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Forums - Politics Discussion - So fears over Citizens United was GREATLY overblown, yes?

Kasz216 said:

It doesn't seem like there is any tangiable effect you can point excess campaign funding had.  Hell, it was an outright disaster for Romney despite him having a 2-3 to one Super Pac Spending advantage.



Once again it's further proof of the fact that to win an election you need enough money, however anything past that doesn't really do much.

No that isn't at all proof of any fact.

The fact of the matter is that SuperPACs raised the majority of funds used to elect Romney.  The Romney campaign and the Republican party actually had little to contribute.  By comparison, the Obama campaign raised the majority of its funds, with a few SuperPACs contributing. 

Had the Supreme Court ruled against Citizens United, there would have been a lot less money in the campaign.  There would have been far fewer negative ads, and more issue oriented ads.

Had Romney had more integrity with his positions, had he been more relatable and therefore more likeable, he could have won the election and the Citizens United ruling would have been a major factor. 

Bottom line, Citizens United is wrong because corporations are not people.  The founding fathers, save a few Federalists, would have stood in opposition to it.  Especially Jefferson.  Jefferson believed, and wrote as much, that the power of the government was in the hands of the individual.  Not corporations or any other type of entity.  For someone who suggests themselves to be strict Constitutionalists like a few of the Supreme Court Justices, to assume a corporation has the same rights as an individual when Jefferson himself in writing said the exact opposite and opposed such inclinations of early legislators, simply boggles the mind.

We need a Constitutional amendment defining to whom the rights of the Constitution applies to.  If you believe in inalienable rights, then you believe our rights have been endowed to us by a divine creator.  I don't recall God pulling a rib from Adam and making a corporation.  I'm pretty sure that's NOT in Genesis.  But he made made and woman, and a corporation is neither.



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First off I have no problem with Citizens United. But you are looking at it at too large of scale. Yes, they may not be as effective on a nationwide scale, but if you look at it at a statewide level it can effect the results easily. State senators and congressman don't get very much money or attention, and getting a rich superpac behind them can make all the difference.
My local one was an example of that. The Republican candidate had a large super-pac behind him, and near the end he was able to blanket the area in mail ads(no seriously, we were getting 6 a day) and radio buys. His democrat opponent never stood a chance...



Adinnieken said:

No that isn't at all proof of any fact.

The fact of the matter is that SuperPACs raised the majority of funds used to elect Romney.  The Romney campaign and the Republican party actually had little to contribute.  By comparison, the Obama campaign raised the majority of its funds, with a few SuperPACs contributing. 

Had the Supreme Court ruled against Citizens United, there would have been a lot less money in the campaign.  There would have been far fewer negative ads, and more issue oriented ads.

Had Romney had more integrity with his positions, had he been more relatable and therefore more likeable, he could have won the election and the Citizens United ruling would have been a major factor. 



No, the Romney campaign at times was outraising the Obama campaign in donations

Romney's fundraising haul, from joint efforts between Team Romney and the Republican National Committee (RNC), marks the second straight month that they have passed the $100 million mark and is likely to intensify concerns among Obama’s reelection team — who raised $75 million in July — that they will be outpaced by the GOP’s fundraising push.

...

The [Romney] campaign said that more than 94 percent of all donations received last month were for $250 or less. Those 600,627 contributions totaled $25.7 million of the haul.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/242325-romney-outraises-obama-for-third-month-in-a-row



Kasz216 said:

It doesn't seem like there is any tangiable effect you can point excess campaign funding had.  Hell, it was an outright disaster for Romney despite him having a 2-3 to one Super Pac Spending advantage.



Once again it's further proof of the fact that to win an election you need enough money, however anything past that doesn't really do much.

The impact was a decrease in potential revenue for broadcasters and Super PACs bought up tons of air time, at decreased rates.  You also had the cost of everything going up a lot and local races getting flooded with outside money.  I got bombarded with advertising for local candidates, and that is due to Super PAC money.  It had a marginal impact on the presidential election.  All it did was make for an arms race to the next level.



For the love of christ. for those people saying corporations aren't citizens...

actually read Citizens united.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

Your opinion is completely misinformed and ignorant... since that's not what the ruling says.

You may as well be argueing that we shouldn't have child saftey laws, because children aren't dangerous and we don't need to be protected from them.



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badgenome said:
Soleron said:

As an hardcore free speech supporter: Corporations should not be natural persons or have rights. Individuals in the corporation should be able to say what they like. There IS a big difference.

--

The practical problem with Citizens United is that billions of dollars were wasted on the election and the nation/news attention was sucked away for a year and a half out of a four year cycle. That's not grounds for reversing it (the Constitution not protecting corporations is) but from the outside it looks like insanity. Our elections are low-key and dull.

The constitution does protect corporations... that whole freedom of the press thing. The government has no business deciding that this corporation (News Corp) is guaranteed a right to speak freely while that one (Wal-Mart) is not because of some arbitrary decision of what does and does not constitute "the press".

