digamma.net - notes

What do you mean by "perennial campaigning"?

I mean that there should be a collage of laws that curtail the campaign season. Each cycle it gets longer until soon there will be no "rest period". The horse race started in 2003 this time, for a Nov. 2004 election. Fuck a bunch of that.

If I had anything to do with it the presidential candidates would not be allowed to advertise until, let us say, July or August. IF we must keep conventions, the the original purpose of which has long been abandoned, let them be in September.

Then, free air time for position statements and subsequent debates in October. Let's say that this format is open to any party that is able to put a national nominee on the ballot in 90 percent of the states.

"but have you ever watched public access TV? How many people would watch it, and of that small set of people, how many could have their minds changed? "

No, this would be (oh the heavyhand!) mandatory for all national networks to provide. Nothing like public access.

Apathy? A good argument explaining apathy is that people are sick of being perpetually innundated by political messages that are dirty or fatuous. Shorten the campaign season and you have something tailor-made for the ADD-addled American populace. Take coporate money and corporate supervision out of the commercials and the debates and you might see, for once, an interesting dialogue (Libertarians and Greens debating amongst Dems and Repugs) instead of a cycle of expensive slimefests.

"This post has nothing to do with donations to candidates. I am talking about independent groups of people who spend money to express their opinions. "

It's only a non-sequitur on the most literal level. "Groups of people" (sic -- often corps) which function as hitmen do indeed perform a service for their (its) favoured candidate and you can bet your ass that quid pro quo applies.

And not a word about truth in advertising, Mark. These innocent groups of people who just wish for free speech often go by names like "People For Sunbeams and Rainbows and Clean Air", but are actually funded by the C. Montgomery Burns Power and Coal Company, and fund disingenous commercials smearing true environmental legislation and candidates. If you are genuinely opposed to this sort of crap, it's hard for a leftist like me to be convinced of your good intentions when you insist on calling it "free speech".

"Your technical knowledge of how to do it and your mastery of America's language are unequally distributed commodities too. Should it be legal for you to leverage this overwhelming advantage?"

Advantage in the production of it, I have to agree, but still protest to your sophistry. But what sets blogs apart, or indeed most any internet endeavour apart is that fact that there is no concentration of message, no monopoly or oligopoly on this medium as there is with the two parties and corporate interests on television and in print. I simply dont have leverage and neither do you; the status quo has more than leverage, however, in other media -- it has hegemony.

How big? Well, if you were as big as google, maybe I'd complain.

In hindsight that all came across as too harsh. Sorry; didn't mean it that way.

And I don't know the first thing about those feed thingies.

I didn't think it was too harsh.

You want to curtail the campaign season? So you'd outlaw MoveOn's Superbowl ad? I wouldn't. You don't say anything about issue ads - should I and some other people have been able to put money together in the spring of 2003 to oppose the Iraq war, or would you consider that a de facto anti-Bush campaign ad?

I don't see why it wouldn't be like public access TV. Let's say every party gets an hour of TV to do whatever they want. Hell, let's say they get to use ABC's studios for a week to make it look professional. The Green Party would probably do something like the Free Speech TV documentaries I see on the college stations in Philly sometimes, with lots of interviews from Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Do you honestly believe many people who weren't already sympathetic to that point of view would watch?

You might think I'd like to see the Libertarian Party on prime-time network TV, but I think their presentation would make the Muppet Show look like the BBC. Would the host be Kramer or Blue Guy?

As for truth in advertising, of course I agree, but it's a matter of slander and libel law, and isn't really relevant to this issue.

Anyway, you keep focusing on TV, which is, as I said before, a tricky issue because of the public nature of the spectrum. What about print publications like The Nation, The American Prospect, and their right-wing counterparts? Certainly they are engaged in "perennial campaigning". What restrictions would you impose upon them?

Basically, the leftist position boils down to trying to change the fact that the rich have the means to speak more loudly than the poor. While that is a problem, the solution proposed is inconsistent with the constitutional system we live under. Individuals have the right to speak, regardless of their economic position. Metaphorically, if I have money, I can buy a megaphone and my voice will be heard by more. If I am really rich, I can take out ads. As viscerally unappealing as the phrase "money is speech" is, the opposite is much worse: "you have the right of free speech, but collectively we will decide how much of your resources you may use on speaking." It's like saying that you can blog about anything you like, but you have to use the library computer to do it.

Money, like water running downhill, follows the path of least resistance. McCain-Feingold pushed money out of the campaigns and the parties and into the 527s. Of course, this did nothing to reduce the problem that Retardo calls "legalised bribery", so now the proposal is to "curtail the campaign season." As digamma asks, what's that mean? The problem is that you can't create a principled rule that enables you to distinguish "good" speech (i.e., from individuals not trying to "bribe" politicians) from "bad" speech (speech by entities and by individuals who are using their wealth unfairly).

The same point applies about Retardo's "truth in advertising" criticism. It's one thing to require transparency: i.e., to disclose the source of funds behind a particular political message. It's another to say that, somehow, the courts are going to police the "truth" of political speech, and ban the untrue speech. Where? How? The "commercial speech" doctrine is a very narrow exception to the free-speech rule that only applies to protect consumers from false advertising about things they can't discover the truth of on their own. To broaden it to all political speech is dangerous and wrong. Your supermarket doesn't have the right to lie to you about the ingredients in the products you buy, but beyond that, freedom of speech does include the freedom to lie. If it doesn't, you could be sued or prosecuted every time something you blog about turns out to be untrue. Is that a good result?

Even banning corporate political speech is a mirage. MoveOn.org and the ACLU, for example, are entities just as artificial as Nike. Should they have to shut up, too, to "level the playing field"? It's already bad enough that the ACLU can't run an issue ad right now urging both Bush and Kerry to oppose removing the sunset provisions of the PATRIOT Act, without facing heavy fines and jail time for their officers. And distinguishing for-profit from non-profit entities is fruitless, too: Your average newspaper and television station is a for-profit entity. And where in the constitution does it say, "Congress shall make no law restricting the freedom of speech of non-profits."?

Even if you were willing to ban all political speech by artificial entities, it still wouldn't work. Corporations ultimately are owned and controlled by individuals. A total ban on political activity by corporations would just mean that the wealthy would take their profits from the corporation and spend them collectively as individuals on the same political message. It sucks that rich people can afford to make their voice heard more. But it's just one of the many costs that we incur to have a freeish political system.

kontrau li rimedon, per kiu ni venkis jam multajn gvidistojn -- malsago kaj idiotaj demandoj. Ci tiuj kreitajoj nenion suspektas -- ili tute ne komprenas la sarkasmon. Neniam dum mia vivo mi estis tiel kontenta, tiel trankvila, tiel plena de bena paco, kiel hierau, kiam mi eksciis, ke Mikel-Angelo ne vivas plu. Ni eltiris ci tiun sciigon el nia gvidisto. Li kondukis nin tra mejloj da pentrajoj kaj skulptajoj en la vastaj koridoroj de Vatikano, tra mejloj da pentrajoj kaj skulptajoj en dudek aliaj palacoj; li montris al ni la grandan pentrajon de la Siksta Kapelo kaj freskojn, kiuj suficus por freskigi la tutan cielon, -- preskau cio estis farita de Mikel-Angelo. Ni decidis uzi kontrau li rimedon, per kiu ni venkis jam multajn gvidistojn -- malsago kaj idiotaj demandoj. Ci tiuj kreitajoj nenion suspektas -- ili tute ne komprenas la sarkasmon.