SCOTUS ruling on campaign finance

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kiryan
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SCOTUS ruling on campaign finance

Postby kiryan » Wed Jan 27, 2010 4:39 pm

Oregon voters raised taxes after decades of voting everything down that even smelled like a tax increase... they passed one on wealthy and corporations. The last lines of the article really caught my attention. Basically they say the union bought the election (of course thats unverifiable and counter charges would be justified). I only bring this up because the SCOTUS majority opinion basically said, all government is corrupt and if you allow restrictions on free speech they'll use it to maintain power by silencing opposition (whether its bipartisian or not).

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01 ... latestnews

It was a victory for public employee unions who were the spearhead of the campaign for the taxes and raised enough money to outspend the opponents.

A Common Cause analysis put their fundraising advantage to date at $6.85 million to $4.55 million in one of the state's most expensive campaigns.

"The bottom line is the unions bought the election," said State Republican Chairman Bob Tiernan. "It's going to be a sadder day as more businesses leave the state and more don't want to come here."
Daz
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Re: SCOTUS ruling on campaign finance

Postby Daz » Wed Jan 27, 2010 5:15 pm

If corporations and organizations are to be treated as 'people' or citizens, shouldn't they be capped at the $2,300 campaign contribution limits like we are? :P
kiryan
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Re: SCOTUS ruling on campaign finance

Postby kiryan » Wed Jan 27, 2010 10:15 pm

technically they didn't change the campaign donation thing. You can't give more than whatever is legal.

what they said is that corporations can spend as much money as they want running ads, movies, books ect independent of the candidates. For example, spend 100 million dollars making a "movie" that is basically an anti hilarly clinton campaign ad. Can't give McCain 100 million dollars to produce his own movie or have his campaign staff help create / critique it, but you can make it and show it and buy air time for it individually or as a corporation.
kiryan
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Re: SCOTUS ruling on campaign finance

Postby kiryan » Fri Jan 29, 2010 9:00 pm

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/senate-d ... id=9698641

Democrats Declare Rhetorical War on the Supreme Court

"Connect the dots," said Whitehouse. "Republicans are the party of the corporations. The judges are the appointees of the Republicans, and the judges just delivered for the corporations. It is being done in plain view."

(Unlike the special exemption for unions on the healthcare tax plan that was performed behind closed doors)

In the wake of that decision, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, "The Supreme Court just predetermined the winners of next November's elections."

--

So if money buys elections and candidates and positions and philosophies are completely meaningless to voters. What does that say about your election? What does that say about Obama's election where he forwent spending restrictions by not accepting public financing and raised an unprecedented amount of money (640 million)? But that was of the people you say, you mean of the unions spent 60 million getting him elected? What other corporation spent as much to get a candidate elected?

and this is a great article

http://usliberals.about.com/od/election ... -Stats.htm

Cash on hand, at June 30, 2008 - $71,670,324
Unpaid campaign debts, at June 30, 2008 - $890,921
Contributions, net total to June 30, 2008 - $337,990,555

Top Employers of Contributors

Lehman Brothers, investment banker
Citadel Investment Group, hedge fund investments
Goldman Sachs, investment banker
J.P. Morgan Chase, investment banker
Citigroup, financial services
Morgan Stanley, investment banker
Proskauer Rose, law firm
Jones Day, law firm
University of Chicago
University of California
Google, internet services
SONY Pictures, media and entertainment
20th Century Fox, media and entertainment

BOY thats real interesting, all those bank employees contributing to Obama's campaign.

Here's another gem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Oba ... aign,_2008

Obama explained his decision to opt out of the public financing system, saying, "public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who've become masters at gaming this broken system."[43] Critics of the decision argued that the decision contradicted earlier statements that he would attempt to reach agreement with McCain to obtain public financing,[44][46] and asserted that Obama's campaign was receiving as much support from unregulated 527 groups as McCain's.[47]

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/16 ... demfunds16

WASHINGTON — Facing a large deficit in the Democratic National Convention budget, officials from Barack Obama's campaign have begun personally soliciting labor unions and others for contributions of up to $1 million. In exchange, donors could get stadium skyboxes for Obama's acceptance speech and other perks.

