System is broken af. Politicians don’t want to reign in on campaign financing because it will hurt their own re-election and campaign fundraising.

Republicans have bought/installed the SCOTUS which allowed for favorable decision in Citizens United v FEC.

This corporation dominated landscape is quite awful. Corporations have more rights than woman right now.

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terminalshort 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Citizens United was the correct decision. I don't understand how you can legitimately restrict political activity. The constitution contains the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Why should certain groups of people not have this right? The constitution also contains the right to freedom of the press. Why should the government get to decide who gets to exercise this right?

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andy_ppp 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Every other country on earth has spending limits, the constitution isn’t perfect and it’s being dismantled by the current regime. Maybe it could be updated to say covering up for pedo billionaires should carry extremely harsh sentences, for example…

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kmeisthax an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because democracy is "one person one vote", not "one dollar one vote".

Around the same time Citizens United was decided, we also got McCutcheon v. FEC, which invalidated campaign contribution limits basically completely. If we take the logic of Citizens United at its word - that money is speech - then letting someone drop billions of dollars to change an election is like firing a sonic weapon at a bunch of protesters to silence them. So, right off the bat, we have a situation where protecting the "speech" of the rich and powerful directly imperils the speech of everyone else.

But it gets worse. Because we got rid of campaign financing limitations, there has been an arms race with campaign funding that has made all speech completely, 100% pay-to-play. We have libre speech, but not gratis speech.

This isn't even a problem limited to merely political speech. Every large forum by which speech occurs expects you to buy advertising on their own platform now before you are heard. If you, say, sell a book on Amazon or post a video on TikTok, you're expected to buy ads for it on Amazon or TikTok. You are otherwise shut out of the system because discovery algorithms want you keep you in your own bubble and you're competing with lots and lots of spam.

	▲	terminalshort an hour ago \| parent [-]
		But it is still one person one vote. Money doesn't allow you to buy votes, but it does make it easier to persuade them. Freedom of the press has always guaranteed you the right to print or otherwise publish what you want, but it never said everyone will have the same amount of printing presses or the same amount of ink. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you an audience. You think you are reducing the influence of the rich, but you are actually just raising the price of entry. A millionaire can donate to a PAC and buy TV ads, but a billionaire can buy or start a newspaper, TV station, or social media network. What are you going to do then, tell the newspapers what they are allowed to print?

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anthem2025 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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catlover76 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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barney54 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Are you saving that an organization should be able to put together a documentary to criticize Trump and his supporters? Because that’s what Citizen’s United allowed. If you don’t support that, then the criticism will only come from rich individuals.