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United States Your Rights Online

Campaign Finance Meets the Web 174

Posted by michael from the and-neither-is-happy dept.
tristan writes "According to the Federal Election Commission expressing your political views on a personal web site constitutes a campaign contribution. How big a contribution? You can start tallying it up by adding up the cost of the server hardware and software. If it's over $1,000, you need to register as a political action committee! The ACLU has a story here. "

The ACLU's solution to the campaign finance mess is to advocate more public funding of elections. Are there other solutions? I'm interested to hear what slashdot readers have to say.
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Campaign Finance Meets the Web More

Campaign Finance Meets the Web

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  • Well, time for some of us to get out that old 486 then I suppose. I am just glad that politics bore me, and this doesnt affect me either way.
  • Those sub $300 PCs with Linux and Apache are looking more attractive, at least to not be labeled your own political action committee.

    ~afniv
    "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"


  • It's times like these when I'm glad to be an Anarchist. [infoshop.org] :)

    Michael Chisari

  • Truly bizarre. (Score:3)

    by Stonehand ( 71085 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @09:31AM (#1601459) Homepage
    If speech is a contribution, then so, arguably, is volunteering for a campaign or simply doing ANYTHING remotely related to politics. How might they compute the cost? Well, using the FEC logic and extrapolating, factor in food, shelter, transportation and all the other necessities...

    Newspaper editorials become contributions.

    Showing up at a rally and providing a boost by expressing your support on national TV is a contribution.

    Delivering a sermon against sin could easily be taken as a contribution.

    Oops. Has anybody at the FEC read the Constitution lately?
  • Where im from if you make donations to certain charities you can claim it as a tax deduction.

    If that applied in this case, then tax aint a problem
  • And I suppose the next thing is magazines and newspapers needing to register as PACs because the cost of their printing hardware is over some magical figure. If it costs more than $1000 to publish a politically motivated book do I have to register? The internet in its essence as it presently stands is mostly a way of sharing information in the same way as publishing. So it should be regulated as such. No two ways about it.

    Just one man's opinion. Flames redirected to /dev/null.

    Ben
  • We're all laughing at another wacky us government decision. But like all the rest, it's a case of a law for the public good being stymied by the unforseen use of the internet.
    Supposing you had a private plane that you used in your spare time to fly all over america, co-incidentally stopping at every city where your favourite presidential candidate was speaking. If you were going anyway, where's the harm in offering him a lift? The net extra cost is zero.
    Same thing here.
    I'm not trying to defend the bill. Well, I am, but my point is that law these days is so complex that there will always be unforseen consequences. When these arise, the thing to do is inform the relevent parties. If nothing happens, then bitch and complain and post to slashdot.
    We're at the bitching and posting stage now, because legislators still haven't realised that the internet is unlike anything they've dealt with before.
    Give 'em time. Twenty years should be enough for them to cop on.
    Until then, let's all give thanks for the ACLU.
  • I don't believe that newspapers with an on-line presence affected by these regulations, yet mine, at least, is forever urging me to support this candidate or the other.

    Perhaps all you need to do is start up a newsletter, and have the greatest part of it be the op-ed section.

  • So, if I extoll the virtues of my favorite candidate while wearing an expensive suit, am I required to file?

    What if I decide I want to paint a large sign on the side of my house, to draw votes? It's the same thing. The house is being used for other purposes, but it's also an advertisement.

    You might say that the only expenditure was the price of the paint, so that was my only contribution, but by that logic, the only expenditures made by this man were the cost of internet access, a tiny portion of hard drive space, etc. Hardly enough to put him over the $1000 limit.

  • What does it matter is my ideas are expressed on the net using a $50 PC or a $10,000 PC? Does it change my ideas any? This law should not apply to web sites. At least not in this fasion. Maybe is their was a law specifically saying (in abstract political mumbo jumbo), "all web pages, containing political views, to be used to aid in a canidates campain, must be registered with _____.." etc. But judging somone's ideas by the cost of the computer they are on is bogus.
  • If you were to staple a pro-[candidate] flier to a telephone pole, would you then have to register as a PAC? Surely, telephone poles cost easily over $1000 apiece...
  • What's really scary about the law as it now sits is when a political candidate actively complains to the FEC about sites that they don't like. Case in point is http://www.gwbush.com/
    This site, being HIGHLY critical of presidential candidate George W. Bush, is being hounded by the FEC as well. In this case, however, the reason the investigation was begun was because GW Bush's lawyers complained to the FEC. Scary... Very scary... (The very thought of politicians with lawyers terrifies me, but...) Anyway, enough babbling from this humble peasant.

  • I too doubt this would stand up to a first amendment challenge. The Supreme Court decided years ago that TV and radio were special exceptions to the first amendment. No such case has been made on the web yet. Second, I can see grounds for challenging the FEC's calculation of a website's costs - $1000 is a lot more than posting political commentary is really worth. If the guy is using his machines from some other purpose on the web, I doubt his real costs for his political sermonising are $1000.

    I'm with the ACLU though - public election funding would probably be the best solution. It seems to work well everywhere else.
  • It's not tax-deductible, in general, if the IRS thinks the non-profit is political. Political activity is grounds for removal of non-profit status; e.g. if a public university uses official assets to support an Al Gore rally, for instance.

    {sarcasm}Not that would ever happen...{/sarcasm}
  • I run two political web sites, Ventura Files [venturafiles.com] and the newly launched GeorgeW.Net [georgew.net]. The question that springs to my mind is who is contribution to? If I criticize a politician, that is not necessarily an endorsement of the opposition.

    Political speech has always been free speech. Now, because I'm using technology to amplify my speech I will need to register with the government? A Web site operator should enjoy the same protection that a newspaper publisher enjoys. There's plenty of political speech in the Op/Ed pages, but you don't see them registering as PAC's. And a newspaper is an enormous capital outlay compared to a Web server.

    This doesn't sound right. I'm going to have to call my representatives.

  • Ahem.

    "Vote Tom Swiss (Independent) for Galactic Emperor, I mean President. He promises to completely shirk his duties, never even come to the White House, and return his Presidental salary to the Federal Treasury."

    There, I've now made a political statement using /.'s computers, which undoubtedly cost more than $1000. Is /. a PAC? Am I? Are you, if you're reading this on a $1000+ machine?

  • When I read this, I was astonished -- momentarily. Then I realized this was exactly the sort of nonsense that would arise from the cry for more campaign finance regulations. I'm sure there are plenty of clueless folk out there who would rather call this a "loophole" than a bad ruling.

    The solution is simple: throw out all the ridiculous regulations on campaign financing and simply require full disclosure. If the FEC (which would probably lobby against this, since it would threaten their existence) decided it wanted to classify your site as a political expenditure, all that would be required of you is to have your name there.

  • Has the FEC targetted anybody but the pro-impeachment feller?

    {smirk}Not{/smirk} that I'm suggesting anything here, but...

    Unless they're willing to go *THWACK* beating on sites left and right -- discussion groups such as Slashdot included, and almost everybody that posts to certain USENET groups, and so forth... but it smacks of retribution.

    It'd be nice if somebody asks Gore, Hillary (who, apparently, wishes to appear in favor of campaign-finance reform... yeah, whatever, Hillary), George the Younger, Dole, and McCain 'bout this move.

  • campaign finance is free speech (Score:5)

    by MattMann ( 102516 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @09:49AM (#1601478)
    Of course advocating for a candidate is covered by campaign finance laws. Limiting campaign financing is limiting speech, equals-equals it's censorship.

