tvashtarkatena

For the record, in case anyone gives a shit, which I doubt, my moniker has been my email address since the late 90s. I selected it because I have an interest in space science and because Pat Gallagher is apparently one of the most common names out there...I quickly tired of searching for some fucked up, unique variant of it. OW's assertion that posters here expend any real energy here to maintain their anonymity is, for the most part, crap. It seems to me that the avatars selected here are just for fun, which I thought was the purpose of Spray to begin with (in addition to shunting the bitching away from the climbing section). The idea that they're something posters are hiding behind? Yeah...get real.

The validity of any good argument or idea should be self contained within it. Debaters who must prop up their points with their credentials would do well to reexamine the inherent strength of their positions.

Why not share our psycho fantasies for a well armed stalking adventure to Seattle with everyone on the googlz? Fuckin-Fuckwad-Full-Disclosure or bust!

Yes, this is a special time, an emergency, that requires special powers and methods... Cheney couldn't have said it better. Difficult times are precisely when we should trust our institutions, most particularly the constitution, democratic process, and the rule of law, the most. If not, anything goes. We've all seen where that can take us. In any situation, you must still answer the same question: who decides? And what, exactly, are you suggesting be done, here? Yeah, we might have an issue of too much corporate influence over government after this ruling. How would you suggest we go forward in correcting that problem? Kvetching about the SC ruling, while a valuable discussion and airing of grievances, probably isn't the most fertile option. That ship has left the dock.

what is this 'super bowl'? Sounds like a GREAT idea on a rainy day....

Fucking pikas. End the breed. [video:youtube]

Wouldn't legally loose arguments tend to, you know, violate the rule of law, which is supposed to 'represent our values and ethics'? You're acting like the SC squeeked this one by 'on a technicality'. A law that denies a non-profit from running a political ad? Hardly a 'nit' issue.

did you read the analysis? Yes, I did read it a couple of times a few days ago when it came out. I would also tend to differentiate between for profit corps and associations that represent people democratically. But, I also don't consider having a completely legally tight argument as critical to this discussion. Pushing fetishism of the law to its most absurd end doesn't sit too well with me. The law is supposed to represent our values and ethics and when it doesn't work it should be ditched or amended accordingly. ??? I believe the values and ethics embodied in the 1st amendment were well served in this ruling. If you think that's 'fetishism', then that's a type of fetishism I can live with. If you think there's a law out there that should be ditched or amended, fine. Last time I checked the legislature handled that stuff, not the judiciary. This judiciary simply ruled that the law in question was unconstitutional, an interpretation I agree with. If the ruling results in an orgy of corporate campaign contribution, might I suggest you lobby congress to pass a more constitutional law to prevent such an outcome. Or would you prefer that an unconstitutional law that obstructs free speech in the form of political advocacy remain in place to 'keep our democracy healthy'?

Um...yeah, I know how it works. I was implying that the SC has a full docket and therefore limited time/resources duh. Reduxs probably aren't in the public's best interest.

No. Another case would have to rise up through the courts addressing a similar issue which could then be ruled on, hopefully with a bigger majority. This could be years later. It just seems to me that 5-4 is a flawed way to decide matters this important that then become precedent (which is very difficult to overturn) It may take 20 years to never for a 'similar' case to come along, and no two cases are really all that similar. The court specifically chooses cases to decide the major issues of the day, not to pan them off to the next generation to figure out. The system you suggest would leave the public and political process with a big, ambiguous, and long term 'WTF' floating over their heads a good percentage of the time rather than decisions produced by a functioning branch of government.

I think of such a system as the equivalent of a 'hung jury', where the issue would need to be revisited, rather than become part of precedent with a narrow margin. It's the High Court. Revisited by whom? And when? It's not like the Supreme Court just sits around twittling its thumbs waiting for something to come along. Buck stops here and all that.

