raisindot:When I saw that headline, I at first thought it was about an unreleased Motown song. Now that I've read the story, why should anyone be surprised that the 1 percenters (on all sides of the spectrum) are now legally allowed to r*pe the electoral process when they get a slap on the wrist for literally r*ping their own daughters? http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/woman-sues-ex-husband-du-pont-heir-dodged-prison-raping-3-year-old-daughter-article-1.1740180 George Soros & Donald Trump must be dancing with glee right now.
webmost: raisindot:When I saw that headline, I at first thought it was about an unreleased Motown song. Now that I've read the story, why should anyone be surprised that the 1 percenters (on all sides of the spectrum) are now legally allowed to r*pe the electoral process when they get a slap on the wrist for literally r*ping their own daughters? http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/woman-sues-ex-husband-du-pont-heir-dodged-prison-raping-3-year-old-daughter-article-1.1740180 George Soros & Donald Trump must be dancing with glee right now. Yep. That was right here in Dull-Aware. No one knew the outcome until here five years later the ex-wife's lawsuit comes to light. Too rich to jail
webmost:I've been thinking about this since yesterday, and I don't see any other direction they could have gone with this decision. Once you define political contributions as free speech, then how do you infringe on it? We don't have free speech because we want to see skinheads and perverts marching down the street. It's the other way around., We have Nazi rallies and gay pride parades because we have free speech. If you're going to have the one, then you've got to tolerate the other. Thing is not who unlocked more purse in the name of free speech. Thing is defining political contributions as speech. Once you do that, you have to unfetter contributions. Hard to see a way around that.
raisindot: webmost:I've been thinking about this since yesterday, and I don't see any other direction they could have gone with this decision. Once you define political contributions as free speech, then how do you infringe on it? We don't have free speech because we want to see skinheads and perverts marching down the street. It's the other way around., We have Nazi rallies and gay pride parades because we have free speech. If you're going to have the one, then you've got to tolerate the other. Thing is not who unlocked more purse in the name of free speech. Thing is defining political contributions as speech. Once you do that, you have to unfetter contributions. Hard to see a way around that. Hate to say I agree with you, Davis, but I do agree with you. Upon reflection, the decision is right, since it keeps the limits individuals can give to individual campaigns; it just does away with limitations on the maximum anyone can gave to ALL campaigns in aggregate. Giving to campaigns and causes is a form of free speech, even if the candidates are right-wing Nazi b*stards or left-wing commie sonsofbeeches or anyone in between. It's not the decision itself that's noxious; it's what will happen to the political process in the wake of this that is so depressing. Then again, all of the superpacs have been enabling the 1%ers to get around this limitation for years anyway, so maybe the end of the total contribution limit will make these paces go away....right.
Amos Umwhat:I suppose I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the so-called Citizens United decision, which extended the free speech rights granted to individuals to include corporations, and thus corporate contributions. The only way I could agree with this being right would be if every single individual in that corporation had exactly the same thoughts, feelings, etc., about every single thing all the time. Not possible.
raisindot: Hate to say I agree with you, Davis, but I do agree with you.
webmost: You cannot have good government. You can only have less government. Like horse manure. A certain amount is necessary. Too much and you are knee deep in it.
Here's how absurd it is: freedom of speech entitles everyone to the exact same amount of free speech: 100%. That is, the entirety of their speech is—and ought to be—free of government restriction. Money, then, cannot be speech, because money is finite. This ruling gives anyone with more money than I do more speech than I have. This is a fundamental misapplication of the first amendment. I am no longer equally protected under the law, which is conveniently enough another amendment. If the Koch brothers wanted to make a great case for communism, they've just done so, because I now have a reason to be entitled to just as much money as they've got in order to re-equalize the amount of speech we have. If money is speech then only when everyone has the same amount of money does everyone have the same amount of speech. So, Koch Bros, where's my money? I'm not kidding.
jgibv:Interesting discussion in this thread....good points by all. webmost: You cannot have good government. You can only have less government. Like horse manure. A certain amount is necessary. Too much and you are knee deep in it. The more I read the news & listen to the political cackling, the more I believe this. You hit the nail on the head, Davis. And I read an interesting take on this decision from another website LINK HERE; haven't thought about it long enough and I don't know if I necessarily agree with the post but there's an intriguing idea here. I've copied that post below, what do you guys think?Here's how absurd it is: freedom of speech entitles everyone to the exact same amount of free speech: 100%. That is, the entirety of their speech is—and ought to be—free of government restriction. Money, then, cannot be speech, because money is finite. This ruling gives anyone with more money than I do more speech than I have. This is a fundamental misapplication of the first amendment. I am no longer equally protected under the law, which is conveniently enough another amendment. If the Koch brothers wanted to make a great case for communism, they've just done so, because I now have a reason to be entitled to just as much money as they've got in order to re-equalize the amount of speech we have. If money is speech then only when everyone has the same amount of money does everyone have the same amount of speech. So, Koch Bros, where's my money? I'm not kidding.