    It is a widely held populist belief that if we allow big money, then the rich will control everything. The proper ACLU-approved response to this is it doesn't matter, free speech is absolute and the proper rational response to this is it doesn't matter because it's not true.

    The reason that free speech is important is that ideas are important and it's important to hear all sides and judge. Everybody gets to vote, rich or poor, nobody's taking that away. Yes, if unlimited free speech is allowed (yay!) then the rich will get more of it, but they already have more of it, campaign finance law has not and will never change that, and it's specious anyway because rich people come from all parts of the political spectrum too, from BarbAra Streisand to Charlton Heston. In fact, it is easier for the little guy, a dark horse candidate to convince a few rich people to support him/her than it is for that candidate to pound the pavement and fly all over the country raising peanuts here and there and ultimately getting nowhere. That's how George McGovern got in. It's only nowadays after we've had campaign spending limits lots of good candidates are complaining that they can't raise enough money.

    When speech is controlled by the government, that's when you lose freedom. Campaign finance law is part-and-parcel of dictatorship, as is public financing. If we were to get public financing, do you think any current office holders or entrenched civil servants will not use it to their own advantage?

    And, right back on topic, if you attempt to limit free speech/spending speech you are always going to get people figuring out how to get around it as we saw with PACs, soft money, private individuals running advocacy ads (banned) and private individuals setting up private websites (which has to be banned for the same reason).

    The answer is simple: stop limiting free speech, whatever form it takes, and how ever much it costs.

    Of course, I feel compelled to add, sometimes free-speech (in the form of campaign shindigs) does equal free-beer if you can wangle an invitation.

  • i beleive $1000 is the limit a person can make as a direct contribution. obviously however if the equipment is still in possession of a donor then he hasn't actually given $1000 to anyone

    considering the value of internet exposure today, there needs to a control on this, no doubt. but how about something semi-intelligent like: if the page's primary focus is on expressing or supporting a canditdates or parties views (just talking about issues does not constitute contributing to a candidate!!!) and the value of the equipment/net access/technician manhours, etc. exceeds say $20,000 (debateable) then it would have to be reported..

    what a bunch of fat bloated eeeediots!

  • My PC was, um, pushing $1500 when I bought it a couple of years ago. I have recently seen better systems for sale at roughly $2-300. The hardware is probably worth (WAG) 150-200 now, less if I disconnect the monitor and the extra hardrive, both of which would be unnecessary on a web server. Running linux, the software would be free if I got it from an FTP server. So, assuming I wanted to support some cantidate exclusively with this machine, would I register as a $1500 contributing PAC, or Just Plain Dan w/ a POS old computer running free software?
  • Agreed: the campaign finance law is supposed to meant to protect the voice of the individual citizen against the `one dollar, one vote' logic of mass media establishment cronyism. What's wrong in the current case is it acts against the very voices it is trying to protect...


    Shameless plug time -

    The constitution by itself does not protect freedom in America: the division of power only works if the public campiagns for openness and civil liberties, so support the ACLU [aclu.org] ...

  • If I were to go out right now and make a free Geocities [geocities.com] page endorsing Ralph Nader [citizen.org] for president (not a bad idea actually), am I going to have to pay the federal election commision for the use of the server? Is Yahoo [yahoo.com] supposed to pay for it instead?


    Ok, so no money exchanges hands there, it might be harder to argue in a court. But my web page [192.245.222.131] now (nevermind my profile, I need to update it) is on a web server at a public university [usouthal.edu]. I pay tuition and am the primary administrator of this machine [192.245.222.131] -- I like to think of it as mine even though it really isn't. If I put that Nader site here, with all kinds of fun stuff like petitions and links and essays and endorsements and yadda yadda yadda, is someone supposed to pay then?


    This is stupid. I can almost follow the FEC [fec.gov]'s logic: expensive equipment is being used. If you were to publish in a newspaper or run a radio or television broadcast ad, you would have to pay the publisher of that media for the space. In this case, you've already paid for it (via tuition & fees) but from a certain point of view it's the same thing.


    But that's an insane point of view. Would it be better to pay by the percentage of clock cycles or disc space that goes to serving out the political page? Arguably, but it's a weak argument at best.


    God I hope this doesn't stand up in court...







  • You think this is bad? Aside from the FEC's value added approach to campaign finance, more insidious still is Sen. McCain's proposed bill. It basically says that if I were to put up money to support one canidate or viewpoint, I must also put up and equal amount for the opposing viewpoint...now take into account the FEC's creative accounting and one can easily see where this becomes something more than just an exercise in stupidity. Say I post a page espousing some mainstream viewpoint (it matters not which one) and I post it to a server that I rent space on. Say it's a Sun E4000. Must I then put up funding for E4000's for the opposing viewpoint? And that's supposing there's only one!!!Thankfully, the odds of the measure passing are low. However, the bigger danger is that those voters who don't bother to think or read for themselves will become lulled into accepting such blatant abuses of Free Speech.do something about stupid voters. Vote.
  • The Republicans can get a registered charity to publicise their candidate in an election, and nobody has to register or pay for anything. (See CNN).

    But if anybody tries to HONESTLY AND OPENLY express their personal opinion, they automatically get a sizable bill through the mail.

    Conclusion: It's better to infiltrate and pervert a voluntary organisation, and subliminally gain popularity, than be sincere or genuine.

    Is there something wrong with this picture?

  • great analogy!

    sometimes a think they come up with some of this stuff just to get people fired up. obviously if there is no change in ownership, there iss no contribution!
  • >While I feel that political speech needs to
    >regulated on the internet, I don't agree how they
    >came up with the costs

    (Imagine this line in the most dry English tone you can imagine.)
    Are you insane?

    Political speech needs to be regulated? Geez Luiz! Are you completely missing the point of democracy?

    And the costs are simply retarded. If I say "Bill Clinton is a big liar" or "George W Bush is a tool", does that mean that Slashdot has to register?

    Everytime I hear about some beaurocracy trying to introduce a new regulation, I wonder how it can get any more ridiculus. Then I see things like this.

    And yes, it may be an older story, but it's new to most of us. I find it interesting, myself. But that's just my opinion.
  • I'm running a 7 yr old 486DX1/33 Linux box with Apache. The hardware value is somewhere around $0.39 by todays market, and the software was free. The only cost is my time, and my employer doesn't seem to put a very high value on that, either!!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I presume that the full price of the equipment would count as a campaign contribution only if the equipment's sole use were for this campaigning. Otherwise it would be usual (in company accounting) to divide the cost pro-rata amongst the uses to which it is put


    And there is no way in which my innocent act of reading your campaign material could count as campaigning itself. You seem to have a `GNU-viral' conception of what political campaigning is...

  • Wait a second, this is great! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey, let's look at the plus side of all this -- any "political" web site will HAVE to run on Linux now!

    I mean, you can't buy NT & a "server" for less than 1K . . .

    All of the sudden, politicians will LOVE us!

  • Like About 99.99% of Federal Laws... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...this is totally un-Constitutional BULLSHIT!!! If we ever decide to move back from the brink (or back up from OVER the brink) of a police state, we have to scrap ALL the federal laws and start over. If a bill does not meet STRICT observance of the Constitution, it does NOT become law. PERIOD. If only the founding fathers had listened (fully) to George Mason [backwoodshome.com].

  • The Supreme Court recently ruled that campaign contributions are protected speech. Now they rule that protected speech is not speech at all, but rather a campaign contribution...

    So money = speech, speech = money, but speech != speech? Hmm.