Such a system would probably produce more controversy, in that it would produce majority decisions that did NOT take effect, effectively handing a win to minority decisions. There are a number of reasons for split decisions. The court may be philosophically split through a history of appointments (the public usually assumes this is the primary reason for EVERY split decision), lower courts tend to filter out the more cut and dry cases; in many instances, the high court will let a more straightforward lower court decision stand, choosing instead to deal with more complex, difficult cases. By that yardstick more split decisions in the high court are an indication that the judiciary as a whole is efficiently doing its job. Justices are people, and all people are political by nature. The public tends to want judicial activism from those justices with which they feel politically aligned, and less activism from those with whom they are not. Historically, the High Court has been largely deferential to the legislative and executive branches. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as justices correctly understand that they are not elected, and therefore should appropriately represent weakest of the three branches.

Even a quick study of the court and its rulings indicates 'Originalist versus Activist' more accurately describes the taxonomy of the justices that 'Corpo-Nazi Fuck' and (presumably) 'anti-Corpo-Nazi fuck'. This well established and described difference in judicial philosophy has far more to do with the consideration given to the potential impacts of decisions than whatever labels the Daily Kos came up with that week.

It's not at all clear yet.

Simple- Were there limits on corporate financing on attack ads by corporations before the ruling - YES Are there any limits now - NO Is my opinion of the ruling based on the idea that moneyed interests now have a greater advantage than those without resources - of course it is. Any real-world perspective leads to the same conclusion. If you're arguing that the overall outcome of free speech is better than this negative fallout - then that's your opinion. But to say that this gives no advantage to the entity with the bigger cash pile is false. I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that the court did it's job: to protect constitutionally guaranteed rights from legislative erosion. What happens in the future has yet to be determined, and will, in part, be a result of how the legislative process responds to this ruling. It was a bad law, it needed to go away. The SC doesn't write laws, congress does. My advice would be take it up with them.

This is a flatly disingenuous line of argumentation and you know well know it. While I agree the media has interpreted this ruling too broadly, you've obviously taken on a blinkered bunker mentality and are determined to view it as narrowly as possible and ignore its far-reaching implications for our already sickened social order. The Court's split on the decision and the dissenters' opinion suggests that the justices involved understood its implications. Why do you choose not to acknowledge the real world context and the range and impact of the decision outside of the immediate case? All SC rulings have implications. After all, it's our highest court. One might expect and certainly hope that the justices involved just might understand this. Furthermore, many SC rulings are split. Unanimous decisions are rare. It's a balancing act of interpretation, analysis, and opinion. That this ruling resembles many, many others regarding the aspects you've highlighted would seem to make it more of an example of normality rather than anomaly, no? If you think that a split decisions and potential consequences somehow make this or any other SC illegitimate or unusual, you simply need to get out more. Welcome to the real world.

You have to be kidding. I think what you are saying is that McCain Feingold was too broad and limited speech - maybe. And that the ruling opens up speech for all, which is a good thing. But you're ignoring the direct - real world consequences. And it's not a political problem that affects real reform - it's MONEY sloshing around the system problem. I stand firmly by my statement. Show me what part of the ruling favors 'big, bad corporations' over other types of organizations and how the court makes this determination. You won't be able to. Again, you're layering your value judgements on the ruling.

Also, it's important to remember that having a minimum threshold amount of money to run a successful campaign and get the message out is far more important than burying your opponent with tens of millions of dollars for things like TV ads, which more often than not provide no additional effectiveness and many times even backfire. There is a saturation point regarding the most expensive part of a campaign. SR 71 provides a classic example. Our side was way outgunned by the opposition moneywise, but a better organized, focused, and more honest message won the day. The other side' untruthful TV ad blitz, despite their high cost, turned off moderates and drove people to our side. As ads become cheaper to produce and run and more people get their information from low cost or free forms of media such as the internutz, this principle is truer than ever.