And I don't think Citizens United had anything to do with the ridiculously overblown nature of this election. The election was talked about nonstop for two fucking years straight because the media (i.e., those magical corporations whose right to free speech would be sacrosanct with or without Citizens United) decided to talk about it nonstop for two years straight.

See, i've always interpreted those freedoms as being political freedoms more than full-fledged freedoms. Freedom of the press merely means that the state can't single out one viewpoint and pass laws like "you can't run stories that portray trickle-down economics in a negative light" or something like that, laws that would impact a political viewpoint, but if the law was politically content-neutral, it would be allowed to go forward (such as the old Fairness Doctrine. So long as it regulates everything equally, it's fair).



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.

chapset said:
except Romney got outspent by Obama

$874.6 million The amount that went toward Obama's re-election this election cycle, with the Obama campaign burning through $553.2 million, the DNC spending $263.2 million, and the biggest Obama Super PACS spending $58 million.

$844.6 million The amount that went toward Romney's candidacy this cycle, with the campaign spending $360.4 million, the RNC adding $284 million, and Super PACs adding $200 million.

$265 million The gap between the amount President Obama and Mitt Romney spent on TV ads through Oct. 29. In sum, the president spent far more. If you combine the ad spending, it amounts to more than one million television ads purchased by the campaigns and their supporters. The Wesleyan Media Project, which gathered the numbers, has a chart of this increase in ads.

the guy with the most money won, when Super Pacs get bigger and bigger I can see this trend continuing, the Super Pacs weren't big enough this time around but who knows in the future

note: the number raised change from site to site but Obama is in the lead in most of them

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/11/most-expensive-election-history-numbers/58745/

Those numbers change quite a bit from site to site indeed.

Though aren't you just making the same point?   In otherwords, Citizens United was overblown since the amount of money it contributed was actually small compaired to other sources?

 

Additionally, if we compare money spent per electoral vote... how does that play out?



Mr Khan said:

See, i've always interpreted those freedoms as being political freedoms more than full-fledged freedoms. Freedom of the press merely means that the state can't single out one viewpoint and pass laws like "you can't run stories that portray trickle-down economics in a negative light" or something like that, laws that would impact a political viewpoint, but if the law was politically content-neutral, it would be allowed to go forward (such as the old Fairness Doctrine. So long as it regulates everything equally, it's fair).

That is not what "Congress shall make no law" means.



Mr Khan said:
badgenome said:
Soleron said:

As an hardcore free speech supporter: Corporations should not be natural persons or have rights. Individuals in the corporation should be able to say what they like. There IS a big difference.

--

The practical problem with Citizens United is that billions of dollars were wasted on the election and the nation/news attention was sucked away for a year and a half out of a four year cycle. That's not grounds for reversing it (the Constitution not protecting corporations is) but from the outside it looks like insanity. Our elections are low-key and dull.

The constitution does protect corporations... that whole freedom of the press thing. The government has no business deciding that this corporation (News Corp) is guaranteed a right to speak freely while that one (Wal-Mart) is not because of some arbitrary decision of what does and does not constitute "the press".

And I don't think Citizens United had anything to do with the ridiculously overblown nature of this election. The election was talked about nonstop for two fucking years straight because the media (i.e., those magical corporations whose right to free speech would be sacrosanct with or without Citizens United) decided to talk about it nonstop for two years straight.

See, i've always interpreted those freedoms as being political freedoms more than full-fledged freedoms. Freedom of the press merely means that the state can't single out one viewpoint and pass laws like "you can't run stories that portray trickle-down economics in a negative light" or something like that, laws that would impact a political viewpoint, but if the law was politically content-neutral, it would be allowed to go forward (such as the old Fairness Doctrine. So long as it regulates everything equally, it's fair).


A) That's almost impossible to actually do.  Outside the fact that you'd need to find a completely unbiased judge,  inherently pretty much any law will negativly impact some viewpoints over others.

All you are making is the "Marriage is already equal, gay people are free to marry straight people as much as they want" arguement.

For a quick and crude example, say a law was passed outlawing the reporting of scientific studies.

Hurts the viewpoint of evolution a bit more then creationism right?   Even though it's a law that applies to both equally.



badgenome said:
Mr Khan said:

See, i've always interpreted those freedoms as being political freedoms more than full-fledged freedoms. Freedom of the press merely means that the state can't single out one viewpoint and pass laws like "you can't run stories that portray trickle-down economics in a negative light" or something like that, laws that would impact a political viewpoint, but if the law was politically content-neutral, it would be allowed to go forward (such as the old Fairness Doctrine. So long as it regulates everything equally, it's fair).

That is not what "Congress shall make no law" means.

As is the case with many tenets of the constitution, we've long since passed into an era where the conception of the press is different than in the founding father's day. The spirit of the amendment is to prevent the government from legislating against ideas, and the means for people to share their ideas. Freedom of Assembly is just that, freedom to assemble, to get together and discuss things, and isn't the right to incorporate to the end of filling the airwaves with privately-funded propaganda.

The founding fathers could not conceive of big moneyed interests becoming the primary global threat to liberty, that beginning about 70 years after their time.



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.