Regular Americans Losing Their Political Voice
Using the conservative mantra that Money = Speech, this inforgraphic shows just how much ordinary Americans are being drowned out of the conversation and our Government. Because those with the money can simply buy the policy they want, increasingly, what Americans clearly want to happen is simply not being done. You can see it pretty clearly in the business of tax policy. Americans don’t much want their own taxes increased, but they certainly are in favor of increasing taxes on the wealthy in order to help balance the budget. And yet — Congress is utterly set on dealing with the wishes of the people with the money, rather than the people who bear the brunt of those policies.
What to do? I’m not so certain. We can start by signing this petition sponsored by the Move to Amend folks, who want to amend the Constituion to clarify that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
Tags: money PACs corruption
I support the Move to Amend petition drive to assert that money is not speech and corporations are not people. I encourage everyone to sign on.
Thank you Andrew! I’d be interested in hearing if you’ve got some thoughts on additional reform on the campaign finance business.
I wholeheartedly agree that corporations are not people. The Supreme Court rulings in the 1870s and 1880s that reinterpreted the 14th Amendment were a travesty. Corporations are business organizations, and should neither be immortal nor serve as an impenetrable barrier between those who run them and their actions; nor do they have rights–constitutional or otherwise.
Only the people who organize them have rights, and if they exercise those rights then they have to risk liability for their actions.
I am 90% of the way with you on money not being speech. Here’s my reticence: if we rule that money is not the equivalent of speech in politics for candidates (and all organizations supporting them), then I am left with the uncomfortable feeling that money IS speech to media organizations like NBC, Clear Channel, ABC Disney, Fox, etc. I think there is an argument to be made that a “money is not speech” amendment might represent the citizenship unilaterally disarming in the face of large media corporations, which clearly have their own agendas.
I don’t know how to reconcile that last 10%.
A little clarity may be in order: Money is not speech vis-a-vie the first amendment. It is not “protected speech” and thus is open for regulation. Corporations are not people and thus do not merit protected 1st amendment speech as a fictitious entity nor any other protection provided to humans by our constitution and are also subject to mediation by congressional legislation. They are chartered by the states and subject to the laws of the states they are initiated from and practice business in. As their business spans state boundaries they are subject to regulation under the commerce clause.
The media are given special FTC charters to broadcast spectrum and public and/or subsidized right of ways for signal transmission. They have no implicit rights as fictitious entities as any corporation and their work product is subject to regulation under the commerce clause as well as state regulation within legislated constraints. Their work product can be construed as “speech” however, conventional wisdom would dictate that it could also be construed as farcical or “entertainment”; even when termed “news”.
There is a significant difference, in my mind, to inalienable , protected free speech and regulated commerce. That is not to say that organizations may seek to leverage non-protected speech, just that it may be constitutionally regulated.
That is a good distinction, Andrew — basically that if you can pull a lever in a voting booth, your speech is protected. If you can’t, then your speech can be subject to regulation.
Steve or Andrew — do you have any thoughts about publicly financed elections?
@cassandra–your “pull the lever” argument raises an interesting consideration. When the Washington Post or even FoxNews runs a story, whose “Speech” is it? The reporter’s? Or the corporations? At universities we get hung up all the time in intellectual property rights arguments, over what belongs to us and what belongs to the university; I think there is a similar but often unexplored morass in journalism once it becomes corporatized.
On publicly financed elections I will admit to multiple ambiguities–probably too many to list here–while also admitting the existing problems.
Here’s my current discomfort with publicly funded elections–as a Libertarian or as Andrew being a Green, where’s my guarantee that public funding will not be used, effectively, to shut down our ability to participate.
Here’s my example: this year both Gary Johnson of the Libertarians and Jill Stein of the Greens (Buddy Roemer, too, I think) qualified for Federal matching funds. Unless I am mistaken they are among the first if not the first to take them.
But the only reason that they are qualified is that inflation/spending increases have rendered the unchanged parameters of the Federal Election law obsolete. Neither Romney nor Obama could afford to accept Federal matching funds because they would be limited to only spending $92 million on the election. So even if Johnson or Stein were to start to take off, and got to spend $92 mill (which I admit would be an astounding thing), they would still be outspent by Obama and Romney each by like 8 to 1 or 10 to 1, PAC money aside.
It seems that “journalistic speech” is its own protected class of speech, which (with my cynical glasses on) would mean that the people who still want to buy elections could reorganize themselves as journalists and operate behind that structure.
I don’t know how to organize public funding so that it is fairly distributed. If you make it a specified pot of money that each declared candidate gets, then you’ve created a Presidential Candidate industry. There does need to be a way to qualify candidates. Public funding done right would give smaller parties a better opportunity. But I don’t know what done right would look like. I’m a recent convert to the need for public funding. And public funding should also come with a time limit on campaigning.
I think you have put a finger on the key to the problem: it is virtually impossible to set up a system that people with mega-resources cannot eventually find a way to game.
“fairly distributed” is also a problematic term. Even as a third-party Libertarian I would argue that any system that arbitrarily gives all candidates equal resources completely moves the focus from the party to the candidate (why shouldn’t parties with millions of members have a resource advantage over those who only have thousands?)
What I object to is the conscious creation of structural legal barriers to anyone who challenges the two major parties. Look at what the Republicans are attempting to do in Michigan to the Libertarians. Look at what our own General Assembly did to smaller parties with HB 11 last year. This past two weeks I have been doing the paperwork to file LPD candidates. I have carefully followed the law and the instructions on the form, and I have three times been sent back to jail without passing go when a State registrar tells me “That’s not really what it means. You have to do it this way no matter what it says.”
At one point I balked and got an Attorney General’s opinion that I was right, but that took five days.
I also sit there and watch Ds and Rs waltz in and out, and watch the people at the Elections office correct their forms for them, and even overlook things like a photocopied notary seal that they are always willing to send me back for.
So I guess my hopes are a little less grand than totally redoing the system at this point: I’d just like equal access to what we’ve already got.