Would the NAACP have been able to keep its members private

[dsc]

under current rules? In a famous court case in 1958 the NAACP prevailed over the state of Alabama who asked for its membership lists under Alabama corporate law. At the time Alabama clearly wanted to use that list to hunt blacks in Alabama who dared to use their money to advocate for their rights. The Supreme Court wisely stated that to let Alabama do that interfered with the people's right of Association. I honestly don't know the answer to this question but it isn't trivial. Secrecy of donations is a bad thing. But allowing such personal info about donors to be part of the public domain also has problems. Imagine what Alabama would have done with that list in 1958? What would they do with a similar list of HRC donors now?

[dsc]

1. kick

[bearfartinthewoods]

2. there has to be a level between totally privacy

in which the government has no way of knowing who is giving to who and this totally invasive transparency wherein any drunken freeper can decide to find out who supports Sharpton and make a visit in the middle of the night.

translucency...not transparency.

[AP]

3. The NAACP and the Democratic Party are VASTLY different types of...

...organizations.

Don't romtacize what it means to simply give money to a democratic candidate. It's not the same thing as active participation in an organization that's trying to RADICALLY change society (sadly).

[bearfartinthewoods]

4. AP, if you have no issues with who knows your political leanings,

why don't you use your real name here? i know it isn't the exact same thing but it's damn similar imho.

[AP]

8. If you have a black list, I WANT to be on it. Politics is all about doing

things in public. I don't want to hide anything that I believe in. I want the opposite. I want to get it out there, and I want to talk about it, and I want people to think of what I think as the norm, and not as something that goes on at the fringe in the darkness.

[bearfartinthewoods]

13. no it isn't

this is essentially the same as demanding anyone who contributes put aout a lawn sign and a bumpersticker on their car and to hell with the secret ballot btw.

not everyone wants to be totally public with their political opinions.

like you for instance, since you do not post under your real name.

[AP]

15. Um, when you put a lawn sign in your front lawn, you're revealing both

where you live and your political inclinations!!!!!

As for the secret ballot, if you donate to several candidates, how are you revealing your vote? If you're a Republicans donating to a Democrat in a state where you can't vote in the Dem primary, how are you revealing your vote?

[bearfartinthewoods]

19. oh yeah...lots of pubbie donating to dems

that's the real core of the issue..</sarcasm>

why is it so hard to see that there can be a midway between total privacy and total exposure? the government demands total access to your wages and income yet it does not make the info public.

and even the format of the site....the purpose for the info is to prevent fraud. do you see any mention of fraud on that website?

this isn't an either/or situation. we can both police against fraud and protect people's privacy at the same time.

[AP]

21. The purpose isn't to prevent fraud. It's to give people maximum informatio

so they can make their choices.

Do you think Dick Cheney should be allowed a secret energy panel?

No.

This is the same exact issue: let's know who's influencing the decision makers.

[AP]

22. Ie, if you want to influence decision makers, don't expect anonymity.

[dsc]

23. How much more influence does a $201 donation have

than a $199 one? The first is reported, the second isn't. Also, presumedly if you go to an envolope stuffing party you are attempting to influnce people. Should that be reported too?

[AP]

28. Where do you want to draw the line?

And if Xerox recruited 500 employees to stuff envelopes for a politician who promissed to help them, I think Xerox SHOULD have to declare the value of that.

What's the value of you stuffing envelopes on your own? $5? Not worth declaring.

[dsc]

31. Either no where at all

or at a much larger level of contribution. I can't see anything lower than $1000 buying any influence in a Presidential race.

[AP]

38. It's not one person alone, it's when dozens of employees of the same corp

give money straight to the candidate and then to the PAC, and then to the party, that there's a problem.

I don't think 1000 is low enough to capture those people. Hell, before 2002, 1000 was the most you could give before the primary (and after the primary).

And "nowhere at all' would be the wet dream for the rich right wing. That would be so banana republic.

[dsc]

41. I meant no where at all in the sense that all contributions would be

reportable.

[bearfartinthewoods]

25. i wasn't trying to influence descision makers

i was trying to fund Kerry's victory. are you confusing lobbying with citizen funded campaigns? i must have missed the part that said i was buying influence!

damn...i got screwed! :grin:

[AP]

29. That statement crashes down under the weight of it's own illogic.

Giving money is HOW we influence politicians in America.

[bearfartinthewoods]

33. giving money and voting is how we_choose_politicians

but nowhere did Kerry ask my opinion as i donated.

if he doesn't know my opinions, how can he be influenced by same?

by donating, i am endorsing his opinions not he mine, because he has no way of knowing what i think.

donations influence politics,in that they enable buying ads and stuff but i don't see how they "influence decision makers" unless they come in under the name of an org who represents well established positions on an issue.

[AP]

37. You, the average guy, won't influence politics. But when 100 Ford Execs

donate 2,000 each to ten different people, it's noted.

That's why the least the government can do is let us know when this happened.

Your problem is where to draw the line so that the little guy has his or her privacy protected. I don't think we can draw it where you want to draw it without giving a huge advantate to rich people.

