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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: hmaly who wrote (128641)	11/16/2000 3:29:34 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580593

First off, you don't have to make your version of free speech illegal; you just have to make it uneconomical. How? By publicly financing campaigns, one can set terms of getting the money. The government does this all the time. If you are going to do an add termed negative,then you must give the opponent time to respond on your buck. You are talking about two different proposals. Public finaceing of campaigns and a free (paid for by the "offending" campaign) right of reply to the targets of any "negative" adds. Both amount to forceing people to pay for the airing of views that they do not agree with. Actually the second gives ("free" right of reply) gives a choice, give up your free speach rights or be forced to pay for speach you disagree with. The primary reason the accused is always given a chance to respond to the accuser is that it is the only way to assure fairness. A court trial is a highly regulated situatation, I don't think political speech should be subject to that same level or regulation with judges decicdeing what can be said and what can not be said. When you have a trial you have a situation where the accused may face long term incarceration or even the death penalty. The government is forceing the person to face the trial (or to just plead guilty and accept the consequences). Anyone running for office does so volentarily and does not face death or imprisonment. If a candidate's opponent is makeing dishonest attacks against him then his campaign should respond. The candidate mya have less money then his opponent but if he has so little money that he can not respond at all then he probably never had a serious chance to get the office in the first place. Negative and dishonest campaignining is often not a black and white issue. There are plenty of shades of grey. If you impose a ban on negative campaigning you potential subhject every campaign annoucement or comerical to red tape and judical review. Politics should be about free wheeling open discusion of issues and candidates. You have to take the good along with the bad. You will note that I don't need to make these things illegal. I just want fair elections and being fair means allowing the opponent fair time to address the charges. You don't want to make them illegal (even though in your original post I think you suggested doing exactly that), but what you do support is not far from it. If a candidate has to pay for his opponents political adds every time he critically examines his opponents record then it becomes very impractical to say anything about your opponent. Also the campaigns can tie each other up in court about what statemens are negative dishonest attacks and what statements are just telling people about the voting record or poisition statements of your opponent. You apparently want to change the advantage from the person who can spend the most on political adds to the person who hires the best lawyers. Such a change would also protect incumbants who in my opinion all ready have a big advantage. "Because 1 - They need money and 2 - The amount of access a politician can give is not unlimited. It has to be allocated in some way." Surely you jest. There are many ways of allocating time besides having the biggest briber win. How about allocating time according to the needs of the district one is trying to represent. How about that for a novel idea? Secondly, why do they need money. We pay them a wage, that is their job. If they can't do their job for the money they are pd; then quit No I was not jesting. I also was not stateing why things should be a certain way but rather why they are that way. Politicans need money for their campaigns as well as their personal salary. It takes more money to communicate your message to millions of people that we would want to give politicians as a salary. If you limit their spending to the ir salary then you will limit the pool of politicians to the rich. If you pay for the campaigns with tax money then you force people to pay for the promotion of ideas and candidates that they disagree with. "Note - I do not consider takeing any money from special interests to be a bribe. If I was in the House of representatives, I would take special interest money." I have no doubt you would take the money, because you justify it by saying giving money is not a bribe. And I have no doubt you would make a good politician. Denial seems to be one of your fortes. Why wouldn't money be a bribe just like any other gift? Why the differentiation? Lets provide an example. I am against gun control. If I was in the house of representatives I would still be against gun control and would vote that way. If the NRA contributed to my campaign it would not be with the hope of influenceing my vote but rather with the hope of keeping an ally in office. If an oppoent of gun control sent my campaign a check I would probably not send it back but it would have no influence on my vote. Someone would be supporting my campaign because they support me, the check would not cause me to support them. It would not go personally to me and the writer of the check would not be able to change my vote. If you don't let a candidate get money for his campaign from his supporters, then you are reduced to either makeing him use the government to forably take money from people for his campaign or you are limited to the very rich for major political offices. Another excample, this one illegal under current campaign finace laws - Lets say AMD stock goes to $15,000 a share within the next week. Now all of the sudden I am rich. If I wanted to campaign myself I could use the gain from my shares and options. But if my friend Tom in New York decides to run against Hilary Clinton in the next senate race it would be illegal for me to fund his campaign. It would even be illegal (or at least subject to heavy federal restrictions) for me to just exercise my free speech by spending a couple of million dollars to by adds saying "Tom is a great guy and I think you should vote for him". If I am not the candidate and am not even directly contributeing to the candidate I should be able to spend whatever I want to advance my political ideas, but according to current law I can not. Tim