webmost:"So, I guess we're doomed to continue. Wall St. will continue to fund legislators who decree that it's OK for Wall St. to swindle average folks with complexeties that really boil down to large-scale 3-card Monte. The military industrial complex will continue to fund any candidate who will assure more war, more weapons, more American tax dollars being spent on ensuring the continuation of military adventurism for fun and profit, while building a web of "security" agencies that slowly stifle the will and freedom of the public. Americans will continue to search for a "Savior", some individual with all the answers while ignoring the paradox of "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Which, to me, is one of the reasons that when the Savior came, he left without creating an earthly kingdom. Just my opinion." No, that's not just your opinion. That right there is the whole sweep of history in its entirety. You'd think that after eight millennia or so of experience at civilization we'd learn to get past the theoretical and grasp the empirical. Government is not nor has it ever been a benevolent association of altruistic intelligentsia there to do you a favor. It is a scheme by which the wealthy and powerful enhance their pilth and power. That's the deal. The rest is window dressing, carrots, and sticks. Which is my recurring argument with Liberals, who want to get all idealistic, and imagine government solutions to problems real and imagined. I'm not into idealistic. I'm into realistic. Here is realistic: You cannot have good government. You can only have less government. It's like surgery that way.
raisindot: Frankly, for most of its history, the U.S. government gave nearly complete laissez-faire to businessesmen to run the country whatever way it wanted. What did that result in?Millions of people working in dangerous sweatshops and mines for pennies a day with no safety protections whatsoever. Large companies using bribery, extortion, and violence to put smaller companies out of business Food that was routinely contaminated with disease and waste The death of millions of people due to lack of access to healthcare The impoverishment of millions of poor elderly people who had no income to retire on once they were kicked out of their jobs The wholesale and uncontrolled contamination of lakes, ponds, groundwater, wells, and other sources of public drinking water and property by companies pouring hazaradous materials wherever they wanted with no repercussions Unlimited freedom of employers to exploit lowly paid workers however they wanted to The total extinction of the passenger pigeon and the near extinction of the bald eagle, buffalo, wolf and the Sacred Cod The enslavement of millions of black people that only a civil war could resolve The post Civil War oppression and unpunished lynching of black people because they had no laws or government forces to protect them Billions of dollars of Americans' savings lost when the banks they thought were safe collapsed in the Great Depression The near impossibility of interstate commerce because there was no interstate highway system or even good state roads because no one was willing to pay for them Total lack of protection from commercial development of great swaths of American wilderness It took a generally pro-business Republican president--Teddy Roosevelt--to finally have the vision to see how false the dictum "What's good for business is good for America" was and is. His expansion of federal powers to set limits on business set a precedent that, as a whole, has made America a better place. If you say that "there is no such thing as good government," and that therefore government should have little or no power, you therefore must be saying that an America where slavery is legal, minorities are oppressed, workers are exploited without recourse, only those with money can get healthcare, no one's food would is safe to eat, no one's water is safe to drink, thousands of species are hunted or fished to extinction, and all of our national parks become strip mines, shale oil fields, ski resorts and strip malls would be a much better place. If that's what you truly believe, then, well, that's what you believe. For me, as a member of the non-1%ers, I would trust even a very flawed government (such as ours is) to protect me from total exploitation by business, rather than trust corporate America to work in my best interests.
webmost: Don't be silly. The sophistry is in the first sentence: "freedom of speech entitles everyone to the exact same amount of free speech:" This is nonsense. It has nothing to do with amount. One guy's got big lungs and the voice of a DJ and owns a newspaper. Another guy has a reedy voice, stutters, and works at a gas station. Both ought to be able to voice their opinions. How much they'll either say or be heard is something else entirely. You're not going to shut up everybody because Helen Keller came along; nor are you handing out megaphones because George Carlin is on HBO. Astonishing the drivel that passes for logic. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Where's one word of amount?
jgibv: webmost: Don't be silly. The sophistry is in the first sentence: "freedom of speech entitles everyone to the exact same amount of free speech:" This is nonsense. It has nothing to do with amount. One guy's got big lungs and the voice of a DJ and owns a newspaper. Another guy has a reedy voice, stutters, and works at a gas station. Both ought to be able to voice their opinions. How much they'll either say or be heard is something else entirely. You're not going to shut up everybody because Helen Keller came along; nor are you handing out megaphones because George Carlin is on HBO. Astonishing the drivel that passes for logic. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Where's one word of amount? True....good points here Davis. But part of your comment makes me think you agree. "Both ought to be able to voice their opinions. How much they'll either say or be heard is something else entirely." Your line above reminds me of that old saying "Money talks, bullsh!t walks" .... You're right the guy who owns the newspaper has a better opportunity to be heard. But so do the wealthier folks who can take out ads & pay the writers/editors for favorable stories. So in that case you're right, the fellow who works at the gas station and doesn't make a whole lot of money probably won't be heard..... It's quite a conundrum.
