JayB

Don't you mean "Union Union"? Yes.

One of the main insights that I gained from reading Keeley's book was that the fact native folks they spent so much time trying to kill each other off and take each other's land made them really, really good at killing non-native people that wanted to kill them off and take their land. Outside of a fairly narrow set of circumstances, primitive folks were cunning, adaptive, tactically sophisticated, and fierce enough to fight much better armed and provisioned colonial armies to a standstill, or completely repel them for long periods of time. When they did lose, it was rarely if ever solely the result of colonial armies getting the best of them in battle. The Maori in NZ are one of the better examples of this. Not quite what you'd expect if their cultures had actually been limited to the Woodstock-in-Eden caricature.

Booga booga.

I think he's quite okay with that set of consequences from the Citizen's United ruling. It's the impartiality that's problematic. JayB and the other nincompoops have already forgotten about the Washington post article posted 2 pages ago showing that ad-hoc conservative organizations are outspending liberal ones 7:1, while most of their contributions come form large wealthy donors and corporations. Now we're getting to the heart of your objections. If the distribution of spending favored your side, we wouldn't be hearing much from you, methinks.

Now you're *really* reading straight from the Regressive Handbook.

and 100's of millions will be spent on the elections by liberal ad-hoc organizations, supposedly independent from campaigns... I think he's quite okay with that set of consequences from the Citizen's United ruling. It's the impartiality that's problematic.

Listen, buddy. I'm the libertarian regressive corporate shill around here....

Take it up with this guy, professor: http://www.uic.edu/depts/anth/faculty/keeley.html lkeeley@uic.edu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory

All things being equal I prefer the likes of Turgot to Robespierre. I've said before that the primary virtue of modern democratic institutions lies their capacity to preserve essential rights and liberties, rather than in the percentage of the population that votes. If I had to choose, I would prefer a liberal state that limits participation in the political process and preserves the rule of law, defends the rights of minorities, etc to a state where there are zero checks on "the popular will." I'll take Singapore in '96 over Cambodia in '76.

The key relationship there is the long-term fatality rate in a given society, which is a function of the frequency, severity, and duration of conflict in each. A small society that is engaged in constant skirmishes where a handful of people are killed each time there's a battle, raid, etc will generally see a significantly greater percentage of its population killed in war than a much larger society that engages in intense conflicts for limited periods of time. "Noble Savages" tend to kill an awful lot of each other relative to non-primitive societies.

Had Mencken stated that oppressive laws are first aimed at scoundrels, while possessing the knowledge of history we have today, he would be speaking with an eloquent style, while at once acting the part of a muddle-minded pseudo-intellectual. By the blood of millions of innocent people murdered by the practice of laws crafted and executed by scoundrels such as Christopher Columbus, we know that oppression more often begins as an act of evil against not a few, but the many.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-popularity.html Bzzzt. We vote on rules, not rights. Rules are constrained by rights, and we have courts to sort out specific tensions between the two. Not perfect, but better than mob rule. Unless you're Robespierre.

Hey Bill - mostly agree, I just worry about where the lines would be drawn and whether or not they'd be applied impartially. I also think that once you get too far beyond direct donations to political parties or political campaigns you quickly get into zones where the government has no business monitoring citizens. I'd put donations to the NRA, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the ACLU, the Brookings Institution, the Cato Institute, etc, etc, etc in that category. These are definitely groups with clear political agendas that generally line up with one side of the aisle or another, engage in quite a bit of lobbying, etc but don't think that they should be compelled by the government to disclose the identities of their donors or the amount they donated. Some groups out there are closer to the line than others, but it looks fuzzy to me at best, and the picture gets even more complicated when you start analyzing each ad, leaflet, movie, etc, etc, etc.

The actual argument was that we'd be much better off if Congress didn't make special exemptions to whatever set of rules for particular corporations or other economic interests they happen to favor. Since they mostly do that through tweaking the tax code, or passing targeted tariffs, subsidies, etc the best way to diminish their incentives for economic interests to buy off Congress would be to reform the tax code, etc so that whatever they pass applies to all corporations without exception. A flat tax is an easy way to do that on the tax side. Same deal with speech one set of rules for everyone. You've demonstrated a singular incapacity to provide even the remotest inkling of any objective standard that could be used to differentiate "political speech" from speech with political consequences. My argument is that's because no such standard exists, and any attempts to enforce it would be hopelessly compromised by partisan motives. Drug laws are another example. Once the government starts making subjective value judgments about which drugs are worse than others then the law-enforcement hammer arbitrarily falls on some groups more than others. I'd much rather end prohibition all together, but failing that - I'd much rather have a single code that applies to all illegal drugs than the current system.

