From one perspective I am not against lobbying in general.
The idea is that legislator don't have the full context and don't know the impact of their work - so they welcome industry or matter experts. Which is quite reasonable. I would argue that the job of the legislator is to know what they are doing, but I can see it being hard for specific technical issues that really benefits from first hand experience.
I am not even particularly against the idea of donating money to make sure a particular issue is known to the public, so that the public can make an effective voting decision.
But all of this seems quite too much.
Companies have disproportionate amount of money to donate and much less synchronization issue that citizen.
> "It's part and parcel to a system that fully embraces free speech," said Tom Garrett, a vice president at the Institute for Free Speech. "All Americans have the right to express themselves and exercise their right to political speech to the fullest extent possible."
I agree in spirit, but if not courts, and government, who is the one who gets to decide on it? Since it's a democratic country, if people disagreed or had a strong opinion about it, then would've voted accordingly.
When was it put up to a vote? I don't recall many national elections where I was asked my opinion about issues, only to choose between two options. And most of the time between one option really.
Entrenched power is leveraged to further entrench power. No way such a bill would have gotten through Congress, even before Citizens United. But is that democracy?
Free speech is when I scream so loud, no one else can even be heard. Its your fault anyway. Maybe if you cared you should have spent your life learning how to scream louder.
I think the idea that we should also be able to hide our large donations started here, but got reenforced by later decisions. ok, it's your money, you get to send it to whoever you like. but you shouldn't be able to hide. companies shouldn't act as cover for their owners, and if a candidate is largely propped up by the billionaire class then shouldn't voters at least be aware? shouldn't we be allowed to connect the dots and say 'wow, so you're removing protection for these wetlands because this guy threw you a couple million to get elected'?
> It also leaves out the $106 million-plus Google co-founder Sergey Brin has spent in California fighting a proposed wealth tax and other issues
Damn, I can't think of a better argument for wealth tax if one dude alone is willing to spend $100m to fight it. He clearly has too much.
From one perspective I am not against lobbying in general.
The idea is that legislator don't have the full context and don't know the impact of their work - so they welcome industry or matter experts. Which is quite reasonable. I would argue that the job of the legislator is to know what they are doing, but I can see it being hard for specific technical issues that really benefits from first hand experience.
I am not even particularly against the idea of donating money to make sure a particular issue is known to the public, so that the public can make an effective voting decision.
But all of this seems quite too much.
Companies have disproportionate amount of money to donate and much less synchronization issue that citizen.
"Citizens United" turned "one man, one vote" into "one dollar, one vote"
It must be overturned. It was a bogus ruling.
Article says that there is an increase of 40% from 2024 to 2026 for political donations.
Interestingly, the NASDAQ over the same time has also grown 40%.
This is how democracies die.
> "It's part and parcel to a system that fully embraces free speech," said Tom Garrett, a vice president at the Institute for Free Speech. "All Americans have the right to express themselves and exercise their right to political speech to the fullest extent possible."
Corporations are people, my friend.
> Corporations are people, my friend.
Then maybe we should start taxing them like people...
File the 1040 take only the standard deduction no matter your income. Revenue, not profit, is your income. Etc.
Money is not speech, no matter what the courts say.
I agree in spirit, but if not courts, and government, who is the one who gets to decide on it? Since it's a democratic country, if people disagreed or had a strong opinion about it, then would've voted accordingly.
When was it put up to a vote? I don't recall many national elections where I was asked my opinion about issues, only to choose between two options. And most of the time between one option really.
Entrenched power is leveraged to further entrench power. No way such a bill would have gotten through Congress, even before Citizens United. But is that democracy?
Free speech is when I scream so loud, no one else can even be heard. Its your fault anyway. Maybe if you cared you should have spent your life learning how to scream louder.
Citizens United is possibly the worst SCOTUS decision ever, on par with Dred Scott and Plessy v Fergeson. Abomination.
I think the idea that we should also be able to hide our large donations started here, but got reenforced by later decisions. ok, it's your money, you get to send it to whoever you like. but you shouldn't be able to hide. companies shouldn't act as cover for their owners, and if a candidate is largely propped up by the billionaire class then shouldn't voters at least be aware? shouldn't we be allowed to connect the dots and say 'wow, so you're removing protection for these wetlands because this guy threw you a couple million to get elected'?