    Well, at least the vision of the Founding Fathers is coming true. They only ever intended land-holding (i.e. wealthy) males to have any say in the governance of the country in the first place.

  • If I buy a $2,000 PC, and spend 50 hours/month playing Quake, and 2 hours/month writing opinionated rants on my webpage, couldn't I argue that the value of the "donation" is only $80?

    Also, if your diatribes are not posted on sites that you are physically hosting, wouldn't your donation be what the ISP charges?

    If I were this guy, I'd argue that since the site did many things besides the political ads, the amount of the "Donation" should be prorated using the amount of server space used for the ads. It is insane to work any other way. Otherwise, you have paradoxical situations wherein if I were to host two sites, one for each of two elections, I'd be "donating" twice as much money as I actually spent.

    Hell, by this theory, Geocities has made one hell of a campaign donation!
  • See Citizens' Guide to Contributions and the Law [fec.gov], put out by the FEC.

    If you advocate the election or defeat of a specific candidate, you may need to put up a notice, and report it to the FEC (if the value exeeds $1K), according to the section on "Independent Expenditures". However, it may perhaps be unlimited if it's *not* targetted at/for a specific candidate, and is independent of various organizations and political folks...
  • Whilst a heavily loaded server such as slashdot, or a main party web page costs a LOT to keep running, you can run a small-medium web page for very little these days.

    Just the cost for a domain name, and a little for the hosting.

    If it were so expensive I dont think the porn pages would do so well ;)
  • >the silly student / he writes really bad haiku / readers all go mad

    the insane reader / creates even worse haiku /
    to aid his revenge
  • The FEC has shown itself to be truly high-handed and arrogant. They have been stopped cold a couple of times by the Supreme Court, but still they persist in ingnoring the constitution.

    I don't think there is any hope for them any more.

    Abolish the FEC. End limits on donations, but make all donations extremely public. All donations and donors go into a searchable database on the internet, large donations ($1,000 or more) go into newspaper ads, very large donors ($50,000 or more) are identified in TV ads. If you spend a $100,000 to buy a congresscritter, I want to know who you are. Donations must be done by individuals, no organization of any kind would be allowed to donate, nor would cash be allowed.

  • DON'T VOTE for this man! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Vote Tom Swiss (Independent) for Galactic Emperor, I mean President. He promises to completely shirk his duties, never even come to the White House, and return his Presidental salary to the Federal Treasury.

    Tom Swiss would have you believe that he is qualified for the job. However ..

    • He refuses to discuss the incident six years ago with the six feet of rubber tubing, the quart of motor oil, and the yak
    • His policy towards Portugal is dangerous and misguided
    • His views on Syrofoam are, at best, backward
    • He led a violent protest after "Mama's Family" was taken off the air
    • He refuses to clarify his position on rutabagas
    • He once accepted a bribe from the National Association of Toothpick Manufacturers
    This is your country. Don't vote for Tom Swiss.
  • Hey! Moderators! Give this guy a few points! If I had a few, I'd definitely let him have one - he's made the most sense out of anyone so far and his views need to be heard.

    Thanks :)


    --

  • This is just an instance of rules created for print/television advertising being applied blindly to internet `advertising'. It's stupid and annoying, but it's happening a lot with law and other groups regulations, and it has to happen, because the interenet is a different sort of media, and it takes rules a while to adapt.

    If enough people scream about it, it will be changed, new regulations for internet advertising will be written, and we'll be able to move on to the next set of rules that have to be rewritten.

  • "After a series of conversations with the FEC, Smith was told, in
    essence, that he was in violation of federal law because he had
    spent more than $250 in expressing his political views without
    disclosing his identity and filing the required reports with the
    federal government.

    "


    Would the $250 limit still be imposed if Leo
    had posted his name.
  • I don't think the law is what the FEC said it was. I'm certain that their interpretation of it is wrong. If I put a booster page on Geocities does that put the value of all of Yahoo's equipment behind it. The FEC is wrong.

    Complex laws have lots of unforeseen results because they are complex. Good laws are clear and straightforward and have very few unpredictable boundary conditions. Good laws are simple at the appropriate level of abstraction.

    I love the ACLU, but they often have this bizarre notion that more government is the solution to screwed up government. The FEC and the current campaign contribution laws are broke. It is not clear to me that public funding of elections will not as a side effect take away the first amendment right to say what you want in support of unpopular and marginal politicians.

  • The article says he asked the FEC for an advisory ruling. The FEC doesn't seem to have known anything about him before that. Also, there's no mention of the FEC trying to enforce any kind of ruling. I suspect they would just as soon not waste time on him.
  • ...from campaign finance harassment of free speech. This sort of thing has been happening in RL for years. Jesse Helmes got the FEC to go after an ACT-UP chapter that made disparaging comments about him, arguing their comments constituted an illegal campaign donation.

    I also think mandatory disclosure is stupid. Ralph Nader had to bend over backwards to in 1996 to coordinate his trips so he didn't go over certain spending limits so he didn't have to disclose income and asset information. I think Nader's a hypocrite, but why should he have to disclose where he's getting his money from (and how much)?

  • Smith told the agency that he was not going to comply with its onerous regulations and refused to take down his website. Informed by an FEC attorney that he ran the risk of having legal action taken against him, Smith basically dared the agency to try. "I told them that I was definitely not going to take my site down, I was not going to file the reports and I was not going to post my name on the site," he said. "I told them that from a free speech standpoint, they were totally out of line."

    I love this guy! He's my hero! Most people would have rolled over. This guy's telling them to come and get him.

    I'm starting a website right now to try and get this guy on the 2000 presidential ticket. www.eat_sh*t_feds.org Does anyone know where I can get the PAC forms from the FEC?

  • Zigg is exactly right, and the important thing to keep in mind is that old
    Nixon era maxim: "follow the money."

    The FEC and the ACLU are made up of (prepare for a shock) LAWYERS!

    Doing as Zigg suggests would eliminate jobs for (drum roll) LAWYERS!!

    This would mean less loot, more competition, all sorts of "bad things" for
    those who would control speech -- who happen to be LAWYERS!

    The people who want to do as Zigg (and ok, I) suggest generally aren't,
    we would benefit financially from fewer crappy rulings from _______
    (fill in the blank). The only thing lacking on the other side is (ironically)
    financial-disclosure-honesty like I just gave above. It's all about greed, I
    admit it and they don't.

    The people will again respect the law (and the lawyers) when the law
    again respects the will of the people.
    JMR
  • It seems to me that the common sensical notion that money spent on a political campaign does equal to volume of speech is pretty accurate. We can rant on /. for days and reach nowhere near as many people as Rupert Murdoch could and Ted Turner can. Or MS, or Phillip Morris. What that means is that when there are candidates and issues that fall on economic lines, the Voice that gets heard is the voice with money. The flip side is that publicly financing political campaigns (if you include all statements endorsing or detracting a candidate) means ultimately either limiting how many people can say what they want (effectively putting a price, or a limit on 'free' speech) or financing the world. That's a tight little dillema, quite appart from "it cost my parents thousands to raise me, so are my political conjectures made by a PAC?" type absurdities. The absurdity is an artifact of the paradox. The real problem is that the ACLU and the FEC are both taking (fair typically) bloody-minded stances. Neither is taking a complex or realistic stand involving resolving this dillema. Rather the one wants to pave over the foundation the other wants to build on. And the fact is that the whole thing is built in the unexplored swamps.
  • To avoid the current mess of campaign finance regulation and the 1st Ammendment, why not switch to a full-disclosure system? Candidates are free to take money in any quantity from anyone (which satisfies the free-speech concern) but are required to provide it to some group (the FEC or another government agency, news media consortium, etc) which will maintain the information in a public format.

