Deja Valeo

The Supreme Court will today hear a special marathon session of argument on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act, the most odious aspect of which is a limited ban on pure political speech: third party ads critiquing or applauding candidates' positions and urging voters to support or oppose them. Cato's amicus brief [PDF] and extensive research on the subject are illuminating.

Comments

[joe]

Veleo was such bullshit. Money is not speech, it's property. You don't get to argue that having a smaller microphone than you'd like is not a free speech violation for the Dixie Chicks, but that it is for some politician.

[Julian Sanchez]

Great! If money is "property" rather than "speech," so are Web servers, paper, ink, meeting halls... feeling free yet?

The Dixie Chicks analogy is way off base as well: your free speech is not affected if nobody wants to provide you with a venue. It is affected if someone *does* want to provide you with a venue (or speak via their own venue in support of your position) but the law prevents it from happening.

[R.C. Dean]

Joe seems confused by the distinction between doing what you want with your own stuff, and being prohibited from doing what you want with other people's stuff.

M-F is all about prohibiting you from doing what you want with your money.

The Dixie Chicks, if they were ever denied a venue (and I don't recall that they were), would have been denied the use of other people's stuff, not their own.

[joe]

Julian, paper and ink allow you to have a voice. Money simply allows you to have a larger microphone. And the point of the Dixie chicks reference was that the size of the microphone you have is irrelevant to the question of censorship.

I'm actually with you on the attack ads issue, because that is a limit on speech. What I object to is libertarians' insistance that writing a check to a politician to get him to vote the way you want constitutes protected speech. Having an ad buget of $130 million instead of $180 million cannot be said to be censorship, unless you argue (as the Dixie Chicks' supporters sometimes did) that not getting all the exposure you'd like is a violation of free speech.

[joe]

Don't you think, RC, that when America is going through the process of choosing who will be the most powerful person in the world for the next four years, there are considerations that should be taken into account beyond how many times a particular campaign would like to run an ad?

[Steve]

If you gave money directly to a politician, he would probably spend it on trying to get reelected, because power is what politicians value most. So if you give it to his "campaign," it's the same as giving directly to the politcian. And I'm not content to take the politicians' word for it that it isn't bribery.

Again, that only applies to limits on contributions. Any limit on expenditures or third-party ads or anything else is wrong, and an infringement on the 1st Amendment.

But giving a politician money is not speech. It's a transaction -- that doesn't mean it can or should be banned, but it can certainly be regulated. At least, the 1st Amendment doesn't prohibit its regulation.

[R.C. Dean]

"What I object to is libertarians' insistance that writing a check to a politician to get him to vote the way you want constitutes protected speech."

Of course, writing a check to a politician in order to influence his vote is bribery, which is already illegal and raises no 1A issues. M-F adds nothing to the law against bribery.

Nobody write checks to politicians, anyway. People write checks to campaigns, which funds are not available to the politician for personal use. It is generally difficult to bribe somebody by giving money to someone else.

Most people write checks to the campaigns of politicians who they already agree with, and there is not the slightest hint of an attempt to change the politician's views associated with most campaign giving.

One wonders what joe thinks of the M-F prohibitions on people spending their own money directly on political speech, and the prohibitions on advocacy organizations spending their own money directly on political speech. These prohibitions include "in-kind" contributions that prohibit the individuals and organizations from making any communication that requires any resources at all if the communication is deemed to be related to the campaign at hand. Thus, under M-F, it will be illegal for the Audubon Society to include a statement of support for a given candidate in ints monthly magazine. This is a long way from outlawing the bribery that joe rightly decries.

[R.C. Dean]

Sorry, joe - I see you agree that M-F's outlawing of ads before elections is a bad thing. Still, you seem to be pretty comfortable with the government deciding how much speech is enough for me during an election ($130MM v. $180MM).

[joe]

I say ethically neutral. Which is still a long way from the good of actual speech.

[MJ]

"Money is not speech, it's property."

What an insipid, thoughtless canard. If you are restricted by law from using your property to facilitate your speech, you do not have a right to free speech. If you are restricted by law from using your property to facilitate the speech of others you agree with, you do not a have a right to free speech. If one has no inalienable right to use their property (including money)in the pursuit of speech, then Reason has no right to publish their magazine, has no right to have this website, and has no right to allow us to post our ramblings upon it.

For your speech to reach people in a continent spanning nation of well over a quarter billion souls, you have to use money and other types of property. Say otherwise, and you reduce "free speech" to applying only to your lone, unaugmented, voice and those within earshot of it.

[MJ]

"What I object to is libertarians' insistance that writing a check to a politician to get him to vote the way you want constitutes protected speech."

What I object to is the "campaign reformers" insistance that financially supporting a politicians campaign can only be considered a bribe. Is it not just as likely that one supports a politician because he already has the positions you wish to see enacted? If that's the case, is not such support a civic good, or at least ethically neutral? Reformers assume guilt, and damn all.