My own view is, that any abuse that McCain-Feingold might have allowed could have been remedied by further legislation, as regularly happened for the previous century-plus of corporate spending retrictions.

Juan Cole has suggested that perhaps the Supreme Court’s decision will have little effect in the era of the Internet, and someone at Talkinpointsmemo wondered if the corporations were already tapped out politically, with their heretofore legal contributions.

My own view is, that the decision is the Republican response to Obama’s fund-raising success, and another important step in their politicization of the courts and justice system, all with the aim of turning the US into just another American republic of the kind that are many between Tierra del Fuego and the 49th parallel.

Whoops – it’s within 60 days of an election, and you just violated McCain/Feingold with an in kind contribution. Meanwhile (insert your least favorite political pundit here) is on TV, Radio, and the Net every day explaining why this law is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and how your Congressman is a genius for supporting it.

Sounds fair…

My equivalence is not false; rather, you are attempting to solve the wrong problem with an ever more constraining set of rules. McCain/Feingold was heading to a place that would have stopped you (yes, you personally) from commenting on an election within 60 days of it.

Sorry, that’s not a solution to any known problem. It’s the path to tyranny, plain and simple.

james you can remove rules till there are none, but then the game is over
as you know, to play with others we need rules

regarding politicians and media, cosinder we are not at jefferson times anymore
this is how it would work these days

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Berlusconi#Influence_on_the_media

Since it’s not a question of rights, for me it comes down to what’s best for the republic and for our democracy. That’s a practical question. Letting profit-driven corporations with money far beyond the scale of individuals buy up the finite time available in mainstream media is sub-optimal for a democracy.

The problem is in having too much power concentrated – it drives rent seeking. Flush the power back out to states and localities, and the corruption problem will grow smaller. It will never disappear, but we can reduce it.

very interesting,
it looks like a system paradox

the product of these companies are opinions, so they can t be banned for doing their buisness, not even for 60 days,

at the same time many media corporations have interests that goes beyond communications (they can have investments in all sorts of industries)
so they might just run for an industrial agenda while posing as information agents

I guess this is the reason a politician has to cut any involvment in a media company to run any elected office, so their agenda can t be pushed by the company

now you are saying, because media corps have their hidden agenda, then we have to grant their communication power to all other companies,
at this point of the game the single voter is way out of the loop
no ?

then my question is

why don’t you grant directly the right to politicians to own media ?

wouldn’t it be easier ?

or

couldn’t we do the same kind of division of power between media corps and all the rest of the industry ?

meaning
if you run a media company you can’t be involved in other kind of companies, producing other kind of goods

in this way, yes they would still have the possibility to shout their opinions louder then others, but it would be the opinion of a consumer not of a producer that is trying to sell you something (like a war or a private health care at inflated prices)

at that point, we also say that political contribution can be done only by individuals
so you have a media market that is a real market, without partecipants on steroids,

I agree this solution sounds more like the internet then the tv, but by know you know me a bit, what would you expect
for me it would be more fair then just say, ‘no rules, the strongest win’
that is not democracy
is the jungle

Are GE and NewsCorp more virtuous somehow?