  • So, China can buy the presidency. Big companies can buy Congressmen and Senators.

    BUT, if I say "Vote for Skippy Dolittle" on my web page I am "subverting the political process."

  • If you read the fine print of the FEC advisory opinion [sdrdc.com], you'll see they do advocate pro-rating the cost of the PC, domain registration, and internet access: "Some portion of the previous expenses described in your request could be apportioned to each and every web site that you construct as part of your business. These overhead costs would include, for example, the fee to secure the registration of domain name, the amounts you invested in your hardware, and the utility costs to create the site.9"

    Which is reasonable. I can't find out where they state that they (the FEC) actually determined that the pro-rated amount actually did exceed $250 during 1998. I also don't see whether they believe the valuation should be based on actual bandwidth usage (which would indicate the FEC would be putting a higher value based on how many people read the page, a potential problem) or merely on harddisk space of the pages in relation to pages for his business.


    From my reading, they were ackowledging that any time he put into the effort would not be included in the valuation. So his "speech" was free, only broadcasting of it was considered a contribution, and only in proportion to the other cost of the web site. His argument was that the political website should be valued only at the marginal cost, which was $0.

  • I think this case is ridiculous, but... (Score:3)

    by FallLine ( 12211 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @10:49AM (#1601516)

    This case is ridiculous. However, campaign finance issues do need to be addressed. There should be restrictions on contributions. Lobbying (of all kinds) is arguably a form of free speach. Though there are clearly huge abuses that simply can't be allowed. Its not just fortune 500 companies either, its unions, interest groups, and many others.

    I basically feel that the greater good would be to disallow active advertisements. eg: TV ads, magazine ads, banner ads, etc. They tend not to be informative, and resort to scare mongering, and mud slinging.

    "Passive" ads on the other hand would be allowed. eg: Web pages comparing and contrasting the candidates. The Federal government should provide a web site, call it election.gov. Which would basically provide the forum for each candidate and interest group to speak their minds, and distribute meaningful information. Hopefully, it would be conducive to constructive and intelligent criticism, ...rather than what is normally seen today in politics.

    I know it wouldn't make it absolutely equitable, but that is not my primary concern here. I don't think we can, as a country, afford to have our promulgators and policy makers to be enticed by financial considerations given by various lobbies.

    ...anyways, i'm out of time. hasta
  • Check out this article about the George W. Bush campaign sending the FEC after someone:
    http://www.thestandard.com/articles/special/disp lay/0,2168,m6628,00.html?special

    Does the FEC also count the value of a car that is attached to a political bumpersticker?

    Lucky for me that my website runs Redhat, Apache on a free machine on a free net connection!
  • Which would you prefer?
    • Candidate A gets several huge contributions from large conglomerates; these contributions are fully disclosed. Candidate A spends a lot of his time campaigning with ordinary people to get votes.
    • Candidate B has to get thousands of small contributions; these contributions are also fully disclosed. Candidate B spends a lot of his time campaigning at $1000/plate fundraisers to make money to support a campaign.
    Now which system is more corrupt?

  • law these days is so complex that there will always be unforseen consequences.

    So lets ditch the surpurfolus laws, yes?

    How 'bout we start by preventing anyone but congress from making laws/rules/regulations with the power of law.

  • Further, the court that slapped back the CDA (remember that...) stated that the Web deserved the highest level of First Amendent protection, or something like that.

  • It's not tax-deductible, in general, if the IRS thinks the non-profit is political. Political activity is grounds for removal of non-profit status; e.g. if a public university uses official assets to support an Al Gore rally, for instance.



    This does bring up other interesting ideas. According to their logic, if the free speech campaign (blue ribbon) is considered no profit. Then there are a whole lot of web sites out there that could fall under that. Just imgaine, every small personal page counting as a thousand dollar donation.

    Hmmm perhpas I'll jsut add a quick amnesty international banner on my site.



    O.D.
  • It doesn't directly affect you.
  • That would work if we lived in a society that actually cared. Imagine if some good old billionaire decided to "buy a puppet", how many people do you think would not vote for the puppet solely because he got a billion dollars? You can disclose it all, but nobody seems to really care all that much.

    There has to be some regulations... (for an extreme example) let's say that billionaire put up a website with multiple T3's, a couple of Sun E10k clustered, etc. costing millions of dollars hired 5 webmasters, etc. and all he had to do was put a little disclosure notice on the bottom... that would put more than a few people out of the running.

    I wish I could say that I have an answer, or that there is even an answer out there. When you try to protect the small guy, the big guys abuse it, you try to protect it from the big guys, the small guys get lost in the shuffle; until someone trys to use the law in a way that it wasn't meant to be and the little guy gets walked on.

  • The reason why public financing might be the only way to go, if we can ever figure out how to make it work, since you have the problem of determining who is a "valid" enough candidate to receive the money, is because the Supreme Court keeps saying that money equals speech, which means a First Amendment problem comes up when we try to restrict or ban the flow of money into political party hands.

    Personally, let's just not allow people to ever personally have enough money to ever be able to buy more electoral power than anyone else. ;)

  • Re:Amen (Score:3)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @11:15AM (#1601527) Homepage Journal
    I agree absolutely. Let everyone contribute as much as they want. There are thousands of people who contribute one dollar for everyone that contributes one thousand dollars. And there are thousands of them for every one that could contribute one million.

    But I would add one other requirement: contributions from eligible voters only. Not only would this eliminate the foreign funding scandals that are arisen in the US, but it would also eliminate corporate funding of campaigns. If the CEO of MegaCorp wants to support George Dubya, then it should be his money/stocks, and not that of the shareholders. Ditto for the unions.

  • Hypothetically an agency of a govenrnment that may or may not be ours intended to regulate alleged abuses of it's electorial process. It might appear that this postulated entity (I am not naming names here) and the administration behind it (hypothetically again- could be anywhere) are again doing what they do best.

    They (whoever they are) are not necessarilly dealing with really powerful entities that threaten to undermine the democratic process; for argument's sake lets say a communist nation doling out pac money, and "soft" money contributions from the already rich and powerful that contribute to both parties and claim they have no control over legislation.

    Instead they bring the full force of law on mostly harmless and ineffectual backwoods hate-mongers no one would listen to anyway just so they look like they are doing a job. Throw in a few cyber-bores ranting as self stylized spin-doctors that are only preach to their own choir for good measure, and some rickety ol ministers urging the vote on a rather beaten to death Pro-life issue and now they are really looking like they have a "mission" to justify their budget.

    It is obvious that Larry Flint has accomplished more investigation than the organization (with less money) that could be called the FEC (but I am not saying it is). If this is the best violations of election proceedure they can come up with it is clear that their charges will never hold in court, and I wouldn't want to be them around budget time if another (hypothetical) party takes office.

    Any resembleance the above hypothetical agency, admistration, or government has to any real agency, administration, or government is purely coincidental and the author disavows any relationship of such with the full knowledge that Big Brother is watching.

    >Bart Simpson- "I didn't do it...It wasn't me"
  • Okay, so if I gave $1000 to a political party, then I'd be out the $1000. It's gone. Not mine anymore. That's what 'donate' means. I'm giving it to someone.

    But if I spend $1000 on computer equipment, I still have the equipment. I didn't give it away and I didn't lose the equipment after the campaign was over. So how the hell can that be considered a donation?

