Today – it’s the DISCLOSE Act, meant to remove the freedom enhancing SCOTUS decision earlier this year (via the Atlantic here):

…The DISCLOSE Act, aimed at addressing the Supreme Court’s Jan. Citizens United v. FEC ruling by requiring additional campaign finance disclosures from outside organizations that can run political advertisements, ran into snags last week….

What is this wonderful legislation you ask (here via ABC News)?

…A pending piece of legislation known as the Disclose Act would require the heads of companies, unions and nonprofit groups to personally appear in any sponsored political ads and endorse the message. It would also require them to reveal the names of the top five donors who helped foot the advertising bill….

Which seems like a solution a Senator might have picked up from visiting an elementary school, but the reality is the Disclose act is an incredible move against free speech.  There are some complaints about the political nature that are indeed worth noting:

…But House Democrats, eager to pass the bill and avoid a fight with one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies, have agreed to exempt from the new rules a small but highly influential group of organizations that most notably includes the NRA….

Obviously excluding certain, influential lobbying groups for tighter rules is a no-no, but the real danger is losing the idea of anonymity with reference to free speech.

The objections come from the usual sources – Cato (here).  They note that while proponents of the bill claim to resolve these ills:

Rep. Price cites three harms from such speech: “the opportunity for corporations, unions and associations to dominate the playing field, intimidating public officials and drowning out the candidates’ own messages.”…

That in reality:

…Notice that these alleged harms are caused by the speech itself and not by the fact that the speech might be anonymous….

Yes indeed, what Senators and the White House is claiming is that by knowing exactly who wrote message X, or even who funded message X, that you now understand more about message X than you would’ve otherwise.   Which works well on a micro level, say arguing on the play ground & when you start losing you can just yell out “liar” or “stupid”, but in real life – for those seeking the best we can hope for, the messenger is less important overall than the message itself.

Don’t misunderstand – pointing and laughing at hypocrites who tell us what to do when they refuse to do so is funny, amusing, and a good waste of time, but ultimately irrelevant to whether the points they made were indeed true.

The odd part about this… it’s likely to die solely because of the exemptions and not because it’s an attack on free speech… but in case it does contain longevity, here’s the ACLU’s thoughts as well (via Reason.com here):

1. The DISCLOSE Act fails to preserve the anonymity of small donors, thereby especially chilling the expression rights of those who support controversial causes….

2. The DISCLOSE Act would chill not only express advocacy on political candidates, but also issue advocacy….

3. The DISCLOSE Act imposes impractical requirements on those who wish to communicate using broadcasting messages….

4. The DISCLOSE Act imposes unjust restrictions on contractors, TARP participants and corporations with minimal foreign participation.

[White House Correspondent Helen] Thomas caused an uproar with her recent remarks that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland, Germany, America and “everywhere else.”…

Within a few short days, the controversy pulled faux outrage from every corner of society, including the White House itself.  Ms. Thomas went from being incorrectly seen as a sweet old lady, to now being seen as she really is.  She was in the process of losing her press credentials, was suspended from her job, and then decided to do what she should’ve done decades ago…. retire:

Helen Thomas , a veteran columnist for Hearst Newspapers, announced her resignation today shortly after the White House condemned her remarks about Jews as “offensive” and “reprehensible.”…

So basically what we have here – is a bunch of people who are upset over a crazy woman saying crazy things.  The reason they have to be feign anger is because they’ve been defending her childish behavior for years and telling us what a great person she was for standing up to power.

Now some may ask – isn’t some of the anger deserved?  & the answer to that is yes.  Telling any race of people to go back “home” to the countries which tried to wipe them out in a world wide Holocaust deserves societal scorn. But the truth is, we don’t typically heap societal scorn on 89 year olds.

We’ve rightfully come to understand that they not only grew up in very different times, but some are a little off.  Please note, this isn’t to say all 89 year olds will wax philosophically about hating the Jews, just that when your family elders who are 89 spout something idiotic or racist at the Thanksgiving dinner table, they are simply ignored.

I might have to talk to my daughter about what was said and how stupid and racist it was, but we generally don’t attack old people with a penchant for senility.   We ignore, deflect, and move forward all while secretly wishing it hadn’t ever happened.

So…. I’m not angry at Helen Thomas.  I firmly believe what she said was racist, idiotic, and juvenile, but she’s nothing more than a senile reporter.  It’s odd I know, but I don’t get upset when crazy people say crazy things.

Something else to note – this love affair the White House and major media had with Helen Thomas, is what got her into this problem in the first place.  There is absolutely no reason anyone should care what Ms. Thomas has to say beyond her reporting the facts she obtains from the White House press briefings.