Illuminated a pathway? If anything, it's illuminated a way for corporations to press for further eliminations on restrictions to campaign finance. Once money equals speech and limits on "speech" are done away with, how would any legislative action placing limits on campaign contributions not be deemed unconstitutional? The questions above still stand: once this is a "free speech" issue, why should there be limits on contributing to a candidate directly at all or why should anyone have to disclosure who contributed the money? You're choosing to wrap yourself around the axle of a comment (not insistence) I made introducing the arguable concept of money as a form of political speech (might I suggest rereading what my actual comments before rewriting them for me?); again, that wasn't the central issue decided here. If you want to chase that deflated ball down the street, go for it, but this case was about actual SPEECH, as in, SAYING SOMETHING, as in EXPRESSING AN OPINION, as in PEOPLE TALKING, not money as speech. Nothing in this ruling prevents the legislature from enacting, say, finance limited, publicly funded campaigns, for example. You'll have to read the ruling to grok this (somehow, I don't think that's going to ever happen, though, because you've made up your mind that the SCOTUS is at the beck and call of big bad corporations (even though the ruling favored a small, good, non-profit corporation). There are a number of options outlined in the original analysis as well, of of which would not go against this ruling. The media (including the blogosphere et al) has blown this ruling up to be much broader than it is, and some of you have swallowed that story without chewing and without actually going to the source to understand what actually occurred. I usually go to the source to understand stuff like this because I've found that media stories are about 95% drivel, and that's on a good day. Your world filtered by journalists, incentivized to maximize histrionics and entertainment value, and most of with little or no professional training at vetting fact from fiction. Good luck with that.

Nothing in the ruling favored moneyed interests. The ruling did not differentiate between non-profit advocacy organizations such as the Sierra Club or the ACLU, and, say, big bad corporations like GE. That is an interpretation you folks are layering onto the ruling. I doubt any of you would be willing or able to describe the method by which it is decided which organizations get to run ads and which don't: the central point of this ruling. Fortunately, the court saw fit to uphold the fairness doctrine and the 1st amendment in this regard. If you want to limit campaign financing, the pathway to legislative reform remains wide open. If you don't believe that is politically possible, that's a political problem, not a constitutional or judicial one.

Well, it seems that the SC has illuminated a pathway to reform and thus provided a focused issue we can write our congressmen about; ie, it's done its job. After learning more about this issue, I strongly support the SC ruling in favor of less, rather than more, restricted political speech, as well as the message it has sent to the legislature regarding some much needed campaign finance reform.

And there is no reason why that issue can't be addressed in the legislature. Remember, this ruling overturned a poorly conceived and enacted law that was overly restrictive on actual political speech, not contributions. Again, if the anti-Hilary ad had been FREE (wonderfully possible in the age of $200 video cameras and YouTube), it would still have been banned by this law.

start by mandating that insurance companies are non-profit If you check both Regence and Premiera of Washington and Alaska already are. So your solution is already there and it's obvious it doesn't work. ??? If you compare the rise in cost and value of care/v/cost for various organizations, you'll find a wide variance. Don't know about these two orgs, but Kaiser Permanente, another non-profit, scores highly by these measures. You seem to be saying that the system sucks in aggregate, therefore there are no good parts to it. That isn't true of any long term system I know of. Doesn't make a lick of sense to me.

Here's the deal - there are limits on how much say, Exxon, can give to, say McCain's re-election committe - which is controlled by McCain and his assistants. Those are still in place. There used to be limits on how much money corporations could use for funding attack ads (or support ads) that don't specifically say "go vote for John McCain." Typically a Political Action Committee would form in support of a candidate - not by the candidate but by supporters. There is not supposed to be coordination between the PAC and the candidate (in theory). The PAC would then garner money from corporate and individual doaners that would pay for ads. These proved very powerful in the Swiftboat ads against John Kerry. Now there are no limits to how much money corporations can spend on such ads. They do not have to form PACs, the associated financial limits are gone. Corporations can now pay directly for attack ads with no limits. This case was about being able to run the ads period (free speech), not how much the ad cost. If the ads were free, the overturned law would have still banned them. I don't agree with that kind of limitation on political speech at all, and, apparently, neither did the SCOTUS.

As Ira acknowledged in his piece, the court did extend the impact of the case in an activist fashion. And yes, like most SCOTUS rulings, there are potentially far reaching impacts. That's why we have 2 other branches of government: to address those potential impacts. I haven't seen anyone here argue that the potential damaging effects of this decision on the democratic process couldn't be addressed by appropriate legislative reforms. That's the legislature's job, not the court's.