    It also ignores the fact that the computer is not necesserily being used exclusively for this purpose and no other. If I had a home business and used my home PC to run it, but also used it for games, I would only be able to declare a percentage of the PC's cost as a business expense rather than the entire cost. Why is this any different? Is that computer doing nothing but running this one political website?

    If I drive my car to a political rally, and my car cost me $18,000, does that mean I have donated $18,000 to the campaign? Of course not. I only used a teeny tiny percentage of the car's lifespan to drive to the rally. And if a webpage is up on a good OS, it will only amount to a teeny tiny percentage of that computer's time and money.

    The people who came up with this ruling are technical illeterates who know nothing about computers or how the 'net works. They have no idea that a webserver does not take up the majority of the computer's time unless its a really slow computer or a really busy website.

  • Rules can always be manipulated.

    So far it's only in the discussion stages, but the FEC's rules on independent TV spots is ripe for abuse. The scheme goes like this: Assume that you are trying to defeat the Hon. Cross Palmer. You register as a PAC and place ads showing archive footage of Rep. Palmer at his stupidest, along with double-meaning captioning written by a really good satirist. The upshot is that the Palmer not only becomes a public laughingstock, but YOUR budget gets charged against HIS spending limits.

    It's the TV equivalent of a Joe-job. The same tactic works even better on the Net. You register as a PAC and put up a page on Geocities with the Best of Palmer done in slack-stick [sputum.com] and then report to the FEC listing the Geocities server farm as a contribution. Now multiply by the thousands of people who think that the public has been serviced enough by Palmer.

    MUCH more practical and cost-efficient than television. But then we knew that, didn't we?
  • Are campain contributions Tax Deductible (considering who's writing tax laws, I would think they were)

    Does that mean we could deduct the cost of our servers/ect if we put up some political views?


    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • This is ridiculous.
    Big corporations get away with giving I don't know how much money (practically bought the last Prez Election) in "Soft Money" and legally doesn't have to report it as a campaign contribution. But Joe User puts up a political web site as a hobby, and gets assessed for their whole computer?????

    The lesson here boys and girls is that if you are a big corporation with billions of dollars you don't have to play by the rules, donate millions to both the Republican and the Democrat canidates and you got yourself the best government money can buy!
  • But I would add one other requirement: contributions from eligible voters only. Not only would this eliminate the foreign funding scandals that are arisen in the US, but it would also eliminate corporate funding of campaigns.

    Amen to that! If you can't vote, you shouldn't fund. And a conviction of monopoly tactics should be counted as a felony that strips voting and funding rights


  • But, er, what does he gain? There's diminishing returns.

    There's only so many ads that one can buy, before the nation gets sick of the buyer. This is particularly so if said billionaire already has a high profile and a not particularly sterling reputation...

    Look at Perot; his wealth did not help him overcome his eccentricity. Forbe's wealth may actually count against him, by stirring up resentment -- particularly if he opens his mouth on taxes.

    Unless you buy up the media itself -- and no one entity is allowed to dominate, say, radio; probably the same for television, as well, and possibly newspapers -- you can't prevent your opponents from being heard, either.
  • Whoa! Did you even read the story? For the record, this was an example of the ACLU getting behind the little guy vs. big bad government overregulation. Which, actually, is pretty typical for them.

    I'm certainly not always on the side of the ACLU, but this rhetoric is just bizarre. Care to provide any examples to back up your reasoning? (or rather, your refusal to use reason: anything they're against is okay by me.)


    PS Get your paranoid rhetoric right! Stormtroopers are fascist, not socialist.
    • The NRA is opposed to most of the liberties that the ACLU fights for (freedom of speech, religion, assembly, the rights of the accused, etc.)
    Go easy on the crack, son. Or better yet, actually try reading NRA publications and writings. You might be surprised.
  • Why does there need to be control? Two messages in a row take it as obvious, and I have no clue why. Sure, free-flowing political discourse is dangerous, but that's what this country is all about.

    Does the FEC filing cost anything beyond a stamp to send in the forms? Because otherwise, I think we should all file. As often as needed. And consider the possibility that any email with a vaguely political slant might be a contribution.

    Please note that I am quoting, in my sig, Homer Simpson making a statement that is political in nature. In the episode, he is begging the art crowd to resume following him. This is a clearly political statement on his own behalf. And, by reference to a bit of pop culture that ridicules the art establishment, I am contributing to the Republican party. (Eew - time to change sigs...)

    Sanity For Today
    Farley Flavors (of Fabulous Fast Food fame)
  • How do you propose a system like this, and in the same breath remove the federal agency that would implement your regulations? Sounds like you want to have it both ways.

    Your idea of restricting donations by organizations strikes me as being non-democratic. Organizations are the way that equal citizens band together to get their point across. Restricting them from donating as a group is a serious restriction of their rights.
  • Don't forget to count the opportunity cost of advocating your favorite candidate when you could be working a second job! :P
  • Perhaps we should collectively let the FEC know what our community thinks of their decision.

    A fax number for them is (202-501-3413), other numbers are listed here: http://www.fec.gov/1996/offices.htm#anchor560369

    BTW, if the story popps up on www.wired.com you can fax it from your web browser.

    Hummmm, I wounder how many times the auto-fax thingie tries to call a non-fax number before giving up?
  • I don't like to have to deal with government BS anymore than anybody else. However, this guy's speech is not being impacted other than he has to explain who he is in a very limited way.

    Kind of ironic that you point this out when posting as anonymous coward. The biggest problem with campaign finance laws is that they are designed to restrict many kinds of free speech. Anonymous speech is one of the truest forms of free speech. By attaching a bogus dollar amount saying that the cost of a system constitutes a person becoming a PAC is ludicrous. The legal paperwork for PAC's are royal pain in the butt for the average Joe who just wants a place to voice his or her opinion.

    IMHO, this is a far worse attempt at censorship than trying to get rid of porn sites. If, as a citizen of the United States, I am not allowed to express my own opinion with out fear of violating some arcane campaign law or having to take the time to fill out several government forms that have no true significance to anything I am doing, the Constitution of this country is as valuable as toilet paper! Where is there a difference between getting a sign and walking in front of city hall protesting some action and calling for someone else to be elected or voted out or impeached versus throwing same information up on the internet for all to see? Most people would surely protest having to fill out forms just to carry a protest sign in front of a government building. If I choose to carry my protest sign on the internet, I should be able to do so with all of the individual rights of free speech that I am entitled to as a citizen of the United States of America!
  • Shoot, I didn't know /. knew me so well... B->
  • You're right: campaign finance laws are a threat to free speech. However, I don't follow your conclusion that big money != political power.


    You seem to argue that since rich people are distributed evenly along the political spectrum, big money has no inherent political bias. What you're forgetting, however, is that the real money isn't with the rich people, it's with the rich corporations, and their influence tends to be much more homogenous.


    Examples (all admittedly arguable, but that's the fun part):

    Continued increased spending on new military technology (boeing, raytheon, etc.) during peacetime.

    NAFTA: pretty unpopular policy move with huge corporate support.

    There are those who would claim that the war on drugs continues to be supported because of money from the alchohol and tobacco industries.


    In addition, there are any number of regulatory issues involving intellectual property and patent law that might become targets for corporate lobbying should free software continue to emerge as a threat. If there's corporate money at stake, congress will be more than willing to ignore what's best for the consumer.


    I don't think public financing of campaigns is the best answer, but it's certainly better than the current system. If there are any better ideas out there, I would love to hear them.

