of those who do.
Citizens United overturned provisions in BCRA which prevented corporations (which happens to include unions and non-profits) from speaking about a candidate 60 days before an election -- in the form of outlawed "electioneering communications". That was the crux of the decision; the law displayed speaker discrimination. It had nothing to do with monetary limits.
After Citizens United it's much easier for individuals without deep pockets to pool their money together to run advertising campaigns or other forms of political speech. Anyone can start a Super PAC and crowd fund for their cause, and they have to do so independently of any related candidate.
Regardless, nobody's votes are being bought. You still control the outcome of the election, nobody is forced to vote for anyone because they saw a campaign ad for them.
I understand your point, but I think it belies the reality of what takes place in most campaigns from my professional experience here in DC, though yes it is anecdotal of course. Yes, a small group of individuals can seek and gain funding, and they do, but in order to have a serious outcome on a race, you need to be able to shift vast sums of money and fast, often in the last 2 months. The Tea-Party influence on the 2010 midterm elections is a great example, the money that supported those candidates, did not come from the tea-party grassroots, but from a band of very rich donors, with very vested interests in legislative outcomes. And I don’t mean to single out the GOP here, the DNC has it’s own fair share of lobbied well-connected interests. Then of course there are the industries and organizations that simply fund the most likely to win in many races, ensuring candidate support for their industry when the time comes for considering legislation.
If I was to start a Super PAC for lower class family concerns, say universal Pre-K, how much of their disposable income do you think they could afford to donate to a political cause? It’d be no where near the vast checks that can be written by opposition groups. And even if successful, I will still likely get outplayed in the long game with legislative lobbying since I don’t have the continued funds to support an ongoing effort.
Now what would be a solution that doesn’t infringe on individual rights to free-speech, I’m not sure. Perhaps we should go back to completely publicly financed elections, though that obviously benefits the current two-party dichotomy over independent challengers, and would likely require serious constitutional amendments to be considered. I admit that more thinking would be required here, but I don’t think its a stretch to say the current system is severely broken, and in fairness to all here, was broken well before this relatively modest change.
Finally, of course votes aren’t being bought in the election - but a campaign costs a lot of money. http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/11/politics/congress-election-cos... The average US House race will cost 1.6M to win and the Senate 10.4M to win, and that increase far outpaces the rate of inflation. That money coming in is critical to reaching voters, paying for GOTV, and ensuring victory, beyond just the money spent on ads and outside group advertising. Then of course, all of that money these candidates raise, it’s not free money from well meaning corporations, they will expect to be repaid when the time comes, and they are.
Thank you. My opinion is the opposite of yours: I think this and Citizens United are the right decisions and free speech should be only be limited in a few restricted circumstances like immediate incitement to violence or terroristic threats. Yet, it's important to be honest about the trade off here and not misrepresent the decisions (e.g., saying that CU determined that "money is speech", etc...)
> Now what would be a solution that doesn’t infringe on individual rights to free-speech, I’m not sure. Perhaps we should go back to completely publicly financed elections, though that obviously benefits the current two-party dichotomy over independent challengers, and would likely require serious constitutional amendments to be considered. I admit that more thinking would be required here, but I don’t think its a stretch to say the current system is severely broken, and in fairness to all here, was broken well before this relatively modest change.
Ideal solution for me would allow donations to political organizations, including those that endorse candidates or lobby for bills (I don't like rent-seeking by Comcast, but I very much like the ACLU, EFF, and others). At the same time, the candidates themselves would rely (as you suggested) on public financing. I think this would take a constitutional amendment (as would overturning CU, but unlike an amendment to overturn CU it wouldn't set the precedents of amending the constitution to curtail rights when they are inconvenient), which should also mandate non-partisan drawing of electoral districts (California went that route and with great results).
Even if that is true, the current system of campaign finance results in large corporations dictating the laws because they fund the campaigns of the legislators.
OF COURSE votes are being bought. There's more than enough evidence that shows that he who spends more wins. There's also plenty of evidence showing that he who spends more on a candidate has a sympathetic candidate.
This is a systemic issue that is one step away from being full on bribery without impunity.
I'll agree on the speech part since it allows for groupings and patrons of movements to be more effective, but I think the press just lost some of its influence. Given the partisanship in the press, this isn't such a bad thing. They've been pushing their influence for years and can basically spend unlimited money on politics so its fine for "non-press" to be given the same ability.
the Government’s other arguments [reason] that corporate political speechcan be banned to prevent corruption or its appearance. The Buckley Court found this rationale “sufficiently important” to allow contribution limits but refused to extend that reasoning to expenditure limits, and the Court does not do so here. While a single Bellotti footnote purported to leave the question open, this Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. Later the Court elaborates on the reasoning behind this; I suggest you read it.
Should people be limited by how much time they can donate to volunteering for a candidate? How about how many words they can write in favor of a candidate? Why should someone who doesn't have the time to do those things but does have the time to write a check be prohibited from participating in the campaign process?
What was overturned was overall spending limits, that you could only donate a total of X dollars per election or whatever.
> Overby says that even with the individual candidate limit still in place, the ruling "[makes] it possible for a donor to give a party leader a check for more than $1 million, with the money getting parceled out in $2,600 amounts to the candidates."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/02/298326893/sup...
I'm confused!
Maybe it would have to be washed though 200 (!) "political committees" to allow for 1M in 5K max chunks ... which would seem to be a bit obvious.
Although that would be a loophole the Congress could close up, assuming it exists. E.g. a limit to the total to a "party leader" or PACs he controls would fly with 8 of the Supremes.