Goodspeed wrote:that there's something seriously wrong with US campaign finance law and it needs changed. Your only point seems to be that it's hard to prevent corporate interests from influencing politics regardless, which I never disagreed with. In my opinion, an important step is at the very least making it explicitly illegal to use money to promote your favourite candidate, which it currently isn't after the supreme court ruling. Do you disagree?
I don't disagree, of course it would be great if private interests wouldn't simply control political candidates via donations. But I am also aware that the USA has a very different political, social and economic culture, as I previously explained. Such a ban on private interests financing political candidates would be seen in a very different light over there compared to how it would be seen in Europe. It would be very likely that private interests would contest such a decision at the Supreme court, arguing that it encroaches on their freedom of speech. The 1st Amendment has already been used by private interests in the USA to defend some of the most ridiculous claims, such as the right of pharma companies to promote off-label uses of their drugs to doctors. For example:
In 2011, the Supreme Court struck down a Vermont statute that prohibited pharmaceuticals companies from getting access to information about the prescriptions doctors were writing—information that the companies then used for marketing purposes. The Vermont legislature saw the law as a run-of-the-mill privacy protection. But to six Supreme Court Justices the Vermont law amounted to an unconstitutional restriction on speech: by restricting the information that pharmaceuticals sales reps could gather, it limited what they could say while marketing the drugs. The case—IMS Health v. Sorrell—exemplified a newfound willingness among federal judges to view drug promotion as an issue of free speech. Now when large companies lose advertising-related battles in the legislature, they can resurrect the fights as lawsuits.
There's only one step from how this case was used to frame pharmaceutical companies' right to advertise off-label uses of their drugs in terms of freedom of speech to extending such understanding of the 1st Amendment to political issues. Private interests could argue that such a ban on funding electoral campaigns is abusive, because it restricts their freedom to express their support for a political candidate by funding their expenses. It might sound weird or crazy, but since there is a precedent in jurisprudence with the pharmaceuticals' right to promote off-label uses of their drugs as an issue of free speech, then all the more so this could be construed as an issue of restraining private interests' freedom of speech. It's America we're talking about here... as I previously explained, it's a country that was built on a constitution (a set of basic principles) and goldrush greed. Every time they have a major, intractable social/legal issue they refer to their constitution in order to solve it. They don't have any other means of solving social disputes.
What do you base this on? I have been arguing from the beginning that capitalism in general needs to be regulated much more than it currently is. Making it harder for people or companies to park their money in tax havens overseas is a great idea, obviously.I think you are underestimating the effect that such permissive legal arrangements in the Netherlands have in other countries.
But do you honestly think that it's going to have a significant effect on American campaign finance, and that fixing this has higher priority than changing local campaign finance law in this context? Then, I disagree. The richest corporations/individuals will have less money, but part of the money that they do have will still be spent on influencing government. It's legal. Politics are simply a worthwhile investment to make, and that won't change even with the complete disappearance of tax havens.No, I hear you, just don't consider it either a priority or realistic to get rid of tax havens, compared to fixing local campaign finance law.Sure, maybe you managed to get a grip on how electoral campaigns are funded locally, but you are missing the point about how your country enables global corporations to have undue influence in other countries' politics.
I think these issues need to be fixed starting from their root causes. And the fact that fiscal paradises exist is one such root cause. It enables lots of fraudulent behaviours among companies and private interests. They can avoid paying taxes, they can fund whatever political interests or media projects they find useful to influence public opinion and political decision-making. A first step would be to make sure there are no such global sanctuaries where private interests can hide their money from being taxed and from being scrutinised for undue influence in a country's political life. But then, again, given what I argued about how private interests in the USA would be likely to defend their right to fund political candidates based on freedom-of-speech legal arguments, maybe such a measure wouldn't have much of an effect in the USA.
I was only commenting on this ridiculous argument:And pointed out that you are ignoring the fact that the USA has only 2 electable parties. Spankyou and n0el did the same.Dolan wrote:I mean, if you hate the party and criticise it, why join it? Aren't you better off outside a corrupt party? Why would you join it if it's disreputable?
With that, I am not assuming any position in the "is AOC a PR stunt by the democratic party?" discussion. I'm just pointing out possible flaws in your thinking.
There's always a time for changing the bipartite system. If these people are so fresh and revolutionary, what could possibly stop them from launching their own party and actually succeed at it? Why do they need to piggyback on the two sclerotic and compromised parties?
I thought these people are genuine heroes. Didn't AOC just run her campaign "out of a paper grocery bag hidden behind a bar", while working at a taqueria in New York? And yet she defeated the pre-ordained candidate of the Dems' establishment. Against all odds. If they are so heroic, why don't they just start their own party and push it through any obstacles all the way to the congress?
I guess it's one thing to create a stir in the media and quite another to actually change anything substantial in real life.