Congress Shall Make No Law

[rowyn]

This is why I don't like campaign finance reform laws.

Those cases have also spawned complex, multifactor tests applied by a government bureaucracy to restrict many entities and forms of speech. There are different rules for over 70 different entities, from corporations to partnerships, and the FEC has varying rules for 33 different forms of political speech. Those exceptions mean that while some corporations are prohibited from engaging in political speech, others are not. While General Motors is prohibited, General Electric, which owns NBC and MSNBC, is not because of the exception in the law for political speech by media corporations.

"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" is such a pleasantly simple statement. Easy to understand. That's what I like about the Constitution -- it's short and to the point -- and hate about modern law, which is pretty much incomprehensible to everyone. :/

Comments

[rowyn]

Campaign finance reform is pretty much an ongoing battle between the people passing laws to (theoretically) stop bribery and corruption, and people finding loopholes in the laws, which spawns more laws to close the loopholes, which spawns more loopholes, etc. I think we're well past the point of diminishing returns on the issue, and getting to the point where it'll a crime for bloggers to post on political issues (because someone might've paid them. Or they have an unfair advantage because lots of people read them.) x.x

And the various campaign finance laws have been challenged, lots. I think they withstand challenge because the courts have ruled that spending money <> speech (so you don't have a right to give money to your favorite campaign or issues), and that the first amendment doesn't apply to corporations? I don't think the Supreme Court has weighed in on McCain-Feingold yet.

The process of the government bribing people into doing what it wants by making it really costly not to isn't really the heart of campaign finance reform. The heart of it is (a) banning contributions in excess of $X and (b) banning groups from doing anything that might influence a campaign and exceeds in value the allowed contribution.