I say this, because she is a reporter… well, she is a crazy woman with journalistic credentials, but nonetheless – her job for her entire life has been to tell the public news she’s heard from government officials.  She has never ran anything, never worked in a government capacity on anything she reports on, never even proposed she was/is an international policy expert… and she seemingly didn’t want that.  She wanted to be a journalist, not any of these other things.

However, since she “stood up to power” (IE: asked juvenile questions to those in power) and stood up to the right people (mainly Bush), she has been promoted from journalist to all seeing without so much as fake reason for why we should care what she has to say about anything outside of her official duties.

I know, it’s odd of me again, but I like my international policy information to come from people with knowledge of internal policy & while all these people might be smarter than I am… my mechanic, my doctor, my lawyer, and yes, even Helen Thomas… they simply don’t fit that bill.

What’s more frustrating that the faux outrage though is some attempts to wrangle this whole mess into some sort of free speech thing from the most unlikely of places (here via Reason):

…True, I find some comfort in knowing that this unprofessional crackpot never will haunt a president, common sense, or the public again. But I wince at the rapidity of her demise. And I feel a nagging anxiety about a journalist’s losing her job over nothing more than a controversial statement….

To be fair, the author goes on to admit this is a private decision being made by a private company which is not bound by the first amendment, but he writes as if firing a senile staff member after they’ve been shown to be a bigger liability than all their assets combined is about free speech.  To be correct however, it’s not.

To gauge the effectiveness of this argument, we can run it to its logical conclusion.  Not always, but this is a sometimes helpful trick to see whether an argument is valid or just whining. So let’s ask this question – IF we agreed completely that Helen Thomas should not be fired, what does this mean?

Doesn’t that also mean we are saying that if the publication she works for is losing money due to her exercising her first amendment rights, they still have no recourse?  They should just keep losing money?  & If it doesn’t mean any of this, then what’s the point of bringing it up?

While reading, I’m unsure where David Harsanyi is going with this other that to try to equate a private business releasing an employee with hate speech paranoia.  Though I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to imply that Ms. Thomas can’t be fired, his argument is leading in that direction.

No, he likely doesn’t believe that she can’t be fired.  The more likely cause of his machinations is that of simple self preservation.

Because no matter how much Mr. Harsanyi wants to make this about free speech or hate speech idiocy and no matter how many other public figures want to make this about racism, the truth is there for all to see. An old lady, who likely should’ve retired long ago, said some crazy things that forced her retirement.

FORT WORTH, Texas, March 16, 2010—Late yesterday, in a striking victory for the First Amendment on campus, a federal district court in Texas ruled that a number of restrictions on students’ speech at Tarrant County College (TCC) are unconstitutional. In his decision, U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means found that TCC’s reliance on a policy prohibiting “disruptive activities” to restrict students Clayton Smith and John Schwertz from holding an “empty holster” protest violated the First Amendment….

Congrats to FIRE once again for trying to teach society what free speech actually means, just wish a court wasn’t required to force “educators” to understand freedom.

More “When I say what others should be allowed to do, that doesn’t apply to me” politicians.  This time via Reason Foundation discussing Arne Duncan, the current US Secretary on Education has prevented poor people in one district from having vouchers while maintaining a system for the well connected in other parts of the country (here):

US Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been unwilling to support the DC Opportunity Scholarship program that allows disadvantaged students to attend higher-quality DC private schools and even rescinded the scholarships of 216 children that had already been accepted into the program this year. This becomes even more ironic in light of the fact that Duncan maintained an exclusive list of well-connected folks that he helped exercise school choice in Chicago’s highest quality public schools….

What they call ironic, I consider extreme arrogance, but to-may-to, to-mah-to…

CATO shows us an interesting chart about the level of government spending in health care.  Hopefully with straight forward facts we can start to disabuse others of the notion that the current state of health care is due to private industry (whole thing here):

via Mercury News, CA, with major budget issues (via KNX 1070 News), but should that stop them from further propping up home sales during a correction in the market cycle?  Well, if you’d think yes, then you give too much credit (here):

…The deal reached Monday provides $200 million in new tax credits for homebuyers…

Which is stupid enough, but politicians can’t be held back by things such as economics.  So while more sellers exist than buyers, they also want to spur construction:

…to be split evenly among those buying a home for the first time and anyone buying a newly constructed home. Anyone qualified who makes a purchase between this May and August 2011 will receive a credit for 5 percent of the home’s purchase price, up to $10,000 over three years….

