Money IS Speech, Its Official!

Which is exactly why money + politics = bad, because the rich/wealthy can easily buy the opinions and power of our "representatives" in the country.

you shouldn't even bother, fonewear just posts for laughs and attention, if you pay attention long enough they never post more than one or two sentences, and there is no ideological consistency to their posts other than attempting to get a laugh or rile out of someone.

No, they don't.

Unions should also be limited to contributing 5200 dollars. I bet the left wouldn't like that. Some groups of people are just freer than other I guess.

Unions should just disappear altogether...

False equivalence. Fonewear's opinion, just like everyone else's on this forum, is worthless. Anyone paying for it is burning money.

Which is exactly why fonewear said what he did -- may as well shill someone rich and dumb enough to pay for something worth less than a loud fart.

Equality sounds like a bad system? The inability for one person to usurp another due to the checkbook of the person backing them sounds bad?

I don't know what kind of country you want, but personally I want a country where elections are determined by the general opinion of the population and its ideals rather than that of the side with the largest pile of money backing it up. If you agree with this view and think ideas are what should be deciding elections in the end then public financing of elections is the right way to go, because otherwise you're only offering those capable of spending the money a chance to buy their politicians of choice.

I probably will stop, I mean I've never really posted in this section of the forum anyways, this is just a subject I feel a bit more talkative about. Thank you for the advice though.

Taking all money out of it is the proposed solution, it's not partisan based but a full removal. Sure, some people wouldn't like it on both sides but it's what needs to be done in the end like it or not.

Unions already are limited in the amount of money they can directly give candidates. Unless you're referring to indirect donations, in which case unlimited contributions are not exclusive to unions.

I would agree with you 100% DJ but I have 1 major difference: popular opinion shouldn't interfere with the rights of the minority.

There was a reason the nation was made as a republic and not as a direct democracy.

Not saying it still is that way, or how practical it is, but popular opinion shouldn't trump the rights of persons, like it has been able to do, with things like the patriot act...

I was starting to wonder if id ever meet someone that realizes that...

Actually this week Fone made some surprisingly insightful and quite out of character posts.

Yeah...

I most certainly agree with that as well. The only reason why I didn't really bring it up is because the majority of people are already against those things anyways. When it comes down to privacy and rights issues so far as I know the majority of the country is on the side of protecting the people. In cases such as in the NSA or Gay rights, to my knowledge the majority of people have acknowledged what's right.

Maybe in your area...

I meant more as a general populace for the country, but I admit it's foolish, I've always placed far too much faith in humanity's ability to not generally be stupid. Part of the overall issue I suppose though are the people who propagate it as though things are bad when they aren't, like the people who think natural disasters are the cause of gay rights and such.

Keep in mind that until rather recently (arguably mid 18th century), transport was uncommon, dangerous, and expensive, especially for areas which had few or no waterways.

Even if there was a desire for direct democracy (which public writings and private journals does not indicate), logistically speaking it would have been difficult (if not impossible) and expensive to enact. There's a good reason why most of the recorded direct democracies were city-states; localized, population dense areas, with fairly uniform access to information.

I also can't think of any notable direct democracies in place since the dominance of monotheistic religions, which would make a rather interesting thesis topic if it hasn't already been covered.

I thought it would be hard to top Citizens United for a supreme court decision which would be more corrosive to the US system of governance, but then they doubled down on it here.

For all intents and purposes, this legalizes bribery. Which is an extremely bad idea, if you want to minimalize corruption.

Now He Tells Us: McCutcheon Attorney Admits Money Is Not Speech

But money DID hire him to claim it was.

Lawyer joke:

A lawyer dies and goes to the pearly gates. St. Peter looks at his book and at then at the lawyer.

"You have done much good in your life but also much evil. Your evil was all contained in your law practice. Therefore you will reside in Purgatory for as long as you practiced law."

"Oh, I can do that standing on my head, I was only in practice for 43 years."

St. Peter glared at the Lawyer. No, 523 years. We go by billable hours here."

Oh the system has been *** since Marbury vs Madison, imo so to hell with it, I thought about making a crack towards the traveling thing, but I figured my point would be lost so I skipped it, I'm aware of the hardships of the time.

Our problem more so now is the power of the vocal minority overpowering the silent majority on rights, which is an odd twist.

Well, duh? If I kill someone tomorrow, my lawyer still goes before the judge and says I didn't do it (unless I'm claiming insanity or justification, blah-blah-blah). Not only is that what lawyers do, it's what lawyers are required to do. Never ever ever ever make the mistake of thinking a lawyer actually believes in his cause. Many of them do, to be sure, but it's nothing like necessary.

Money is equal to the ability to speak. If you limit how much money can be spent, you are in fact limiting speech.

It's all about the Renminbi, ***!

Holy ***, you're alive!

Yeah I'm back in the states again for a bit.

Finally got a job doing computer programming in Oryol, Russia for awhile there.

Then I was chilling in China for a bit after that.

Now hopefully I'll be moving to Chengdu, China soon. That's where all the game programming jobs are (Far East), lol!

How's the good old US of A doing? :P

Sorry gotta get used to English again.

Didn't realize you were overseas, and depending on your interests and pay scale I know of a position or two in VA.

I'm not a programmer but I keep browsing the jobs, especially lately due to my contract expiring.

Need to set yourself up a proxy, so you can get on and we won't think you're dead for months on end ^.O

Comrade, UUU S A!

Hell I was even in Mexico last April-May on a Disney Cruise. Those things are sweet!

No doubt. I'll PM you a permanent email address. Don't worry the NSA reads it all the time, lmao!

Check out P&R.

Not well for the poor, the middle class, or the wealthy. The .01% are making out like BANDITS.

Just make sure it's an old open-ssl encrypted email so they can do it easily :P

watch it, you'll be accused of starting a wage war.