The flip rejoinder here is, "Yeah, and they pay more taxes than most families will pay over the course of generations, too." Glibness aside, though, I've never been happy with either side of the argument, here.
I understand the philosophy behind, "money is speech," but I refuse to take that at literal, face value. We tax money, for one thing, while the notion of a tax on speech is both stupid and reprehensible. Unless you're dealing with Ayn Rand, you'll usually set someone back on their heels with that one, if you're talking about direct donations. Likewise, if it's bad to bribe Senator Nelson with a special deal for Nebraska, it's also got to be bad to allow (effectively) corporate bribes by way of campaign contributions.
But then, we're not. Unless my understanding is flawed, we're talking about speech that is actually speech. It's associational speech, but the ruling freed up union speech as much as corporate speech. I can't be enthusiastic about bans on associational speech unless we (somehow) ban all associational political speech-- corporate, union, charity, newspaper, advocacy groups, etc. And that, I think, causes far more problems than the problem it purports to solve, because bear in mind, political parties are themselves associational speech groups in this regard. The Founding Fathers' quaint notions that political parties are Bad Things might be true, but their notion that they can be avoided is, on reflection, kinda dim.
On this side, too, I understand the philosophy and the desire to make sure that concentrations of power don't band together and wield disproportionate influence. But the practicalities of it inevitably boil down to rival interest groups trying to engineer the laws in such a way that they get to speak, and the other group doesn't.
Ambivalence, rather than outrage, is the rule of the day here at Casa Corwin.
no subject
I understand the philosophy behind, "money is speech," but I refuse to take that at literal, face value. We tax money, for one thing, while the notion of a tax on speech is both stupid and reprehensible. Unless you're dealing with Ayn Rand, you'll usually set someone back on their heels with that one, if you're talking about direct donations. Likewise, if it's bad to bribe Senator Nelson with a special deal for Nebraska, it's also got to be bad to allow (effectively) corporate bribes by way of campaign contributions.
But then, we're not. Unless my understanding is flawed, we're talking about speech that is actually speech. It's associational speech, but the ruling freed up union speech as much as corporate speech. I can't be enthusiastic about bans on associational speech unless we (somehow) ban all associational political speech-- corporate, union, charity, newspaper, advocacy groups, etc. And that, I think, causes far more problems than the problem it purports to solve, because bear in mind, political parties are themselves associational speech groups in this regard. The Founding Fathers' quaint notions that political parties are Bad Things might be true, but their notion that they can be avoided is, on reflection, kinda dim.
On this side, too, I understand the philosophy and the desire to make sure that concentrations of power don't band together and wield disproportionate influence. But the practicalities of it inevitably boil down to rival interest groups trying to engineer the laws in such a way that they get to speak, and the other group doesn't.
Ambivalence, rather than outrage, is the rule of the day here at Casa Corwin.