The Glade 4.0

Well, there are already some safeguards out there for Bill the individual. Unless I'm mistaken, there are caps on the amount that a single person can donate to a campaign. Contributions to lobby groups is still an issue, but unfortunately I don't really see a good way to address that without curtailing individuals overly much.

My entire point is that I don't think that anyone should have more rights than anyone else. The way I see it, today Bill has far more rights than I do. He has far more "free speech" than I do, because he can spend spend so much more money than I can in an effort to get his opinions made. All that being said, I really don't have too many qualms with how individual contributors are handled today. It's about the best we can do I think overall.

The people are where the buck stops.

Want hope and change? Lobbyists didn't swing that.

Want smaller government? Lobbyists aren't going to swing that next year either.

People's votes counted 3 years ago and they'll count next year, lobbyists can only get messages out, they can't change anyone's mind...they can't corrupt honest folks.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Except that A) again, they must compete with everyone ELSE that has access to politicians, and B) they actually represent the interests of large numbers of citizens that own stock in them them, and work for them. Given that many retirement and other investment funds purchase stock, this could mean hundreds of thousands or 3even millions of citizens have a stake in a large company like Ford.

You're trying to treat the company as if it exists in a vaccuum of competing influences, and as if it has no obligations to meet.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

How does Bill Gates being able to make his opinions translate to him having "more" free speech? It's funny, this objection doesn't seem to crop up when we have some ignoramus from Hollywood going on and on about whatever their pet issue is.

Bill Gates does not have any more rights than you do. Each of you has the right to free speech, within your means to exercise it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The bolded area is the important part of your sentence. Basically his effective rights are greater than mine. As I've said, it's something that is somewhat annoying, but ultimately not really possible to get around.

I don't think you understand what rights are. He has more money than you, but he has the same rights.

It is a mistake to think that just because someone owns stock in a certain company or works for them that they support all of the political goals of that company.

That there is competition for the attention and support of a politician is part of the point. The more money an organization has the more advantage they have in competing for that attention.

Were it up to me, no company would be able to donate to either lobby groups or political campaigns. Only private individuals would be able to.

Oh I completely understand what rights are. What most folks here like to ignore is the law of unintended consequences of those rights when it comes to the wealthy.

Aizle, DE and Stathol have made my points for me. Influence in DC is about money apparently; wealthy individuals (i.e. Gates, Buffett) and collections of individuals (i.e. Ford, AARP, SEIU) have more of it than you do. It by no means grants them more "rights" it does, apparently, grant them more "access". If the pollution of money in DC is really important to you, make sure it is given due consideration when you exercise your right to vote.

Your previous comments and the new one about donations make it clear that the quote you used about citizens and corporations is not really connected with the issue you are complaining about, after all.

No one even came close to stating that "someone owns stock in a certain company or works for them that they support all of the political goals of that company."

What do you mean by "the law of unintended consequences of those rights when it comes to the wealthy"?

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Does that go for unions as well?

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

The only difference being wealthy provides is the things money can buy. By definition, you can't buy an honest man. You can't buy love, you can't buy respect, etc.

I guess it's a matter of perspective. I don't see wealthy people being better than me or as having more of what matters, and I don't see myself as better or more powerful than those with less money than I possess.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Duh. Of course. However, there are a lot of owners of stock in any given company, and just because the company cannot or does not line up exactly with the political views of any or all of them does not mean that its political goal of obtaining conditions favorable to it is not reflective of the reason the people are invested, directly or indirectly, in the company in the first place.

This is like saying your congressional representative does not represent you just because you do not agree with him on every issue. Of course you don't. He represents a lot of people, and just because he can't make every consituent 100% happy does not mean he does not represent them in the aggregate. You are attempting to create an absurdly high standard in order to sustain your initial complaint.



So what? An organization is, by definition, an organization of people. I don't see any good reason why each and every individual should only be able to exercise their influence alone rather than in conjunction with and in compromise with other individuals, just because the nature of their associasion is a business.



That's absolutely absurd. First of all, some private individuals have vastly greater influence than others, often for far worse reasons than companies do. It makes for more sense that a company like For which produces real products and serves an actual purpose in the economy should have greater influence on the behalf of its many stockholders than some idiotic dipshit like Angelina Jolie getting a platform for her pet issues just because she acts in movies and steals the equally idiotic dipshit husband of another idiotic dipshit actress.

Second, you leave out organizations that are not companies, but are not private individuals either. I suppose it's perfectly acceptable that NOW or ACORN have a lobbying arm, but not Ford?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

His effective rights are not any greater than yours at all. A right is something you are permitted by <insert whatever you think the source of rights is here> to do; it has nothing to do with your ability to do it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You've never supplied any evidence that you do.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

It's very evident that you don't. Regardless of what you think about the nature of rights, its completely absurd to conflate the ability to perform an act with a right to perform it.