DA has several posts on the governments’ continuing actions which are understood to have been part of the problem in the first economic crisis (here, here, & here), but attempting to add new inventory to a market under correction is grossly irresponsible.

• Proving once again that fascism isn’t just a word, Italy (here via Economist) gave three Google executives six-month suspended sentences for “allowing a clip of an autistic boy being bullied to be viewed on Google Video, which the judge said broke Italy’s privacy laws. “

Just to clarify, I’m not pro-autistic-bullying and would think a civil trial isn’t out of the question, but jail?

• Fannie Mae needs more cash, but just 15 billion… from the taxpayer of course (here via RTTN News).   Seems like people might not agree with this (here via WSJ):

The Obama administration’s decision to cover an unlimited amount of losses at the mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the next three years stirred controversy over the holiday….

Probably why the decision was made over the holidays.

• Crazy fundamentalists blame the Golden Girls for homosexuality (here via ChristWire).

• Democrats & President Obama, all firmly against the Patriot Act after signing it, vote to  prevent all measures from lapsing (here via Wired) for the next full year.

• Harvard intellectual tells us why allowing corporations to spend money on politics is bad (here):

…To understand why, it is important to focus on the individuals who make decisions for companies. When corporations decide which politicians to support, what kind of messages to send, and which political outcomes to seek, their general investors are not consulted. Rather, such decisions are likely to reflect the preferences and objectives of the insiders who manage the companies, ostensibly on shareholders’ behalf….

A little interlude for a thought experiment.  Change which politicians to support and which political outcomes to seek to which charities to support and which cultural outcomes to seek.  Or try reality and change it to, which lobbyists to support and which regulatory outcomes to seek.  But of course, he defines the problem for us:

…And politicians that benefit from corporate spending and access to corporate resources will have an interest in serving the insiders’ preferences and objectives….

Which presupposes politicians already don’t have this interest, presumes it will get much worse, and last, but not least; for spending to have any affect at all, voters have to be swayed to vote against their interests.

It seems the default assumption of every perceived risk these days is simply this:  there can never be too many laws when trying to protect people from themselves.

• CalTech researchers say the brain is wired for equality (here):

…Specifically, the team found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. The surprising thing? This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person’s head, rather than the poor person’s….

Oddly enough, the Freakanomics blog posted this with little comment (here) proving environmental factors such as working for the NY Times can affect even innovative economists.  I’ll admit there might be more, but from what they’ve shown, the results do not necessarily say anything about equality at all.  A perfectly reasonable answer is one of need: a rich person doesn’t need a windfall as much as a poor person.

CalTech’s reasoning:

…It’s long been known that we humans don’t like inequality, especially when it comes to money. Tell two people working the same job that their salaries are different, and there’s going to be trouble…

Conflating the thinking that comes with social status and worth when compared to colleagues and equality of results.  It could be in a lot of cases, the person making less might think they work harder and deserve more, not equal.

• & finally, via the Hill.  Did Nanci Pelosi really say that

…”They’ve had plenty of opportunity to make their voices heard,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning. “Bipartisanship is a two-way street. A bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes. Republicans have left their imprint.”…

]]> http://detailedabstractions.com/2010/03/01/infinite-monkey-theorems-20100301/feed/ 0 http://detailedabstractions.com/2010/01/26/score-one-for-freedom/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=score-one-for-freedom http://detailedabstractions.com/2010/01/26/score-one-for-freedom/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:04:09 +0000 Michael S. Langston http://detailedabstractions.com/?p=710 On Thursday January 21st, the Supreme Court of the United States dramatically departed from past court decisions, by declaring McCain/Feingold’s restrictions on corporate speech prior to elections as unConstitutional.

In doing so, the court not only overturned parts of  McCain/Feingold, but went further in overruling prior courts which held that even with respect to speech, corporations can be seen as uniquely different from individuals and therefore while individual speech could not be regulated, corporate speech could be.

In a close, 5-4 decision, the court returned to its Constitutional roots, by removing an arbitrary distinction prior courts added to the Constitution years ago.  I’m not positive how prior courts held “congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech….” actually meant:

Congress shall make no some laws abridging the freedom of speech, based on the arbitrary notion that corporations spending money towards speech is different from individuals spending money towards speech.

Readings from around the web would have you believe however that this is a travesty of justice.   From the Baltimore Sun, an op ed entitled Supreme Court tramples the little guy giving you a heads up to what they believe:

The 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court allowing corporations to pour millions into federal elections is frightening and dangerous (“And now, the deluge,” Jan. 25). Even more alarming is that many of us never saw it coming….

