Supreme court rules: corruption in the US is totally cool

welp..... we're boned.

This should not be overly surprising. Freedom of Speech is all well and good but an efficient society where merit is rewarded would be a lot better.

I'll reiterate that I don't believe the ability to talk so loudly others can't be heard is freedom of speech.

@turambar: It's not a matter of being louder, it's a matter of talking longer. If you limit spending, then eventually you don't have the money to continue funding, and you stop talking. That's the issue to me.

The government can place reasonable time, manner, and place restrictions on speech, as well as restricting speech classified as obscene.

None of these rights in the Constitution are as black and white as you seem to think they are (except maybe the third).

Are you suggesting the election campaign season (the amount of time candidates have decided to talk for) isn't long enough? The donators themselves can talk all them want through means other than personal donations to politicians, so their own ability to continue talking is by no means infringed upon.

Are you saying this decision will help making the latter a reality?

That's why I said absolute was a poor word choice (though I often disagree with what's classified as obscene, and often think that infringes on stuff). The First Amendment says Congress can't make laws abridging freedom of speech. That does seem pretty black and white to me, but I realize it's not that simple, though there's a part of me that thinks it should be.

@turambar: I'm saying that the government shouldn't arbitrarily limit it.

And I think you just made one of my previous points. If there are other means by which these people can get their message out there, then there's no point to limit donations because the same amount of money is going to get to the same place anyway, it's just a shorter and easier to follow path without the limitations.

Or maybe I'm wrong, it's getting late and I'm getting tired.

Pretty sure that when the court established that money=free speech (again, moronic) they at least said corruption was still illegal.

Off course it doesn't really matter when you define corruption as something only a comic book super vilain would do. That's the real problem. The perspective of people in the justice and political system has been so warped for so many years that they can believe making decisions on the basis of gratitude (or fear of funding getting pulled) you feel toward big donators is TOTALLY FINE and NOT CORRUPTION AT ALL.

One is the ability to make statements yourself. The other is the ability to make a publicly elected official give your voice disproportional attention. Does limiting donations equate a perfect solution, no. However, the lack of a cure does not mean we cease treating the symptoms of a disease.

On a side note, had to be sure, but current wealth inequality still isn't as bad as the height of the gilded age, .o no need to fall into despair on account of people becoming obscenely wealthy,

@turambar: The system was not designed to work this way at all. The way the system is designed is for amendments to the constitution to be made when circumstances change to make the existing document insufficient. The Supreme Court's job is to interpret the constitution, but not to create principals in the document where none exist - for example, I there is no principal against excessive campaign donations in the Constitution by which to justify an exception to free speech. As I said, I feel they made the right decision here. In the media era, money is speech.

If the American people want to set a limit on how much rich people can talk during elections, that's a decision that should be made through elected representatives. The thing is we don't believe in our elected representatives to get that job done anymore.

This is exactly the issue, thank you. As I stated before, if people don't like the Constitution, pressure your congressional leaders to amend it. People want courts to legislate from the bench, except when they don't want them to.

But isn't that because they receive a bunch of money to get the job done for the highest bidders and not for ''us''?

A few thousand voters (optimistic number) pressuring to change the sacred document VS tradition, the entire political culture and billions of dollars of potential loss for the primary parties.

@pyrodactyl: I don't think that this is a competition between "us" and "them" for politicians' representation as people often perceive it now. The will to impose campaign spending limits manifested itself before, and there were still rich people who wanted to buy favors back then. That was how we got the laws the SCOTUS just shot down. However, people are so disaffected with the congress that I don't think many people even consider that a viable route for enacting change anymore. My original point was only that it seems to me that in the absence of faith in elected officials, people are putting too much hope in the Supreme Court for creating change, when in fact that has historically been a crap shoot with a few major successes and its share of "backward" outcomes as well (many would call this such an outcome).

@mooseymcman: You are not a bad person at heart but you are an exemplar of what happens to reason and sense when constitutional logic is allowed to trump all else. When you tie the primacy of the constituion to idea of being American you end up with a country where slavish adherence to a 300 year old document is seen as a greater virtue and more patriotic than decency, fairness and good governance.

Very unfortunate, America is moving further away from being a Democratic Republic everyday.

Modern communication tech and the rise of the corporation makes ensuring a level playing field more important than ever. This ruling of course only makes the lobbyist corruption problem only that much more acute.

If a presidential candidate thinks they need upwards of a billion dollars to campaign I hope them the absolute worst.

Money isn't real to these people!