Your argument essentially boils down to the idea that having more financial means than another means you have more rights than they do. While in some places this may actually be the case, it's something we try to avoid in this country and when it does come to the public eye it tends to result in severe consequences.. Bernie Madoff for example.

It's a very sneaky way of trying to insert the idea that some people having more money than others is some sort of problem into the public conciousness, just like the phrase "income inequality" by simply assuming that more rights are had by the wealthy, or playing on the gut reaction people have to any sort of "inequality" and thereby avoiding real debate or real examination of these ideas by simply phrasing them as if they are fundamental assumptions everyone holds.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

an argument completely invalidated by the fact that you can prove that ad campaigns DO sway public opinion. Not every individual will be swayed. But as a group, human beings can be moved.

Even individuals can be manipulated with the right tactics.

If you're a very eloquent public speaker, does that mean you have more rights too? Like I said, some people here don't really know what rights are, or are inventing their own definitions.

No, not "prove". You can argue that an ad campaign can affect an election and you can supply evidence that an ad campaign has certain influences over certain people under certain circumstances, but "proof" in as broad a context as you've claimed is a higher standard than you can jump with your conclusions.

Unless, of course, you can produce such proof. If you can, please do so.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Most of the scientific articles on the effect of advertising that I had easy access to (read: query of Google Scholar) are behind for-fee sites. I'll see what I can dig up later, but I think the mere fact that advertising is a trillion dollar+ industry pretty much proves that it does sway public opinion, (since its entire purpose is to sway opinion) --an industry with zero demonstrable effect would have died years ago.

So...


Yes, and:


The former.

Essentially, you're telling me that "equal rights" means "equal outcome", and therefore our government is justified in treating people differently in the name of equality. Awesome.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

How does that invalidate his argument at all? Of course people are persuaded by campaign adds - that's the point of them. What exactly is inhernetly wrong with trying to convince people that they ought to adhere to your point of view, or elect you? (the merits or lack thereof of the ones currently doing so notwithstanding)

This isn't "manipulation". That's just predjudicial language to imply that there's something wrong with this, when in fact anything wrong is entirely dependent on what occurs in specific instances, not in the concpet itself. The fact that people allow themselves to be swayed by political advertising without looking into the matters in question more deeply is their fault, not that of the advertiser.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yup.

As an aside, I've never really understood why I've somehow been labeled as a lover of unions. I am by and large not a fan of them at all, and feel that most unions today are counter productive and unnecessary.

This is the crux of our disagreement I think. Having the right to do something, but then in reality not being able to actually effect anything with it is to effectively have no right at all. In this specific example, it has been shown repeatedly that the amount of money funneled into a campaign has a direct effect on the chances of being elected. Therefore it's quite easy to show that someone or an organization with a lot of wealth can absolutely affect the outcomes of an election.

Doesn't matter DE. The fact is, last year Democrats outspent Republicans by about 50% in the house races but it didn't give them a correlating numerical advantage. If TheRiov was correct, Democratic spending would have swept the elections in their favor.
I did have trouble reading this article though, it seems to say different things, but I have to take what it says at face value.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/us/po ... money.html

This one is a bit clearer -

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... stpop_read

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In time, this too shall pass.

Here's the thing:

1) If our elected officials didn't have anything to sell, no one would be looking to buy. In no small part, the undue influence of lobbying money on federal government is due to the excessive amount of power that it wields in the first place. Take away that power and you'd see a dramatic decrease in the lobbying industry. Or, at the very least, the industry would have to fundamentally change to lobby the people instead of the assholes in Washington.

2) This whole affair of senatorial and presidential candidates "needing" massive campaign warchests is a problem entirely of our own making. There's a damn good reason why senators weren't originally subject to popular election and why the president still isn't -- in theory. In practice, we've hamstrung and/or hopelessly corrupted the electoral college by allowing them to become "bound" to party pledges under terms of civil penalty, and (in almost all cases) a "winner takes all" electoral vote policy by the individual states.

The idea of direct election by the people is seductive. It sounds like it shoudl be more egalitarian and should give more power to the people, but the reality is quite the opposite. The larger the electorate, the more corrupt the system becomes, and the more diluted and meaningless your individual vote becomes. Large scale popular election just doesn't work. It always winds up working against its own ends.

Abridging the rights of the private citizens is not the solution to this problem. If you want to fix Washington, start by emasculating it. Advocate strict adherence to the enumerated federal powers of the Constitution. Demand the return of the federal excesses of power to the states and the people. Fix campaign finance by making massive campaign funds irrelevant. Wake up to the reality that massive popular elections are a complete **** that only wind up hurting the little guy. He stands a much greater chance of influencing his state legislature's vote for electors or senators than he does in influencing a nation-wide or state-wide popular election.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.