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Should America move to federally financed political campaigns?

Should America move to federally financed political campaigns?

  • yes

    Votes: 11 47.8%
  • No

    Votes: 12 52.2%

  • Total voters
    23
Moderator's Warning:
Gabriel in thread banned from this thread
 
I'll enlarge my sig so there's no further confusion:

"On a Super-Secret Mission to Take Over the World!"

It's a JOKE.
 
Moderator's Warning:
Coronado is now thread banned from this thread
 
Well obviously it's going to fail because your politicians will be bought off. Fix it. There should be zero tolerance to corporate donations. If you can not fix it your "democracy"/ government is broken for good.

1) These aren't *my* politicians.
2) As I've said before in this thread, the best way to "fix it" isn't for campaign finance reform but rather electoral reform.
3) Corporate executives are voters too, and deserve their rights too.
 
And being as they are political discussion, they are protected by the First Amendment, moreso even than tits.

They don't actually discuss anything, and propaganda and lies shouldn't be First Amendment protected, anyway. We need to step away from COnstitution worship anyway.
 
They don't actually discuss anything, and propaganda and lies shouldn't be First Amendment protected, anyway.

Who determines what is "propaganda and lies"? That's the line that every dictator in the world uses to stifle his opposition.

Technocratic said:
We need to step away from COnstitution worship anyway.

Umm it's our governing document. Are you suggesting we replace the rule of law with a free-for-all system of government? How is that working out for Pakistan?
 
I'll enlarge my sig so there's no further confusion:

"On a Super-Secret Mission to Take Over the World!"

It's a JOKE.

It's not funny..
 
1) These aren't *my* politicians.
2) As I've said before in this thread, the best way to "fix it" isn't for campaign finance reform but rather electoral reform.
3) Corporate executives are voters too, and deserve their rights too.

Finance reform would work fine. Corporate voters should not have increased value over and above the working poor. But even so a 3k cap on donations would increase their value.
 
Finance reform would work fine. Corporate voters should not have increased value over and above the working poor. But even so a 3k cap on donations would increase their value.

No it wouldn't. You want to know why?

SCIENCE!

There's a reason why libertarians and Christian fundamentalists join in one party despite different philosophies, and a reason why environmentalists and union workers join in one party despite totally different political focuses. The reason why is because of splitting the ticket, also known as spoilers.

Now let's say that New York state was having it's election for governor. Only the Tea Party elements caused a schism in the Republican Party between social conservatives and economic conservatives who join up with the Libertarian Party. They campaign against each other along with against the Democratic Party candidate.

The Libertarian Party candidate gets 30% of the vote. The Republican Party 25% of the vote. The Democratic Party gets the remaining 45% of the vote.

Because of our plurality election laws, the Democratic Party candidate will get elected into office. While he did get more votes than other candidate, 55% of voters voted against him. This means the majority of voters is being represented by a man whose politics they are against.

Why? Because of splitting the ticket.

If we had Instant Run-off Voting, or some other transferrable vote system, the voters would vote the same way:

The Libertarian Party candidate gets 30% of the vote. The Republican Party gets 25% of the vote. The Democratic Party gets the remaining 45% of the vote. However, because there's no majority, the ballots that went to the Republican Party on the first vote would then go to the second vote - which would likely be the Libertarian Party.

So in the second round, the Libertarian Party would get a total of 55% of the vote and the Democratic Party would get 45% of the vote.

In this case, we have a candidate get elected who is more acceptable by the majority of people.

This is how IRV works. And it's much easier to implement since it's a state issue, not a federal issue. And it'll work a lot better for third party candidates that campaign finance reform ever will. That's just all there is to it.
 
Who determines what is "propaganda and lies"? That's the line that every dictator in the world uses to stifle his opposition.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist. There are entire academic fields of study that focus on the use of propaganda. It's called marketing. The best people to point this out, and deal with it, are logicians and marketing experts.

Politican ads often commit many easy-to-see fallacies on purpose, because they are emotionally appealing. For example, they will make deliberately vague accusations that are negative, yet have little to do with any issue or have any relevancy. THey will not sayit directly, but indirectly. This is obvious propaganda.

The Swift Boaters are another example, only they outright lied. But the beauty of marketing is that you can lie, and even if the lie is exposed, it rarely gets the attention that the original statement did. So even if people are exhonerated, political attack ads cement negative attitudes toward the accused.

They also are useless, since they can't possibly convey any serious message, or content, in the format.

The only function of political ads is to smear and insinuate.



Umm it's our governing document. Are you suggesting we replace the rule of law with a free-for-all system of government? How is that working out for Pakistan?

No, I am suggesting viewing it like a document and framework instead of frothing at the mouth like it's a holy text. There's no reason to interpret freedom of speech as protecting any kind of speech whatsoever.
 
I feel kinda scorned and bitter, at times, about this.
I'd like to call it, "You reap what you sow."
(Not you specifically.)

I think ultimately, people want leadership in some form from government. If someone they consider a leader tells them that we are going to need to go through some austerity, there is a chance people will support that. But this is never going to happen until people begin to trust government again. The number one problem with trust is that government is corrupt.
 
