Reply #31: Again, you miss the point.

[blackspade]

I guess I'll have to go point by point with you....

**is that the right to raise and spend money is inexorably linked to the ability to disseminate political messages. Like it or not, that's a fact and always has been. A restriction on one is a restriction on the other, as everyone who criticizes this decision understands implicitly, but refuses to acknowledge.**

This is your opinion. However, limits on financial contributions have been part of the American political landscape for over a century. This is not a case of restricting 'the ability to disseminate political messages'. This case was about unrestricted spending as a way to buy votes by folks and corporations that have money to burn. There is no 'right' as you say, in the Constitution that allows for anyone to buy votes.

**And how exactly does this ruling prevent people from voting for the candidate of their choice on election day? Whose right to vote has been taken away as a sole result of Citizens United? **

This is not the point of the case and you know it. It is about allowing the richest people in the world to drown out the voices of the average American. An example of this is the recent revelation that a single hedge fund manager from Long Island has single handedly bankrolled $175,000 in adds against a candidate in Oregon. That one person has had a disproportionate impact on the voting patterns due to the amount of money that he has available. The average American does not have this ability.

**This ruling will indeed tend to increase the amount of political speech that is disseminated, but why would anyone have a problem with that notion on its face? They don't...what the decision's critics have a problem with is that they see it increasing political speech that they don't like, in favor of candidates that they don't like. **

It is increasing the amount of 'political speech that is disseminated' (that is if you equate money as speech) but for only a handful of rich bastards that can afford the add buys. I have a problem, as I stated above, with this because it means that one voice/position is disproportionately disseminated over that of the average citizen. This has nothing to do with what speech I like or don't like, I am against any rich individual or group from having more representation over the average American regardless of political stripe. The fact that most of the rich are supporting Republicons this election cycle is beside the point.

**And if candidates you don't like get elected, it's because more people voted for them (thinking that they DID represent them and their interests) than for the candidates you do like...sorta the way things should work. That they voted the way they did because of what you consider to be right-wing/corporate propaganda is pretty much irrelevant. They are as entitled to base their voting decisions on that as you are entitled to base your voting decisions on what they would consider to be left-wing, socialist propaganda. That's the "free" part in "It's a Free Country".**

This seems to be the core of your opinion, and the weakest. The notion that a stressed and uninformed electorate is somehow able to objectively cast a vote in their best interests while deluged with deception and outright lies in campaign adds funded buy 500 of the richest people and corporations in the world is laughable. It is entirely relevant that their voting is influenced by these rich bastards, that was the whole point of the case to begin with. Control. Control of the messages that are disseminated through the electorate by the very few for their own benefit rather that the benefit of the country as a whole. We do not live in a 'Free' society any more. This ruling merely reinforces this point.