  • Almost every newspaper and news magazine in this country endorses candidates for elections (at least via the editorial board) -- so should the total cost of the paper, ink, presses, delivery, salary, location, etc. count as campaign contributions to the endorsed candidates?

    Should campaign volunteers' time be counted as contributions if the "fair market" value of the time exceeds the cap? (Sorry, Chris, but if you help us at this rally, it'll cost the campaign too much...)

    Just another case where you add in the word "internet" and all of a sudden everyone thinks they have to get involved. Oh my God! Do you realize that with the INTERNET, anyone could be politically active without reporting to us?!?!?!

    Excuse me while I throw up...


    --

  • That's an elegant solution! Nice!
  • You make an excellent point. It is high time these people started getting more informed counsel.

    A better way, if they must have something, might be to take into consideration the revenues of a site that runs an endorsement, especially advertising revenues. The true value of an endorsement is bound up with who is doing the endorsing and how big their audience is, not how much the equipment cost (what if they used the same rule for radio advertisements!?!). There is a direct relationship between the size of a site's audience and their [advertising] revenues. Thus, the value of the "donation" should be assesed by how much the site would charge a third party for an endorsement of similiar size/content.

    If an endorsement is placed on Joe Hackestoop's Personal Home Page, it can and should be ignored by the government, regardless of what hardware he is running. However, if amazon.com or E*Trade placed endorsements for candidates on their sites, I should think those endorsements would be very valuable to their candidates and should be accounted for. The problem is not that the FEC wants to get a handle on this somehow, but the way they are doing it.

    The flip side of this is that most commercial sites would never run endorsements on their pages for fear of alienating customers.

    JAD
  • Most of the arguments seem to center around restricting money vs. the free flow of money. My question is more fundamental: Why are donations even required?

    Think about this. Thousands of charity and non-profit organizations go scraping for money to feed the homeless, help orphans, teach kids, you name it. Yet our country's citizenry spends MILLIONS each year donating to POLITICS and politicians instead.

    Is anyone else seriously bothered by this?

    Why does it need to cost, on average, close to a million dollars to become a US Rep? Close to 5 million to become a Senator? And for President? Bush has over $60 million, and we're still more than a year from the election! Don't we think this money could have better uses? And the advantage still always goes to the incumbent!

    I'm not sure how I feel about public funding of all elections. It's different, but it may be a solution. I'd be interested to hear other ideas about how to remove these utterly ridiculous price tags to elected positions.

    You can posture all you want on free speech and contributions. I say that as soon as you put a requirement that a candidate fund raise, you corrupt the process. The interests of the poor and the rich are not equivalent, hence the advantage always goes to the rich (or at least those who donate). That's fine in business, but what is the best candidate for creating the laws of our land should not have price tags attached to it.

  • Well, if that counts as a political contribution, I guess that I can deduct the first hundred on my 1040!

    I think I can engineer 100 dollars worth of "political views" as a side bar on my web page. =)
  • *Anybody* can give soft money without having to report it as a campaign contribution.

    The reason the FEC is going after this web site is because it endorsed a specific candidate. If a corporation put on its web site, "Vote for candidate Y" that would be considered a campaign donation. Actually if a corporation mentioned in its internal newsletter who it thought employees should vote for, that would also count as a donation.

    A lot of groups and nonprofit organizations simply don't include "please vote for candidate X" in their newsletters because the hassles are too great. This was what happened to the Christian Coalition -- you come too close to saying "we would prefer candidate Y" and you get in a lot of trouble (the CC and unions have both gotten into trouble for producing voter guides that the FEC thought were too politicized).
  • your conclusion that big money != political power

    that was explicitly not my conclusion. What I said was limiting political spending does not accomplish the goal of limiting the political power of big money.

    You seem to argue that since rich people are distributed evenly along the political spectrum, big money has no inherent political bias
    What you're forgetting, however, is that the real money isn't with the rich people, it's with the rich corporations, and their influence tends to be much more homogenous.

    Well, I don't want get you on an "inherent" technicality so let me remake the argument: I think it's easy to demonstrate that rich people are distributed widely across the political spectrum, though I have no idea how evenly. I'd sure like to hear the points of view that are supposedly not being heard, I'll bet I've already heard them. I've sure already heard all the ones you presented, defense, NAFTA, alcohol, tobacco... I don't feel like I or anybody is underinformed on those issues. Those debates actually tire people out and they shout "gridlock" and form third parties, though I've no idea what their fresh perspective is. As to the law which emerges from those debates? It doesn't seem to me that it has swung one way or the other. We still have tobacco, but not as much or as free, we still have defense spending, but not as much. NAFTA? Hell if I know which way it went. We still have lots of imports and lots of exports and lots of Americans working home and abroad, and lots of foreigners working here. The system is pretty much working, isn't it?

    And the debate is working so well because big corporations with all of their big money are owned by the same rich people who come from all across the spectrum. Have you met the officers of your and other companies? All the "suits" I've ever gotten to know personally have turned out to have ideas from all across the same spectrum. "Suits" are just people who wear suits.

    I think the gripe I'm hearing is really that the system is not open-sourced: we don't get to see how the decisions are made.

    I say, anybody should spend as much money as they want, hey, hire all the lobbyists you want, I don't care. But it should all be on CSPAN... no wait, it should all be on Slashdot... no more secrets, no more closed source. What do you wish to tell my congressman, or my president that you don't want me to hear? If we had open campaigning, open meetings, and open lobbying, we really would get the best government that all of that money could buy for us.

    But don't think I'm calling for this too loudly, because most of the system is working. This is a better time, richer, freeer, healthier, cleaner, funner, you name it, to be alive than ever before in the history of man. Yes, some people don't have all of all of those things, but that's the "the glass is 1% empty" point of view, because vastly more people in the world have all of those things, and there's no reason to think that more won't tomorrow.

    Too rosy? Heck, 10 years ago there was no Linux, and 20 years ago there was no opensource. Yeah, we have AIDS to worry about, and NT, but things are getting much better.

  • "Think about this. Thousands of charity and non-profit organizations go scraping for money to feed the homeless, help orphans, teach kids, you name it. Yet our country's citizenry spends MILLIONS each year donating to POLITICS and politicians instead."

    Since you're saying this I'm assuming that you know the amount donated to charities vs. the amount spent on campaigns (obviously nobody posting to Slashdot would think of posting something completely unsubstantiated). I would like to know just how much more is contributed to political campaigns vs. charitable organizations.

    Thank you.
  • I'd like to mention just how these regulatory agencies work: He didn't send an e-mail or go down to the local FEC office and ask one of the people for their opinion over a cup of coffee. Instead Leo Smith probabally got a phone call or an e-mail from the Federal Elections Comission and asked him to start filling out the required paperwork.

    As part of the appeal process he demanded a formal written opinion from the FEC, which is one of the first steps they are required to do before any legal action can take place. This process is the same if you are disputing something from the IRS, NSA, FCC, or any other federal agency. The advisory opinion [sdrdc.com] is taken as the official position of the FEC on the matter and is treated similarly (although not exactly) to an opinion written by a federal judge, or at least a legal briefing by a procesuting attorney.

    The fact that the FEC would even write such an opinion indicates that they take the issue seriously and are in the process of of trying to enforce what they percieve as violations of US Elections Laws. They even specify the exact laws they feel are being broken and are threating legal action.

