Why is lobbying even legal in the US?

[onodera]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


What do you do about independent advertisements?

Outlaw them.

[Kuciwalker]

See? That's where the pesky free speech thing comes into play.

[Wiglaf]

Yes, because we should really be taking lessons from the Russians on how to run a democracy. Let's just disallow everyone from voicing a political opinion.

Listen, we all know how big Putin's penis is, but with enough effort you can get it out of both of your ears long enough to listen to reason. Things are just fine the way they are, as much as I would like Bush to start getting a Stalinesque 105% approval rating.

[onodera]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
See? That's where the pesky free speech thing comes into play.

That's paid for speech :P

[Imran Siddiqui]

It is still outlawing speech... a big no-no in the US.

[onodera]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
It is still outlawing speech... a big no-no in the US.

Air them only in the free speech zones.

[Lancer]

Lobbying is legal in order to give the Chinese access to democracy.

[Heresson]

because Yankees are greedy

[Hercules]

Yeh YEh.

It is legal because genuine lobbying is also rightly open to communities and voluntary groups and business.

It is lobbying with money in the background via donations and votes that causes the problems.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
It is still outlawing speech... a big no-no in the US.

An was the U.S. Supreme Court Miller case which equated spending money with speech. Stupid decision. Makes campaign finance reform very difficult.

BTW: Lobbyists do perform valuable functions. First, they form a conduit to an official of a lot of points of view. For example, if doctors need a certain bill passed or amended in a certain way, one person can go in and make their pitch.

Second, lobbyists are good at researching and organizing arguments pro and con. I remember State Senatory Kuehl telling me once that she offen asks lobbyists for the arguments against the bill they're pushing for. She continued, "And they tell me too. Because they no if they don't, I won't trust them in the future."

In my union job, I sometimes work with lobbyists, and I have done lobbying myself. From my experience, lobbyist don't "own" politicians. At best, they have access to them to present the arguments. I've gone in, made my pitch to friendly politicians, only to have them tell me why they're not going to support my position.

[Kuciwalker]

An was the U.S. Supreme Court Miller case which equated spending money with speech. Stupid decision. Makes campaign finance reform very difficult.

99% of campaign finance reform proposed actually is unconstitutional restriction of speech.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
What do you do about independent advertisements?

Good question. Don't have an answer off the top of my head.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by onodera


Air them only in the free speech zones.

Good one.

[Kuciwalker]

Well, as a response to many of your possible answers:

What do you do about actual news coverage on TV that's biased towards a candidate?

What do you do about the editorial board on a newspaper, or an entire independent paper with an agenda?

What do you do about someone's blog?

etc.

The logical conclusion is that all speech that doesn't go through strictly government-regulated channels to ensure "fairness" has to be illegal.

[chequita guevara]

Probably the best thing to do would be to ban advertisements by private sources. That leaves individuals and news agencies free to print what they like. People can write letters and editorials.

There are ways around that, of course, like printing your own paper, buying a network, etc., but that's pretty extreme.