[ExI] Campaign Finance and the candidates

[William Flynn Wallace]

Campaign finance is the kind of speech that should be most protected under
our constitution  Chris

I am not talking about the ability to contribute to campaigns.  I am
talking about the ability of the candidates to dip into it as if it were
personal money, like my post about Mississippi the other day.  Campaign
money should be spent on campaigns, no?

bill w

On Sun, Mar 20, 2016 at 5:22 PM, Chris Hibbert <hibbert at mydruthers.com>
wrote:

> On Mar 17, "William Flynn Wallace"<foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Maybe it isn't this bad in DC, or maybe it's worse.  I dunno.  But fixing
>>> campaign financing would seem to help us all and cost us nothing.  Who is
>>> going to lobby for this besides Ralph Nader, Consumer Reports, and the
>>> like
>>> in other words, not contributors?
>>>
>>
> There does seem to be a broad consensus that campaign financing is broken,
> but I don't think there's broad agreement on which problem needs to be
> fixed. I don't think I'm alone here in thinking there isn't an actual
> problem that can be solved with more restrictions. Campaign finance is the
> kind of speech that should be most protected under our constitution. The
> primary argument against free speech on political issues seems to be that
> spending in this way will corrupt public officials, but the campaign
> finance controls that we have make that more true, not less. And much
> spending on political speech isn't about a candidate at all. I'm fully in
> favor of the outcome of the Citizens United decision, which said that
> people are free to band together to spend their money advocating political
> positions. Much of the "consensus" that campaign reform is broken agrees
> with this, but I don't think a majority could be found to agree that that
> is the problem with our current system.
>
> We don't like what is going on in Washington.  Trump shows us that in
>>> spades.  I would not vote for him for dogcatcher, but we do need
>>> someone(s)
>>> to radically change the way our representatives do their business.
>>>
>>
> I'd agree that Trump's success shows that there are a lot of people who
> don't like what is going on in Washington. I don't think Trump's success
> shows that there is a consensus on what the problem is or what should be
> done about it. One of Trump's strengths is in uniting people who think
> something is wrong without saying what the problem is or what he advocates
> doing that would make things better.
>
> Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> replied:
>
>> In theory this is part of what Sanders may attempt...if he can get the
>> nomination.  (Sanders vs. Trump, despite what some say, seems almost
>> guaranteed not-Trump.  Of course, so does Clinton vs. Trump.  And that's
>> assuming Trump isn't on the take, driving out all other Republican
>> contenders with intent to abdicate his campaign between nomination and
>> November.)
>>
>
> This seems like a narrow viewpoint, which probably derives from being
> surrounded by people who do not favor Trump. From where I sit (even though
> I'm in Silicon Valley, and hence surrounded by liberals) it appears that
> two thirds of the electorate are afraid of Trump, two thirds are afraid of
> Clinton, and a different two thirds are afraid of Sanders. I'm in the
> minority (perhaps it's as big as a quarter of the electorate) who thinks
> it's scary to contemplate any of them being CIC, appointing cabinet heads,
> and able to issue executive orders.
>
> I don't know how it's going to end, but I've heard a fair amount about
> Trump's ability to grandstand, cast aspersions, and duck away from fair
> attacks. OTOH, I may be afraid of him the least, since my main complaint is
> that there's no predicting what he'll try. The policy goals I expect the
> other to to pursue are worse than that.
>
> Chris
> --
> It is easy to turn an aquarium into fish soup, but not so
> easy to turn fish soup back into an aquarium.
> -- Lech Walesa on reverting to a market economy.
>
> Chris Hibbert
> hibbert at mydruthers.com
> http://mydruthers.com
>
>
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