    Specifically, the FEC said "Should the activity qualify as an independent expenditure, you would be required to file reports with the Commission if the total value of your expenditures exceeds $250 during 1998. 2 U.S.C. 431(17), 434(c), 441a(a)(7)(B); 11 CFR 109.1, 109.2. In contrast, if your activity were not conducted completely independent of the Koskoff campaign, your expenditures would be reportable by the Koskoff Committee as an in-kind contribution from you. 2 U.S.C. 431(8)(A)(i), 434(b)(2)(A), 434(b)(3)(A); 11 CFR 104.3(a)(3)(i), 104.3(a)(4)(i), 104.13. 10"

    I think that is pretty specific and shows they mean business.
  • >Most of the arguments seem to center around restricting money vs. the free flow of money.
    >My question is more fundamental: Why are donations even required?

    >Think about this. Thousands of charity and non-profit organizations go scraping for money to
    >feed the homeless, help orphans, teach kids, you name it. Yet our country's citizenry spends
    >MILLIONS each year donating to POLITICS and politicians instead.

    The money is an investment, either in creating laws which are favorable to the contributor or in protecting the contributor from the grasping claws of the government. The less the government does, the less incentive people have to try to buy it. The bigger government gets, the more important it becomes to influence the government, and the more money will flow to politicians.
  • That almost brought a tear to my eye. VERY well spoken! I wish you had put an e-mail addy on your /. profile so I could talk with you outside the forums. Ah, such is life.

    Excellent excellent insight there, keep up the good work!

    --

  • There will always be some non-trivial sum of money required to campaign for a federal office. The nominal purpose of an election is for the people to select the person they feel would best represent them. This is something they cannot do without sufficient information to differentiate between the opposing candidates. Surely it would be unconstitutional for the state to provide less money than it takes to provide that information to all the potential voters, something that is not guaranteed under the current system.

    Any system that limits an individual's ability to support a campaign must also be carefully examined to make sure that it does not gag the public. It would be dangerous if the only information available about the candidates was that authored by the media or the candidates themselves.

    I myself have nothing against public financing of campaigns -- I check the appropriate box on my federal return every year (on the other hand, I never check the corresponding boxes on my state return, which channel money directly to the Republican or Democratic parties). We just need to come up with a system that truly allows everyone a chance to be heard.

  • Learn the facts before flipping out (Score:4)

    by XDG ( 39932 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @01:49PM (#1601571) Journal
    Is it me, or is /. becoming home to any sort of FUD that will get people whipped up? (Unless it's against Linux, of course :-)

    This is a classic case of the ACLU and some hyper-active first-amendment activists blowing things out of proportion and slanting the facts to suit their purposes.

    I actually went to the FEC's web site and citizen's guide (http://www.fec.gov/pages/citnlist.htm [fec.gov]) for some information before posting this reply and learned some interesting things.

    First, volunteering does not make someone a PAC as some people have immediately starting yammering on about. From the site:

    Personal Services

    An individual may help candidates and committees by volunteering personal services. For example, you may want to take part in a voter drive or offer your skills to a political committee. Your services are not considered contributions as long as you are not paid by anyone. (If your services are compensated by someone other than the committee itself, the payment is considered a contribution by that person to the committee.)

    As a volunteer, you may spend unlimited money for normal living expenses.

    Further, what the article is talking about when you personally make a web page about a campaign is called "Independent Expenditures" -- meaning that you are doing it as an individual and independently, not linked in with some candidate campaign. Again, from the site:

    Independent Expenditures

    Independent expenditures provide yet another way to support Federal candidates. An independent expenditure is money spent for a communication that expressly advocates the election or defeat of a candidate. It is "independent" only if the individual making the expenditure does not coordinate or consult in any way with the candidate campaign benefiting from the communication. Independent expenditures are not considered contributions and are unlimited. You may spend any amount on each communication as long as the expenditure is truly independent.

    You may, for example, pay for an advertisement in a newspaper or on the radio urging the public to vote for the candidate you want elected. Or you may produce and distribute posters or yard signs telling people not to vote for a candidate you oppose.

    When making an independent expenditure, you must include a notice stating that you have paid for the communication and that it is not authorized by any candidate's committee. ("Paid for by John Doe and not authorized by any candidate's committee.") Additionally, once you spend more than $250 on independent expenditures during a year, you must file a report with the Federal Election Commission, either FEC Form 5 or a signed statement containing the same information.

    There are a couple of relevant caveats in that. First, you have to say that you are independent. Second, if you spend over $250, you have to file a form. This DOES NOT mean your free speech is being restricted. All it means is that the goverment is requiring you to register how much you spent on your speech. Why? So that political campaigns can't get around federal law by pretending to have lots of independent contributions.

    You can download the form from the web site. It's about a page long. Name, address, how much you spent. Not much more than that.

    Finally, I personally think it would be hard to say that a page on your website with a political message should be "calculated" as the cost of the machine, web-space, etc., as the marginal cost of adding a page to an existing site is essentially zero. If you had a dedicated machine, they'd have a better case.

    In any case, people should go looking for the facts (since they're in plain sight) before overreacting to whatever FUD people want to use /. to spread.

    -XDG

  • I think I'm going to have to disagree with your point that limiting political contributions isn't working. Why? Because there really *aren't* any limits. At the very least the limits that are there are so filled with holes as to be nearly useless. I also disagree with your point that things 'balance out'. There have been laws in the past and there will be laws in the future that are for the sole benefit of a single industry. See the Telecommunications Act of 1996 or UCITA.

    This is not to say that I believe that making political contributions impossible is going to work either. My personal belief is that the records of who contributed what should be fully and completely open. Not 'fill out a form and we'll *maybe* get you this information'. More like 'go to this website and interact with this database and you'll get the information'. And this should, IMHO, go the same for political parties.

  • Uhm. Why, precisely, would the ability to gather huge amounts of money from a small amount of people induce Candidate A to go out to the public and garner votes like that? Why, precisely, wouldn't he go the seemingly standard route: thirty-second sound bites, attack ads all over the media, the *occasional* promotive ad, and a complete and total refusal to debate his oponents?


  • I'm aware that the line between censorship and freedom is a fine line. My concern here is not people expressing their opinion, it is monies and similar contributions being given in return for actions on the part of our various legislators.

    Put it this way, if you owned a company, would you allow your vendors to give money and other favors to whichever employee is in charge of purchasing and acquisitions? Absolutely not. You can't just say, "oh they can accept goods, but they can't show any consideration." That just isn't practical to enforce. You have to draw the line and simply say, No.

    Yet, every day both republicans and democrats alike moonlight with various lobbies. It has only gotten worse and worse since Clinton has been elected (despite claims to the contrary).

    One notorious company which is known for its lobbying is ADM. They've created whole industries for themselves with effective lobbying. For example, the sugar tariffs. Its in the name of protectionism, to protect domestic sugar growers from foreign competition. The unadvertised side effect is that domestic sugar remains 3-4x higher (if memory serves) than foreign sugar. So guess what, many sugar consuming companies turn to cheaper alternatives. Guess who just happens to own most of the corn syrup production? You guessed it, ADM. We're talking billions upon billions of dollars? ...Or how about adding Ethanol to gasoline in the name of clean air. It never demonstrated that it actually helped. Yet, it passed it great cost to many. Guess who just happened to profit? ADM. Tearing away at trucking via NAFTA? The unions are responsible for that one. NRA...anyone?

    There are many examples like these. The fact of the matter is that you're never going to be able to prosecute either party no matter how illegal you make consideration. There are always going to be loop holes. The money is going to end up in campaign coffers no matter what is done.

