[EM] Campaign reform

[Russ Paielli]

MIKE OSSIPOFF nkklrp-at-hotmail.com |EMlist| wrote:

> Russ says:
> 
> Yes, it was a slightly off-topic tangent, but the best election method
> in the world is worthless if free speech is squelched during the
> campaign. When the government gets into the business of deciding who is
> and is not allowed to run political ads before an election, it's on a
> very slippery slope.

<cut>

> Russ's notion of free speech is based on the legal theory that money talks.

Last I heard, money is legal tender. As such, it "talks." And most 
people listen. Do you reject the "legal theory that money talks"?

> That's why Russ opposes campaign spending reforms in general.

Isn't it amazing how Mike understands my true motivations? Maybe he's a 
professional psychologist, but has been keeping it secret from us all 
this time.

> As for the notion that the government only has jurisdiction over 
> broadcast media, yes the legal situation isn't as obvious when 
> information isn't broadcast through space, but is distributed via cables 
> or posters, highway signs, flyers, newspapers, etc. But surely it's 
> obvious that govt jurisdiction over media isn't limited to non-cable 
> broadcast media. If you think it is, then put up pornographic pictures 
> on highway signs, and then watch the "anti-free-speech repression"  :-)

Now Mike is conflating pornography with political speech. For the 
record, pornagraphy didn't exist when the Bill of Rights was written. 
The First Amendment was intended to protect political speech more than 
pornography -- Larry Flynt notwithstanding.

> By the way, do tv cables go over any property (underground, or via 
> towers standing on that land) that doesn't belong to the cable company? 
> Does that company be have an inalienable right to transmit anything it 
> wants to using land that it doesn't own?

Oh, so now the justification for regulating political speech over cable 
is that the cable company doesn't own all the land their cable 
traverses? By that logic, they should also be able to regulate what Mike 
writes on EM, eh?

> Does it abridge freedom of speech to abridge big-money monopoly over 
> freedom of speech. Is it abridgement to abridge an abridgement? That 
> would be rather like saying that the govt (police) can't use violence to 
> arrest someone who is doing violence.

Big-money monopoly? Have you heard of blogs, or do you live in a cave?

> Giving the public, as opposed to a few companies, better opportunity for 
> free speech is not an abridgement of free speech. The abridgement is 
> already there. It's a question of how fairly it will be done.

The irony here is too much. Talk radio and the Internet are finally 
giving a voice to the "little guy," and the results are hardly what Mike 
is hoping for. But Mike doesn't know which end is up.

Mike is so extreme he doesn't even realize that the "big-money" media is 
overwhelmingly beholden to the left. Poll after poll shows that big-time 
Washington journalists favor the Democrats over Republicans by something 
like 87% to 7% (Of the 87%, many of course favor more extreme leftist 
parties but .... "lesser of two evils," you know.)

That big media is finally getting some competition. Ten years ago, Dan 
Rather would have gotten away Scott free with the crude hatchet job he 
tried to pull on Bush a few weeks before the election. Not any more. 
Bloggers caught him in the act.

I have very bad news for Mike. The "little guy" is finally getting a 
voice -- not because of campaign finance reform, but because of 
individual initiative. And it's the beginning of the end of the 
big-media near-monopoly Mike's side has enjoyed for decades now.