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Liberal Shit I Am Sick of #1
So I am theoretically liberal so here's some shit I'm sick of.
"Money isn't speech."
What? What the fuck? In case you haven't noticed, the rights granted by the first amendment are not simply speech, but also "the press" which has been widely read to be "the media." Some media (including the press) cost money, thus money -- and the right to spend it -- is inherently tied to your first amendment rights.
Imagine that you and your friends decide to get together to raise awareness about -- I dunno -- racism in local police forces. You decide to print up some fliers and pass them around. To do this, you pool some money and ... get this! ... spend it at a printer.
Now, if "money isn't speech" then the government can restrict your ability to publish materials, because that's spending money. So the cops could say "uh, no printing anything about how we're racist. It's illegal to spend money on political causes." And you could do crap about it.
Indeed, a restriction on spending money on political speech could be expanded to publishing anything with political content whatsoever, up to and including posting on the internet.
Does this mean that I think political donations should be totally unregulated? Not really. I just think that we should except that this is done as an exception to the first amendment, in the same way that the laws which prevent me from owning NBC weapons (nuclear, biological, and chemical) are an exception to the second amendment that nonetheless we should all live with.
In other words, when you phrase your support of campaign finance laws as a constitutional argument, you look like morons, because it's explicitly a-constituional, even if it is a constructive way*.
Love and kisses
--Ben
* Yes, there are right-wing supported laws that are a-constitutional in exactly this manner. Two wrongs don't make a right etc.
"Money isn't speech."
What? What the fuck? In case you haven't noticed, the rights granted by the first amendment are not simply speech, but also "the press" which has been widely read to be "the media." Some media (including the press) cost money, thus money -- and the right to spend it -- is inherently tied to your first amendment rights.
Imagine that you and your friends decide to get together to raise awareness about -- I dunno -- racism in local police forces. You decide to print up some fliers and pass them around. To do this, you pool some money and ... get this! ... spend it at a printer.
Now, if "money isn't speech" then the government can restrict your ability to publish materials, because that's spending money. So the cops could say "uh, no printing anything about how we're racist. It's illegal to spend money on political causes." And you could do crap about it.
Indeed, a restriction on spending money on political speech could be expanded to publishing anything with political content whatsoever, up to and including posting on the internet.
Does this mean that I think political donations should be totally unregulated? Not really. I just think that we should except that this is done as an exception to the first amendment, in the same way that the laws which prevent me from owning NBC weapons (nuclear, biological, and chemical) are an exception to the second amendment that nonetheless we should all live with.
In other words, when you phrase your support of campaign finance laws as a constitutional argument, you look like morons, because it's explicitly a-constituional, even if it is a constructive way*.
Love and kisses
--Ben
* Yes, there are right-wing supported laws that are a-constitutional in exactly this manner. Two wrongs don't make a right etc.
no subject
"Money is speech:" the facile legal theory pushed during both the 2003 case and this one.
"Money is not speech:" the immediate intuitive reaction, which, you rightly point out, is as facile as its reverse.
More specifically, these positions are "ALL money is speech" and "NO money is speech." Neither of these makes sense. The actual premise we're looking for here is "NOT ALL money is speech."