    You have to ask yourself, what is worse? Creating a universal law which evens the playing field for all politicians, thus making such campaign contributions worthless, and as a side effect killing a certain area of free speach, but doing so in a consistent and fair manner. Or accepting the status quo: failed attempts at regulation and continued aggressive lobbying, causing inequitable spending, law making, and policy making.

    I don't think the answer is black and white. But i'm not inclined to run in fear just because it happens to put a clamp on a small area of speach. This is not the first time that speach, as defined in the constitution, has been restricted. You're not allowed to yell fire in a theater. You're not allowed to liabel. Commercial advertisements are constantly restricted. Television and radio content is censored by the FCC for nudity and language. Some of these shouldn't exist. But others are simply necessary.

    Until I see a perfect answer, I will continue to consider such methods. If you have a better idea, please do tell.



    PS: Pulling apart words (snip snip), and paraphrasing (putting words in my mouth) are not appreciated. There are other ways more polite ways to discuss disagreements without being so catty. Particularly on a forum such as this, where exact syntax, and other such considerations play a small role. Its not witty, and its most certainly not informative (particularly in this case). It may be your prerogative, but a little etiquette goes a long way. Thanks...
  • How do you propose a system like this, and in the same breath remove the federal agency that would implement your regulations? Sounds like you want to have it both ways.
    Why would we need an extra federal agency to make sure that crimes aren't committed. FEC doesn't prosecute, it harrasses. It's the job of the Department of Justice to enforce the laws. Do we really need a department to make sure that you filled out the paperwork just so? Journalists can do the auditing if they want.
    Your idea of restricting donations by organizations strikes me as being non-democratic. Organizations are the way that equal citizens band together to get their point across. Restricting them from donating as a group is a serious restriction of their rights.
    No. I'm just taking away the right to be an anonymous coward when donating money for elections. You would still be allowed to donate as a member of an organization, and I would encourage organizations to donate as a group: "Here are the checks from fifty slashdotters in Juneau, Alaska who believe in freedom. The names on the checks are the donors' names." I don't think that AC's should be donating to political causes. This does give a lot of room for abuse.

  • It may go a long way. But unless those thousand people pool their interests, its most likely going to be a rag-tag distribution of money. Whereas the billionare or pooled interest (pre-funded) is decisive. They can, and do, allocate it all to one particularly promising campaign. Given a reasonably equal number of dollars, this will be far more effective. E pluribus Unum...Out of many one.

    However, that being said, I think corporate speech (lobbying) has a place, though it is much abused. Innocent (and not so innocent) actions by the ignorant masses and politicians can cripple perfectly legitimate industries in a matter of days.

    Is the immediate desire of the voting population, to outweigh their long term economic interests and the interests of the company (shareholders, employees, bondholders, management, etc)? Perhaps companies should be given the same right to contribute that voters are (they are already basically viewed an an individual legally). The question is, how do you weight it, and who decides what is equitable. Its a tough call.
  • The First Amendment does not give a blanket right to bribe public officials, nor does it give public officials the right to shake down their constituents for contributions in order to get things done. That being the case, it is clear that some measure of regulation of campaign financing is constitutional. The problem comes from going too far to close potential loopholes, and it's there that the free speech issue becomes important. The First Amendment does give me the blanket right to endorse political candidates, and it comes fairly close (excepting libel, slander, etc.) to giving me a blanket right to condemn public officials. If that's a loophole, it's one that must be kept open. Just because it's impossible to close all the loopholes doesn't mean that bribery should be legal.

    In practice, the strongest check we have against corruption is the electorate. If you sell out my interests, I will vote against you. If I have reason to believe you might sell out my interests, I am that much less likely to vote for you. Having money can buy you a lot of television commercials, but taking too much money from the wrong contributors will most effectively buy my distrust. I'm curious to see whether W's immense war chest is going to come back to haunt him: it may win him the nomination but ultimately lose him the election.

    The difficulty with relaxing campaing finance rules is that going too far to legalize bribery in the name of free speech does little to help free speech (which can, after all, be sold out); all it does is lower the bar for honesty in Washington. If we legalize bribery, we come to expect it, and we no longer react so negatively when it happens. It doesn't actually have to be enforced to be effective; it just has to be on the books: bribery is a no-no. The electorate will handle it from there, by recall if need be. Call it censorship if you like.

    The ultimate tool for campaign finance reform, then, is a well-educated electorate which is able to smell corruption in whatever form, legal loopholes or no. Lawyers and spin doctors can't cover up a sufficiently large smell. A necessary component of this is a free press that can point out corruption. One element of a free press at this point in history is the right of common people to put up personal web pages. That's the real reason this is messed up.
  • The First Amendment does not give a blanket right to bribe public officials

    A campaign contribution is not a bribe. The only benefit a public official derives from a campaign contribution is greater ability to convince voters to keep him on as a public official. That's no more a bribe than an AFL-CIO or newspaper endorsement. Allowing endorsements is not a "loophole" -- it's political speech/press, the very core of the First Amendment.
  • Man, moderated up to 5 and no critical responses to this kneejerk apologist for America-as-it-is. So, I gotta say a few things.

    It is a widely held populist belief that if we allow big money, then the rich will control everything.

    Straw man. The belief worth defending is that if we allow the amount and effectiveness of speech to be proportional to wealth, then the rich will control more than they should be entitled to.

    The burden of proof, it seems to me, is on someone who opposes that belief, holding e.g. that wealth should automatically confer entitlement to have one's speech more effectively heard. I guess you think that, but you don't give a reason for it; you only say it doesn't matter if it does, because "rich people come from all parts of the political spectrum", which is doubtful at best. What is certainly true is that rich people come from all parts of the political spectrum that is commonly represented, but that's just a consequence of the current arrangement in which wealth DOES confer the right to more effective speech.

    I mean, look, if wealth is so irrelevant in the shaping of political discourse and electoral decisionmaking, why do viable candidates in the US now have to acquire so damn much of it? And why do you think this situation can't be changed for the better?

    --Seen

  • I've said it before here on /. and I'll do so again.

    • Money is not speech. Advertising is not speech. Advertising is commerce. Commerce is already regulated by both the states and the government. Regulating and limiting money in no way, shape, or form prevents a human being from speaking his mind.
    • Corporations are not human beings. They should not have first amendment rights. They don't have second amendment rights do they? If Exxon or MS is not allowed to raise an army they should not be allowed free speech.
    • Corporations are not allowed to vote therefore they should not be allowed to participate in the electoral process any other way either.
    • If the corporations did not get something in return for their donations they would stop. Why would they continue to squander shareholders money for no return? If a CEO gave me ten grand for no return he would be fired.
  • I don't recall finance being so HUGELY important until the Reagan admin dropped the FCC "Equal Time" law, which required TV stations to give equal time to all candidates, even if they had to give the air time for free! This had two effects. First, we heard from candidates we would never have otherwise known about. OK, so the Consumer Party never went anywhere, and LaRouche turned out to be a nut, but it was still interesting to hear from them. Second, and most important, TV stations refused more than a limited amount of expensive, paid advertising, because of the losses they would incur giving free air time to the fringe groups. This in turn kept candidate's financial needs more reasonable.

    We were told that killing the equal time rule would give us more and better political discussions. Yeah. I've seen mud slinging and rapidly escalating campaign expenses instead. Bring back the equal time rule, and we'll get some moderation back again, without having troublesome first amendment issues complicating an already difficult problem.

    When Russia was setting up for its first real elections, I read we were sending campaign consultants to help their candidates out. Am I the only one who suspected that simply nuking them would have been kinder? At least radioactivity has a known half-life.

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