In an example of the campaign's late-innings effort, a very senior Obama campaign official called the political director of one of the largest labor unions about two weeks ago and asked for a $500,000 contribution on top of a similar amount that had been committed just a few weeks before, according to the union official

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/40959

(CNSNews.com) – The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) political action committee made more than $27 million in independent expenditures in support of President-elect Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, according to a filing the PAC made with the Federal Election Commission.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... 96469.html

"We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama -- $60.7 million to be exact -- and we're proud of it," boasted Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, to the Las Vegas Sun this week. The behemoth labor organization's leadership is getting its money's worth. Whether rank-and-file workers and ordinary taxpayers are profiting from this ultimate campaign pay-for-play scheme is another matter entirely.

----

its pretty clear to me that this is a blow for democracy because unions no longer are the only corporation that can spend millions influencing and election.
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Re: SCOTUS ruling on campaign finance

Postby kiryan » Fri Jan 29, 2010 9:40 pm

Whitehouse also described recent interpretations of the 2nd Amendment inventing "a new individual constitutional right to bear arms that no previous Supreme Court had noticed for more than 200 years…"

A fair criticism from a liberal point of view if you take the "militia" arguments at face value despite being completely misguided. This Wikipedia article does a great job of giving readers a strong understanding of the 2nd amendment and what its debatable ambiguity does mean. Not particularly the first draft submitted by James Madison "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed;..."

If you study the history of the constitution and the bill of rights, it is very clear what the words mean even if you make a pedeantic argument that the english is ambigious. "These debates revolved primarily around risk of "mal-administration of the government"... in the context of fear of centralized control of the military. This amendment was specifically targetted to prevent government from disarming the people so that they could rise up against the central (federal) government.

2nd amendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Liberals look at this as only applying to militia's (like a national guard, but not under federal control). The first two phrases, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" obviously go together, and if you talk to liberals invalidates the 3rd phrase expect in the context of a militia. So only people in a militia have the right to bear arms vs "the peopple". To understand why they inserted the militia language at all is to understand what a militia was and who it was made up of (all males).

anyhow, this is not the debate that the "right of privacy" is. the right to privacy is not explicitly discussed while the right to bear arms has an entire amendment, and a verifiable historical context. 2nd amendment deniers are the liberal version of birthers. Obama may not be a citizen by their standards, but he has a Hawaii birth certificate and its all but impossible to prove that its fraudulent (whether by forgery or by pretenses).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Ame ... nstitution

James Madison's initial proposal for a bill of rights was brought to the floor of the House of Representatives on June 8, 1789, during the first session of Congress. The initial proposed passage relating to arms was:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.[61]

On July 21, Madison again raised the issue of his Bill and proposed a select committee be created to report on it. The House voted in favor of Madison's motion,[62] and the Bill of Rights entered committee for review. The committee returned to the House a reworded version of the Second Amendment on July 28.[63] On August 17, that version was read into the Journal:

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms.[64]

The Second Amendment was debated and modified during sessions of the House on in late August of 1789. These debates revolved primarily around risk of "mal-administration of the government" using the "religiously scrupulous" clause to destroy the militia as Great Britain had attempted to destroy the militia at the commencement of the American Revolution. These concerns were addressed by modifying the final clause, and on August 24, the House sent the following version to the U.S. Senate:

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.

The next day, August 25, the Senate received the Amendment from the House and entered it into the Senate Journal. When the Amendment was transcribed, the semicolon in the religious exemption portion was changed to a comma by the Senate scribe:

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.[65]

By this time, the proposed right to keep and bear arms was in a separate amendment, instead of being in a single amendment together with other proposed rights such as the due process right. As a Representative explained, this change allowed each amendment to "be passed upon distinctly by the States."[66] On September 4, the Senate voted to change the language of the Second Amendment by removing the definition of militia, and striking the conscientious objector clause:

A well regulated militia, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.[67]

The Senate returned to this Amendment for a final time on September 9. A proposal to insert the words "For the common defence" next to the words "Bear Arms" was defeated.[68] The Senate then slightly modified the language and voted to return the Bill of Rights to the House. The final version passed by the Senate was:

A well regulated militia being the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The House voted on September 21, 1789 to accept the changes made by the Senate, but the Amendment as finally entered into the House journal contained the additional words "necessary to"::

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.[69]

On December 15, 1791, the first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights), having been ratified by three-fourths of the states, were appended to the Constitution.

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