GOP Going All-Out to Legalize Bribery

[Indy]

[Doncorelone]

This what happens when the philosophy of 'Government legislation = interference' becomes warped and taken to the nth degree due to excessive interference by corporate America.

[The dane]

In spite of all the talk about the ACA and gay marriage, the real legacy of the Roberts court will be the undermining of US democracy.

Citizens United was the most important decision since Bush v Gore, and this would take it even further.

[Indy]

Agreed.

This is just making it no-holds barred for both corporations and individuals. You, with your lone "vote"? You are screwed.

Granted this is already more or less the case; this just makes it official.

[Professor]

Actually, people giving money to a candidate, instead of a PAC, would increase transparency. Sure, you'd have people giving thousands directly to candidates. But, instead of setting up some shadow PAC and running commercials, everyone would see that Mr. Smith gave money to Candidate X. That way, when Candidate X started considering Mr. Smith for a high-level position, we'd all know about it.

[The Dude]

Yeah, this is a scary case.

[Indy]

Er, the dark money groups would still exist.

And it would be really interesting to see how they push for donors to retain "anonymity" because, why, they're entitled to their privacy as well as their "free $peech."

Here's an idea: any time a TV candidate makes a commercial on an issue or a TV appearance talking about an issue, the amount of contributions he's received from someone with skin in that game must appear on the screen. Say, like Pop-Up video. So like when Boehner goes on TV and weeps openly about the injustice of regulating Wall St. a little bubble pops up reminding us that he received about $400K from that industry in the past 12 months.

BTW guess who three of Obama's top five contributors are (not people, sort of-industries)? Weird.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contr ... =N00009638

And you'll never guess who the other two are...

Let me give you some perspective here. GM used to be a client of mine. One time out there, I invited my contact to lunch. Only if she paid, she said, because GM strictly prohibited employees from accepting free stuff from outside vendors. Why? To insure that GM employees are making decisions based only on what's good for the company and not what's good for them as far as receiving gifts. Walmart has the same policy.

On the flipside, on the agency side in the digital world, it has become rampant that if you want to get on that buy, you need to bribe the media buyer out the ass--some have even put out wish lists!!! And not cheap stuff either: Hawks tickets, iPads, etc.

You know who gets hosed in those instances? The client that trusted them to buy media, because the buyer is only looking to benefit themselves.

Yet we tolerate that from our elected leaders? Amazing.

[Ben Huh]

Citizens United is one of those things that you have to allow even if it can be used for evil purposes, which it has and will continue to do so. It stinks, because without it a joe schmoe like me wouldn't be able to generate 3rd part media in favor of a candidate. If I have $5000 and I want to make my own advertisement in favor of a candidate, Citizens United allows me to do that. It is one of of those things that's there to provide an avenue for the little people to express their opinions that gets used by corporations for their own benefit. I support Citizens United because of the former....people should be allowed to make 3rd party media that supports candidates if they so desire. I understand that you feel that simply voting for someone is sufficient, and it obviously is the most important thing someone can do in support, but it's not the only thing. IMO if a citizen wants to make a commercial, put an ad in the paper, etc. to promote a candidate they should be allowed to.

As far as donations made directly to a candidate? Those should most def be capped.

[exploited]

Without a national elections commission, which is constitutionally impossible, you are going to get f**k a thousand different ways anyways.

[Medius]

The real problem here is we have a big centralized government, while having an election system designed around a small decentralized government.

The answer I'd prefer is to decentralize as I firmly believe that a large centralized government will always be corrupt. However, if you insist on a large centralized government, you need to alter the constitution to support an election system for such a government.

In short, the government we have is not the one envisioned in the constitution, but the elections we have are following the original rules.