[...]The Left vs. The First Amendment | The Velvet StraitJacket[...]…

“Authoritarian leaders can be arrogant, hostile, boastful, and egotistical.”

Hmm… sounds like a current administration I know!

But anyhow, the comments I wanted you to address were the dirty tricks, harrasment and police state tactics that the family of Susann Coleman faced with Bossie’s pursuit of Hillary Clinton.
All in the name of **cough** free speech.

I’m not familiar with this issue, so you will have to explain to me what this has to do with this court decision, but one thing I do know is that only the state can use police state tactics. They are the ones who actually have the police.

And for ekg:

“will you ever answer my questions instead of dodging them? you weren’t asked about Obama.. you were asked about corps and spec interests and what they could do…do you think you could stick to the discussion at hand instead of constantly diverting from it?”

Ironic considering I’ve had to ask the same questions over and over on the muche (still waiting for answers!).

Corporations and special interests will of course try to influence the process. I’m not arguing otherwise. My argument to that though is twofold:

It’s really can’t get much worse than it is.

The real answer is to restrict the federal government from being in a position to do favors for private interests. Every contract, every purchase, and every earmark is something to be fought over and divvied about by other interests. The more of that there is, the more corruption there is going to be in the system.

You want to make the target juicer, and are blind to the utter failure of the law before United, What kind of bargain is it to trade away free speech in the hope of keeping corruption out of the system, and then end up with less free speech and more and more corruption?

will you ever answer my questions instead of dodging them? you weren’t asked about Obama.. you were asked about corps and spec interests and what they could do…do you think you could stick to the discussion at hand instead of constantly diverting from it?

whoa.. what? isn’t your party THE party that wants gov’t telling people what they can and can’t do? who they can/can’t marry? who they can/can’t visit in the hospital? who can/can’t adopt? who can/can’t serve their country? how they should be the one to decide medical procedures?

not to mention all the phone calls your party wants to listen to and secret searches they want to do..

seriously? you’re going to promote the (R) party as the one who doesn’t want gov’t to tell people what to do?

holy wow Batman!

From Lewin:

“Authoritarian leaders provide clear expectations for what needs to be done, when it should be done, and how it should be done. There is also a clear division between the leader and the followers. Authoritarian leaders make decisions independently with little or no input from the rest of the group.

Researchers found that decision-making was less creative under authoritarian leadership. Lewin also found that it is more difficult to move from an authoritarian style to a democratic style than vice versa. Abuse of this style is usually viewed as controlling, bossy, and dictatorial.”

From Annick Brennan:

“Authoritarian leaders can be arrogant, hostile, boastful, and egotistical.”

Sounds a lot like the Bush regime, IYAM.

But anyhow, the comments I wanted you to address were the dirty tricks, harrasment and police state tactics that the family of Susann Coleman faced with Bossie’s pursuit of Hillary Clinton.

All in the name of **cough** free speech.

Laws that were put in place, while exclusive in nature, were done so to protect citizens rights to fairly participate in the political process, as is accorded to them, without worry that their efforts were merely for show.

We’re damning the orchard, for one tree.

The ruling stretched to form a holding on issues that everyone, including Citizens United, agreed were not in front of it. Further, two previous cases were used as precedent where it explicitly acknowledged no precedent existed.

“Buckley did not consider §610’s separate ban on corporate and union independent expenditures,” and “Bellotti did not address the constitutionality of the State’s ban on corporate independent expenditures to support candidates.”

We as citizens are limited in our funding, corps and special interests, with regards to ad campaigns and others are not now. If people honestly believe this will not impeded a citizens ability to participate in the political process…they are at best naive and at worst proffering idealism, at the expense of reality.

For Uselesslegs, I would say that yes, people are being extremely black and white on the issue, and I would include yourself in that bunch. You constantly try to look for a middle way or a compromise, and usually that’s a good thing, but I don’t see how you can expect to “regulate” political speech without picking winners or losers, and who does the picking? The government of course. I’ve seen campaign finance as a big con to protect incumbents by limiting the visibility of outsiders. Incumbants have plenty of free access to the media to make their point, but outsiders don’t. Unless you want to limit challengers to the Bloombergs and other multimillionaire self financers, you are going to have to let enough cash come into the system to make up for the incumbent advantage. I would prefer transparency; openness about where every dollar comes from, than a fools errand in trying to keep that money out of the process. It seems to me that as a policy, trying to regulate has been a failure.

Freedom is not only a better policy ethically, there is just less paperwork.

Ekg, based on where the money went during the last Presidential election, I don’t think Wall Street could have picked a more compliant President. Look how much of our money he’s helped give them! And that was with campaign finance. So, it’s basically failed. You are supporting a system that was not only unconstitutional, but that didn’t even do what it was supposed to do.

I think this the proverbial “watershed moment” for the GOP..and if they don’t take heed, they may live to regret it for a long long time…. this ruling makes them extremely happy because they know they are the benefactors if it.. the problem is, the American people are hyper-aware politically right now, more than they have been in a seriously long time, they want results and are not unwilling to fuck up elections like the NY 23rd or toss Palin out of their tea- party for being RINO and supporting McCain of all reasons or even the (I) putting an (R) in Kennedy’s spot to get their results.. The GOP is basking in the glory right now and not paying attention to what’s going on around them..

the GOP is taunting the (D) with smirks on their faces that “well, you should have listened to the America people”.. but the fact is.. they never have listened to the people, but they have always gotten away with it.. I don’t think they understand that that has changed..

This ruling is bad, people are hyper-political and know this.. and if they don’t .. they will.. they may vote more GOP at 1st, but when they find out the GOP they voted for has to give into the wishes of master AIG or Exxon and not master tea-bag,master conservative, they’re going to be pissed and turn against their own even more severely than they turned against the (D)..

The GOP thinks it’s still business as usual with just better benefits now that SCOTUS gave them such a bonus.. and they will abuse it.. in the end, if they don’t stop from indulging their own greed and Big business’ agenda over that of the people.. if they don’t ‘balance’ it all.. I believe they will be hoisted on their own petard so to speak..

Corporations were never, ever suppose to have the ability to funnel unlimited money into politics, that completely undermines the average single or collectives citizens voice in government.

People are being extremely black and white about the issue. Our freedoms are not absolutes, with good reason. If freedom of speech was unhindered, you’d have 1,000’s of people calling for 1,000’s of peoples deaths, crosses burning all over the south in people’s front yards, on and on…all protected from prosecution…because they were merely expressing their freedom of speech.

If people feel this was a win for free speech, they must overlook the literal 10’s and 100’s of millions it will suppress to the whims of the wealthy few.

Balance. It never makes everyone happy, especially those few who benefit most by it’s tilting.

hell, he’s got to win the argument somehow right.. so why not with misdirection and fairy tales..