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

To: hmaly who wrote (142856)	2/20/2002 4:50:41 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578138

I suppose you idea might cover just the candidates but the overall conversation started with discussion of the new campaign finance bill that does prohibit political adds by third parties (meaning no the candidates or even the political party) as well. My proposals wouldn't do anything to stifle debate, because my proposals just include advertisements through the media, not any form of debates. "Debate" is a more general term that goes beyond formal structured debates. Every advertiser has to live up to their statements now, and there hasn't been a major problem. I am also against some of the restrictions on commercial speech. There are at least moderately sized problems. And the loss of some liberty is itself always a problem, that doesn't mean that no loss of liberty can ever be justified by practical concerns but I don't set the bar low in this area. If the claim is an outright lie I don't have a problem with it being treated as a case of fraud, but I do have a problem with prior restraint that prevents the companies from making any claims and/or prosecution of companies for making claims even if it can not be shown that the claims are false. In politics I would give even greater leeway then in commercial speech. The laws on libel for public figures seem appropriate, if a statement is known to be false, or is false and was made with reckless disregard for truth and it causes harm to someone and this harm can be proven then there should be some penalty for having made the harm. Otherwise political speech should be a free for all with the main punishment for saying awful or dishonest things being the disgust of (and loss of votes from) the voters. It is tough to do when a 100% of them are doing it. What choice do we have, except to vote for the lessor of two evils If there is a big enough difference then voting for the lesser of two evils can still encourage change. If there is little difference and they are both major evils then don't vote for either, and say why in any public forum or even in letters to the campaigns. Change will be slow and never total but if enough people agree and do the same thing then civility and honesty will become more common. Tim