The NY Times holding up Justice Stevens dissent (here) to make their point:

…But there was no mistaking his basic message. “The rule announced today — that Congress must treat corporations exactly like human speakers in the political realm — represents a radical change in the law,” he said from the bench. “The court’s decision is at war with the views of generations of Americans.”….

Indeed, allowing corporations to speak is equivalent to putting the mentally retarded to death:

That was the plainspoken style of the last years of Justice Stevens’s tenure. In cases involving prisoners held without charge at Guantánamo Bay and the mentally retarded on death row, his version of American justice was propelled by common sense and moral clarity, and it commanded a majority….

The Huffington Post (of course…. here):

…With the Supreme Court ruling by the “Fabulous Five,” Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a single corporation will be able tap into its deep pockets and disfranchise a million citizens. A group calling itself “Citizens United” has just won a fight to give huge corporations more control over our politics….

& a little more thought out, but the same basic premises @ NewsWeek (here):

…The Supreme Court’s five conservatives are properly protective of American citizens’ First Amendment rights to spend as much of their money as they wish on political speech, both individually and by funding nonprofit advocacy groups. But this was no justification for the court’s blockbuster, precedent-smashing Jan. 21 decision unleashing corporate executives to pour unlimited amounts of stockholders’ money—without their consent—into ads supporting or attacking federal candidates….

From just these few examples, you can see most of the talking points against the decision.

#1 is the “conservative” court has radically departed and conservatives are against activism.

First, the attempt to make “conservative” somehow interchangeable with radical change is transparent and childish.  Either the evidence stands by itself or it does not.

But… for the radical departure… let’s look at the majority opinion written my Justice Kennedy:

…In this case we are asked to reconsider Austin and, in effect, McConnell. It has been noted that “Austin was a significant departure from ancient First Amendment principles,” Federal Election Comm’n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U. S. 449, 490 (2007) (WRTL) (SCALIA, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). We agree with that conclusion and hold that stare decisis does not compel the continued acceptance of Austin. The Government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether. We turn to the case now before us….

Indeed it’s idiotic to think that stare decisis, the principle of following court precedent, should compel them to vote in any particular way and I think most people would agree.   I think it intuitive that the opponents of this decision don’t believes that relying on stare decisis would have been a good argument for continuing separate but equal, but they do act here as if all the sudden, stare decisis is as immutable as the law of gravity.

#2 Corporations will now poor billions into campaigns, distorting politics, and overall damage our way of life.

To begin with, this basic idea has so many non-proven assumptions built in, it can be easily dismissed with logic alone.  The theory has to hold these things to be true:

a)  Corporations will automatically jump into advocacy of political ideas through spending.

This fails because as we all know, you don’t talk about politics in polite company.  Businesses are not stupid enough to advocate for candidate X, when they know 50% of the country is for candidate Y.  There is simply not enough pay off they can get from candidate X that would suffice for the loss of revenue for those supporters of candidate Y.

b)  Even if corporations do spend millions to influence elections…

It does not follow that corporate money would somehow be more nefarious than individually spent.  Is it not possible that a corporation’s political interest might also be the interest of the people?

It also does not follow that this money would automatically influence any specific election.  This assumes  a sizable  percentage of people, enough to effect the outcome of a vote, can be swayed by ads to vote against their own self interests.

It might be unwitting or without malice, but the thought that you’ll be ok, but the masses will be swayed into some corporate slavery is insulting and arrogant.

But that’s just me – what say Justice Kennedy?

…The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy. By definition, an independent expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate that is not coordinated with a candidate. See Buckley, supra, at 46. The fact that a corporation, or any other speaker, is willing to spend money to try to persuade voters presupposes that the people have the ultimate influence over elected officials. This is inconsistent with any suggestion that the electorate will refuse “‘to take part in democratic governance’” because of additional political speech made by a corporation or any other speaker. McConnell, supra, at 144 (quoting Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U. S. 377, 390 (2000))….

…The McConnell record was “over 100,000 pages” long, McConnell I, 251 F. Supp. 2d, at 209, yet it “does not have any direct examples of votes being exchanged for . . . expenditures,” id., at 560 (opinion of Kollar-Kotelly, J.). This confirms Buckley’s reasoning that independent expenditures do not lead to, or create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption. In fact, there is only scant evidence that independent expenditures even ingratiate.  Ingratiation and access, in any event, are not corruption….

