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[baronmind]

You're never going to be as cynical as the corporations and the harem of politicians they pay for. It's like trying to outchant a Buddhist monastery.

--Bill McKibben
Politics, goes the old joke, comes from two words: poly, meaning many, and ticks, meaning blood-sucking creatures. This observation causes people to smile wryly and shake their heads

Comments

[elmo_iscariot]

Looking at the linked article, the solution is supposedly a Constitutional amendment (points for actually advocating a legally legitimate remedy, rather than just demanding more unconstitutional campaign finance laws) restricting the First Amendment:

I don't want to be hopelessly naïve. I want to be hopefully naïve. It would be relatively easy to change this: You could provide public financing for campaigns instead of letting corporations pay. It's the equivalent of having the National Football League hire referees instead of asking the teams to provide them.
...
To make this happen, however, we may have to change the Constitution, as we've done 27 times before. This time, we'd need to specify that corporations aren't people, that money isn't speech, and that it doesn't abridge the First Amendment to tell people they can't spend whatever they want getting elected...

I'm on board with the revocation of corporate personhood, but it's an extremely libertarian position that I doubt most of its advocates would like in reality. Corporate personhood is what allows large, efficient corporations that provide the services we've become accustomed to.

With regard to the rest, though, it would be shocking to see a supposedly liberal commentator advocating such restrictions on freedom of political speech, if it hadn't become so routine in modern political discourse. McKibben is suggesting that we ration the rights of citizens running for office to use the press to spread their messages. The restriction on campaign donations would require that we extend that rationing to groups of citizens as well, so that the evil corporations don't simply run their own ads independently. Apply the same press limit to each corporation? A corporation can be formed with three people. Are a hundred PACs spending $100,000 each better than one PAC spending $10,000,000? Is that better than the interested party just consolidating the press resources in the candidate himself?

Access to the press isn't free, and in a complex society, corporations are a useful way for people to work together for all kinds of goals.* In that context, "corporate dollars" are a necessary part of a functioning free society. What McKibben is asking for, really, is the suppression of political speech he disagrees with, framed in economic terms that would restrict access to the press.

As far as i'm concerned, anyway, this is unacceptable on its face and we need to look elsewhere for solutions.

* - The ACLU is a corporation. The NRA is a corporation. The NAACP is a corporation. I'd be very surprised if McKibben's 350.org isn't a corporation.]