The only compelling interest that corporations (and limited partnerships, and outfits like the Trial Lawyers, etc) have in taking over the government is to score special tax breaks, subsidies, or other exemptions from competition to enrich themselves at the public's expense. The more power that Congress has to rig the game and pick winners, the greater the incentive for all businesses to distort the laws in their favor. Exhibit A, once again - Corn Ethanol. There's a few thousand others. The great irony here is that the more power that you grant Congress to regulate commerce, the greater the incentives for businesses to "take over" Congress, while the tax and regulatory regime favored by regressives would dramatically reduce them.

Uh - there's plenty of folks from private, non-profit liberal arts colleges that haven't got a prayer of ever paying them off either.

One would think that fact that the boundaries between speech with political implications and "political" speech are clearly too complex, subjective, and laden with value judgments renders you incapable of marshaling so much as a coherent argument here would temper your enthusiasm for entrusting Congress with that power. Particularly if the evangelo-pluto-fascist hordes ever secure a majority there. The alternative being that your logic is too twisted to justify arguing against it: the existence of nuances and subtleties has never been an argument for letting everything go, but you appear to be an expert at making inferences that have no reason to be. They're actually not too far removed from the real-world case that lead to the Supreme Court's decision: "The case arose out of Citizens United’s January 2008 release of Hillary: The Movie, a 90-minute critical documentary about then-Senator Hillary Clinton, who was a candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Citizens United sought to distribute the movie through Video On Demand, but was prohibited from doing so because federal law made it a felony for corporations–including nonprofit corporations–to use their general treasury funds for political advocacy." http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/2010/01/26/supreme-court-strikes-down-restrictions-on-corporate-speech/

Speaking of revising history, I heard a pretty interesting interview about that on NPR this morning. The interviewee was a history Prof who was making the case that drunks, prostitutes, and various other ne'er-do-wells played an important role in securing various rights and freedoms in practice. An interesting side-note was his concession/argument that market processes helped this process along by making it profitable to undermine the status quo. Rich madams securing the right to own and dispose of property and Italian mobsters running gay bars were a couple of examples he tossed out there. All the more interesting considering the guy's gold-star leftist pedigree. Haven't read it but it sounds interesting: http://www.amazon.com/Renegade-History-United-States/dp/141657106X

Well...I certainly don't understand the arguments behind your position here, mostly because you haven't stated them.

One would think that fact that the boundaries between speech with political implications and "political" speech are clearly too complex, subjective, and laden with value judgments renders you incapable of marshaling so much as a coherent argument here would temper your enthusiasm for entrusting Congress with that power. Particularly if the evangelo-pluto-fascist hordes ever secure a majority there.

So if an ad is financed by 10,000 people giving a hundred dollars a piece that's substantively different from a billionaire funding it with a million dollars? What arbitrary numerical thresholds for participation and wealth should be exempt from political control - and what specific modes of political expression should be regulated? Should the billionaire be prevented from buying ads on broadcast media, but permitted to self-fund distribution of a political film in theaters? What about direct mail? Internet ad campaigns? Airplane ads over stadiums? How on earth would any of the above emerge from Congress free of the self-dealing and partisan game-rigging that characterizes every single....highway appropriations bill. Determining what constitutes permissible and impermissible political speech, how those restrictions should be implemented, monitored, and enforced is vastly more complicated than laying down pavement. What reason is there to believe that the political forces that distort something as straightforward as determining what highway construction projects to fund won't compromise any legislation that tries to do something infinitely more complicated and laden with so many subjective value judgments? As a general rule, when something is impossible for the government to accomplish at all, let alone in a fair and impartial fashion, we're better off when the government doesn't attempt to do it.

As an ecologist you should be comfortable with complexity, no? There's no single, clear standard that divides speech with political implications from "political speech," and any attempt to draw a line where none exists will be gerrymandered to suit the interests of whichever party has the upper hand at the moment.

There's a subtle but important difference between contributions made directly to a politician for use at his discretion and spending by groups with a political agenda. If the Sierra Club or Greenpeace spends a few million dollars on adds that state that Congressman or Senator X has voted to subsidize oil production every time it's come up for a vote, or if the ACLU takes out an add saying congressman X was a principal architect of rendition policies - then it's not clear to me that the public has the right to force those organizations to personally identify all of the people who gave them the money to put them on the air. Maybe their being funded by a Halliburton trust funder who wants to keep his activity secret because he doesn't want to get written out of the will, etc. Then there's the matter of, say, an editorial that's written by an employee of the New York Times corporation. Should they be put on a Congressional leash because they make statements that are critical or full of praise for a particular politician? How about the talking heads on Fox? Both have significant reach and influence, and have the potential to help or harm the prospects of particular politicians. Are either cases of corporate speech that should be subject to congressional regulation and censure?