Furthermore, Congress can’t fix a supposed problem by removing rights:

…When Congress finds that a problem exists, we must give that finding due deference; but Congress may not choose an unconstitutional remedy. If elected officials succumb to improper influences from independent expenditures; if they surrender their best judgment; and if they put expediency before principle, then surely there is cause for concern. We must give weight to attempts by Congress to seek to dispel either the appearance or the reality of these influences. The remedies enacted by law, however, must comply with the First Amendment; and, it is our law and our tradition that more speech, not less, is the governing rule. An outright ban on corporate political speech during the critical preelection period is not a permissible remedy. Here Congress has created categorical bans on speech that are asymmetrical to preventing quid pro quo corruption….

#3 Corporations are not humans and therefore are not afforded rights.

This fails the basic test with the rest of the bill of rights, as while it’s true that a corporation is nothing more than a legal entity and not a human, removing a corporations’ rights results in real human damage.

For instance, because corporations are not human and therefore don’t have rights, then it would follow corporations also don’t have rights to a speedy trial or protection from unreasonable search and seizure by the government.

I’m not positive, but I don’t believe these opponents honestly want the government to be able to seize financial records or phone records simply because they belong to a corporation which has no rights.

& lastly #4 Shareholder money should not be spent on political campaigns for which shareholders’ disagree.

This is actually an idea that I’m semi-sympathetic to… as a libertarian, ethical capitalism standards as spelled out by Milton Friedman, and even in a legal sense, I believe that corporate profits of public companies should either be reinvested into the business or paid out to the owners or shareholders.

But I can also view reality for what it is and notice the obvious:  corporations are routinely spending a portion of their profits on their pet charities, often at the behest of liberal groups proclaiming loudly that corporations have a responsibility for being good social citizens.  I’m not sure why PETA should be able to get corporate dollars, but a specific candidate…. but here we are.

Having said that, so long as shareholders aren’t being forced to buy stock and so long as they are able to freely sell when they want, then forced to invest in political speech with which they disagree, is an abuse of the word force.

Additionally, the same logic which holds true with consumers holds true with investors.  If a corporation went out of their way to play into specific political campaigns, investors just as consumers, can look elsewhere.

Justice Kennedy?

…The Government contends further that corporate independent expenditures can be limited because of its interest in protecting dissenting shareholders from being compelled to fund corporate political speech. This asserted interest, like Austin’s antidistortion rationale, would allow the Government to ban the political speech even of media corporations. See supra, at 35–37. Assume, for example, that a shareholder of a corporation that owns a newspaper disagrees with the political views the newspaper expresses. See Austin, 494 U. S., at 687 (SCALIA, J., dissenting). Under the Government’s view, that potential disagreement could give the Government the authority to restrict the media corporation’s political speech. The First Amendment does not allow that power. There is, furthermore, little evidence of abuse that cannot be corrected by shareholders “through the procedures of corporate democracy.” Bellotti, 435 U. S., at 794; see id., at 794, n. 34….

Going further, he points out how the law doesn’t fix what they claim to disagree with here:

…Those reasons are sufficient to reject this shareholder protection interest; and, moreover, the statute is both underinclusive and overinclusive. As to the first, if Congress had been seeking to protect dissenting shareholders, it would not have banned corporate speech in only certain media within 30 or 60 days before an election. A dissenting shareholder’s interests would be implicated by speech in any media at any time. As to the second, the statute is overinclusive because it covers all corporations, including nonprofit corporations and for-profit corporations with only single shareholders. As to other corporations, the remedy is not to restrict speech but to consider and explore other regulatory mechanisms. The regulatory mechanism here, based on speech, contravenes the First Amendment….

In fact is appears as if all opposition to this decision is based upon a fear that by allowing normal people to be subjected to political speech paid for by corporations, freedom as we know it is ending.

Just like religious fundamentalists who want to ban books because the mere availability of fictional smut can lead to the downfall of man, without a hint of irony these people demonstrate their religious-type devotion to the exact same thought:  you are neither  strong nor smart enough to handle a free and unfettered marketplace of ideas.

Justice Kennedy concludes:

…Speech would be suppressed in the realm where its necessity is most evident: in the public dialogue preceding a real election. Governments are often hostile to speech, but under our law and our tradition it seems stranger than fiction for our Government to make thi political speech a crime. Yet this is the statute’s purpose and design.

Some members of the public might consider Hillary to be insightful and instructive; some might find it to be neither high art nor a fair discussion on how to set the Nation’s course; still others simply might suspend judgment on these points but decide to think more about issues and candidates. Those choices and assessments, however, are not for the Government to make. “The First Amendment underwrites the freedom to experiment and to create in the realm of thought and speech. Citizens must be free to use new forms, and new forums, for the expression of ideas. The civic discourse belongs to the people, and the Government may not prescribe the means used to conduct it.” McConnell, supra, at 341…

Read entire opinion here.

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