I think ultimately, people want leadership in some form from government. If someone they consider a leader tells them that we are going to need to go through some austerity, there is a chance people will support that. But this is never going to happen until people begin to trust government again. The number one problem with trust is that government is corrupt.

I've stumbled upon a pretty cool idea called agonism.
Agonism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think it's a great idea personally.
Using it in place of the House of Representatives would be cool as well.
 
If you vote no .. please explain.

free speech. its not a legitimate government function to tell someone how to spend their money
 
That doesn't cover the problem of third party ads.

Certainly there are things that would need to be worked out, but the idea itself seems sound and it solve the majority of the nasty problems American politics has devolved into.
 
I would like to see a campaign where the hopeful to be POTUS tried their best to spend as little money as possible. THAT would be a President worth voting for on that merit alone...almost anyways.
 
No, I am suggesting viewing it like a document and framework instead of frothing at the mouth like it's a holy text. There's no reason to interpret freedom of speech as protecting any kind of speech whatsoever.

No one is under the illusion that freedom of speech is "protecting any kind of speech whatsoever". For example you cannot yell FIRE! in a theater. Any speech which causes bodily or physical harm or incites bodily or physical harm is against the law despite the 1st amendment of the Bill of Rights. You also cannot say something that is not true against someone else. That's called defamation and libel, if you do you can be sued.
 
free speech. its not a legitimate government function to tell someone how to spend their money

Free Spech isn't being silenced, it is being limited if we introduce limits on campaign funds. I would actually argue free speech is being more fully represented by leveling the playing field like this. If everyone has the same amount of funds, then everyone can afford the same amount of ads, rallies, etc. Now, it is jut up to the candidate's ability to use the money they've been given most effectively, and I know I'd consider that if I was looking for someone to give my vote to. In our current system, the group that has more funds dominates the other group in the media, and that prevents the suppressed group from succesfully presenting his/her platform to the voters.
 
Free Spech isn't being silenced, it is being limited if we introduce limits on campaign funds. I would actually argue free speech is being more fully represented by leveling the playing field like this. If everyone has the same amount of funds, then everyone can afford the same amount of ads, rallies, etc. Now, it is jut up to the candidate's ability to use the money they've been given most effectively, and I know I'd consider that if I was looking for someone to give my vote to. In our current system, the group that has more funds dominates the other group in the media, and that prevents the suppressed group from succesfully presenting his/her platform to the voters.

This ^^^^^^^
 
Free Spech isn't being silenced, it is being limited if we introduce limits on campaign funds. I would actually argue free speech is being more fully represented by leveling the playing field like this. If everyone has the same amount of funds, then everyone can afford the same amount of ads, rallies, etc.
Your assumption is that the playing field -should- be 'level', under one defintion of that word.

If campaign donations are a measure of support for a candidate, both in terms of the number of people that donate and the amount that thay they give, then artifically limiting the fund that a candidate can use merely squashes the support of the candidate with the most support, and in doing so, restricts the rights of his supporters to some lowest common demoninator.

In our current system, the group that has more funds dominates the other group in the media, and that prevents the suppressed group from succesfully presenting his/her platform to the voters.
The "suppressed" group? Dont you mean the group that doesn't have a message strong enough to attract as much support as the other guy? That's not a problem for the government to solve.
 
The "suppressed" group? Dont you mean the group that doesn't have a message strong enough to attract as much support as the other guy? That's not a problem for the government to solve.

Not in today's political field. Now adays it is all about drowning out the competition. Why do you think that so many people believed that Sarah Palin said that "I can see russia from my backyard" when she didn't?
 
Your assumption is that the playing field -should- be 'level', under one defintion of that word.

If we want to preserve some semblance of balanced, free speech in our elections, then yes, we should level the playing field.

If campaign donations are a measure of support for a candidate, both in terms of the number of people that donate and the amount that thay they give, then artifically limiting the fund that a candidate can use merely squashes the support of the candidate with the most support, and in doing so, restricts the rights of his supporters to some lowest common demoninator.

When you have single groups, single people who can hand out millions of dollars to a political party, that isn't the support of the people, its the support of a person, and more often some special interest groups, through lobbyists and what not. Your perspective would be completely valid if there were absolute limits that any one group could give to any one candidate, and even then, there would be loopholes for those groups to give more, or make it seem like more people gave to one candidate. Therefore, the absolute best thing to do would be to introduce absolute limits on campaign funds, ie federal funding.


The "suppressed" group? Dont you mean the group that doesn't have a message strong enough to attract as much support as the other guy? That's not a problem for the government to solve.

Again, we have single people spending huge amounts of funds to overwhelm the average person. I don't like the idea, in general, of involving the government with campaigning, but in this instance, that is the lesser of two evils.
 
I'm skeptical that there is any causal relationship between the amount of money that the candidate spends and the electoral results they achieve...at least once you get beyond the point where most voters know who the candidate is. It's true that there is a correlation, but I think this is more due to the fact that popular candidates tend to get both a lot of votes and a lot of money, rather than any direct relationship between the money and the votes.

Therefore I'm skeptical that federally-financed political campaigns would do much.

If that were true, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
 
How could ANYone vote "No"????? :wassat1:

Money in campaigns is the largest problem OF the election! It breeds corruption! Anyone with a understanding of the System MUST vote YES!
 
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