Supreme Court paves the way for American oligarchy

[Mazmaz]

They struck down the limits for contributions in McCutcheon v. FEC. Find more information below.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...itizens-united

[Meresgi]

Just means we all need to make billions so we can influence politicians too!!!


Fucking not surprised by this at all, how many court judges are in the pockets of these companies already? Entire system is corrupt as fuck.

[kuronosan]

They struck it down for individuals.

Still stupid, but you should probably point that part out.

[Meresgi]

They struck it down for individuals.

Does that change anything though? I mean sure a congressman can't be bought by Walmart, but the founders of Walmart could always individually donate and buy them that way.

Also corporations have individual rights! They just liek peoples

[kuronosan]

Well, no. Maybe on a superficial level it does.

[Mazmaz]

There's also the unlimited donations to parties.

[Serra]

Does that change anything though? I mean sure a congressman can't be bought by Walmart, but the founders of Walmart could always individually donate and buy them that way.

Also corporations have individual rights! They just liek peoples

So, just gonna jump in here.. Yes, this is a concern, but not because either individuals or companies are going to "buy" politicians as you're saying. The majority of evidence (and if I wasn't feeling remarkably lazy atm, I'd actually get you some citations..) shows that interest groups do not give money to buy votes. They give money to members of congress or candidates who already support them. So this isn't going to lead to say, Planned Parenthood or an individual who supports them giving McCain millions of dollars to get him to switch to be pro-choice, but it could lead to someone giving money to say Nanci Pelosi (I'm just assuming where those two fall on this issue btw, but it seemed like a fair assumption) to make her better able to campaign and get reelected (if you don't like that example, feel free to switch it to the NRA and switch those two). So the concern is that unlimited funds are going to help individuals and companies make their candidates better able to win, not that they're going to be buying their votes. Whether that's any different though, well, maybe it's just slightly better..

[Salodin]

Not like this matters as much any ways, its inconceivable that individuals would donate and risk blow back when they can get the same results, anonymously, using super PACs.

That doesn't mean that this isn't bullshit, but let's work in reality here.

[Mazmaz]

Sorry I don't believe you

[Meresgi]

I don't think it's really even better. As it won't allow anyone without IMMENSE financial backing to be able to get anywhere. And to get that backing by selling themselves to corporations. Not that a company like Walmart will say "Hey lib, we'll give you 5million bucks in your next campaign if you denounce your lib ways" but will instead force hands as "Hey repub, we noticed you're against unions, here's a shit load of money for being against unions and other shit". Then come next election cycle "Hey repub we gave that money to, we noticed you were pretty lenient on unions and not what we wanted, no loads of money this time"

Money needs to be removed from politics completely. The fact that campaigns are won and loss at the financing stage is appalling. I get they need to have a shit ton of cash so be able to air all the ads, fight off opponent ads, purchase 55 trillion buttons and bumper stickers and shit...but it should never have honestly gotten to this point, and i'm starting to give up hope that it will change for the better down the road.

Jump 5 yrs from now when it's decided that it's totally ok for politicians to give favors to the people who backed them in the form of contracts, which they do anyways, but now they won't have to hide it!

Not like this matters as much any ways, its inconceivable that individuals would donate and risk blow back

What blowback? Koch brothers are notorious for doing this shit, but no one cares really. America!

[Serra]

Sorry I don't believe you

I'm assuming you meant me. I tried to find articles I could link and anyone would be able to read, but only found a few that were easily accessible (because academia is a giant clusterfuck..), so it's not exactly a plethora of information, but there are a lot of others:
http://www.campaignfreedom.org/docli...eyAndVotes.pdf

Our tests strongly reject the
notion that campaign contributions buy politicians’ votes. While it is not
possible for us to conclude that none of the congressmen ever sold their
votes for donations, our estimates demonstrate a remarkable degree of sta-
bility in voting patterns over time, thus lending support to past work em-
phasizing that it is costly for ideological politicians to alter their positions.
Contrary to the usual presumption, the article shows that campaign dona-
tions can be ‘‘rational’’ even when they do not alter how an individual poli-
tician votes. Just like voters, contributors appear able to sort into office poli-
ticians who intrinsically value the same things that they do.

http://www.utdallas.edu/~tbrunell/pa...groups_PRQ.pdf

When interest groups donate funds to the “other” party, the donations are designed to
have as minimal electoral impact as possible. Interest groups accomplish this by giving “strategic” donations
to this party in the following way: donate less money almost exclusively to incumbents (who typically do not
need the money in order to be reelected). Thus, while many PACs do give money to both Democrats and
Republicans, which indicates the importance of access, it is evident from the overall pattern of donations that
these groups clearly favor either one party or the other.

There are a multitude of reasons that can inspire an inter-
est group to donate money to a candidate for Congress:
access, geography, ideological affinity, activity on a specific
piece of legislation, or partisanship, to name a few. Political
scientists have examined many of these factors and access is
generally regarded as among the primary reasons for hard
money contributions.

http://polmeth.wustl.edu/media/Paper/wawro99.pdf

Wawro (2001) re-examines data on
campaign contributions and voting behavior of members of
Congress in a way that allows him to “account for individ-
ual specific effects, such as the predisposition to vote for or
against a particular piece of legislation.” After accounting for
these effects, Wawro finds no evidence that campaign con-
tributions bias the voting behavior of MCs. This finding is
consistent with prior research that indicates contributions
do not have direct effects on voting (see Wright 1990).

Gopoian (1984) finds that donations made by PACs
do conform to many of the negative preconceptions that we
have about these groups. To wit, they are “self-interested,
materially oriented, and narrowly focused.” However,
Gopoian also shows that some PACs have a strong ideolog-
ical orientation and that their actions can be explained, at
least in part, by their desire to effect a government that con-
forms to their ideology

[Salodin]

What blowback? Koch brothers are notorious for doing this shit, but no one cares really. America!

Chik Fil A owner comes to mind. Of course, you have your consistent turds like Koch brothers who don't give a shit, but then again they were doing this before hand with Super PACs and backdoor deals. This changes nothing for them.

[Meresgi]

@Serra

Who funded those studies. I was looking at campaignfreedom one but didn't see any notes on who had funded the study

[Serra]

They're from academic journals, so NSF maybe, but most likely they weren't funded by anyone -- not in the sense of someone paid to put those findings out there at least.

[Waraji]

Chik Fil A owner comes to mind.

The main difference here though is that Koch brothers hide behind the veil of multiple "corporations" in order to funnel their money into political candidates. You won't see Koch brothers actually Hand the money to the candidate.

[Salodin]

Which was my point. Why do it and risk any negative publicity when you can just do it anonymously via shell corporations and super PACs?

[BaneTheBrawler]

capitalism hooooooo

[Mazmaz]

Money needs to be removed from politics completely. The fact that campaigns are won and loss at the financing stage is appalling. I get they need to have a shit ton of cash so be able to air all the ads, fight off opponent ads, purchase 55 trillion buttons and bumper stickers and shit...but it should never have honestly gotten to this point, and i'm starting to give up hope that it will change for the better down the road.

Someone didn't watch the video. Wolf-pac.com

[Meresgi]

Someone didn't watch the video. Wolf-pac.com

Online petition = lullllz!(sarcasm)

Yeah I looked into it a few weeks/months back when I heard them talking about it in another one of their videos.

[Mazmaz]

Nope.
From 3:35 if you're lazy.