[bearfartinthewoods]

24. hmmm...i'll have to think about that.

i thought the purpose was to insure that the restrictions on donations were abided.

wait a minute...how does knowing joe blow who works for pizza hut gave money to al sharpton help me make a decision.

what descision? who to vote for or where to buy pizza?

are you saying campaign finance reform and transparency is designed to help you decide where to eat???

[AP]

30. So to protect joe blow, you want to give Goldman Sachs a curtain to hide

behind?

Didn't everyone think it was important to know that insurance and oil company execs give to Bush and that lawyers give to Edwards?

[bearfartinthewoods]

32. hide from who?

did you need that site to tell you that insurance and oil company execs give to Bush and that lawyers give to Edwards? i didn't.

let me say this plainly. i want the gov to know and check for irregularities in campaign financing. that keeps it honest.

i don't see why the addresses have to be made public except for purposes of revenge by either party against either party. i don't see that as helpful. your desire to "know" may be akin to the desire of a freptard to know about his emplyees with a desire to punish them for their political activity just as many here vowed to economiclly punish pubbies. i don't think that's likely to increase either funding or participation....period.

[AP]

34. Um, yes. It's always good to have the facts. And full disclosure

like this is the way to get the facts.

Why do addresses need to be included? Because there are lots of Joe Smiths in the world.

You can always use a PO Box or your business address.

[dsc]

35. You can not use a po box

I get my mail delivered to one and had to give a physical address to which I can't get mail delivered.

[AP]

36. I saw a couple people listed on that site who used a PO Box, and their

checks were cashed by the campaign.

[dsc]

40. I was specificly told not to

and that was after informing them that I literally can't get mail at my address (I live in the building which houses the post office). I had presumed that this person knew what they were doing. On every other occasion of contact I used my PO Box without incident but when I went to give money at a reception in Cleveland they said physical addy only.

[AP]

42. From the Edwards donation page:

(I'm not going to look up the Federal law, but I suspect this reflects it)

Federal law requires us to use our best efforts to collect and report the name, mailing address, occupation, and name of employer of individuals whose contributions exceed $200 per election cycle.

All online contributors must enter the following information and confirm that the following statements are true and accurate. Please click on the box before each statement that applies to you. Your contribution cannot be accepted unless each box is checked. If you are not able to affirmatively answer each question, you are not eligible to contribute to Edwards for President via the Internet.

MAILING ADDRESS -- not home address.

[dsc]

44. guess the person who collected my donation messed up then

glad I didn't give enough for it to matter.

[AP]

17. Furthermore, if you don't want people to know who you're giving to, either

don't vote, or give less than $200 in cash. Either way, democracy is better off.

[bearfartinthewoods]

18. wtf????

ahhh...only the bold are worthy of the right to vote eh?
cute....

and you still are hiding behind a screen name. maybe only the bold should be able to express their opinions on an internet board. maybe a little accountability in that regard?

they still call it a secret ballot. you think making it a public affair would increase participation?

or maybe that's not a goal for you.

[AP]

20. Giving money doesn't equal right to vote. And if you want to screw up

democracy, you'll achieve that end faster by not letting people know who finances politicians' campaigns.

And there is a way to give secretly: walk into the campaign office and had over cash less than $200.

It's a balance which ensures that big donors don't get to benefit from secret donations, yet it probably still works to help the rich much more than the poor.

And if you're attacking anonymity on an internet forum, well, geez, that's aiming low.

[bearfartinthewoods]

26. you are the one who connected them when you said:

"Furthermore, if you don't want people to know who you're giving to, either don't vote, or give less than $200 in cash. Either way, democracy is better off."

so democracy is better off with only those who choose to be public as particpants. i find that a really disturbing statement. there are too few people who participate as it is. if a person must chose between the personal and financial security of themselves and their families and political involvement we will get even fewer joe blows to vote against more rich people who aren't threatened.

imho, that is definetly not good for democracy.

[AP]

43. Perhaps I meant "don't donate"

since "don't vote" doesn't make sense.

But I'm not so interested in this debate that I'd go back an check. I think there's clearly diminishing returns in terms of committing more time to trying to convince at least two participants in this debate that secret donations to candidates is an oligarch-friendly approach to politics.

[dsc]

45. please either admit you out and out made up what I supposedly said

or sight where I used the words secret donation.

On edit Here is what I actually said

Secrecy of donations is a bad thing. But allowing such personal info about donors to be part of the public domain also has problems. Imagine what Alabama would have done with that list in 1958? What would they do with a similar list of HRC donors now?


Notice that unlike your totally dishonest representation of what I said I specificly said secrecy of donations is a bad thing. You flat out made up a post to respond to. There is no other, honest way to say what you did. Either admit it, or back it up.

[AP]

46. "totally dishonest"? dsc, please note that I'm responding to the general

tone of the responses here. If you meant something else, and I missed it, it wasn't intentional. It's just that I find having to debate this so silly that I'm not spending a lot of time rereading other posts to make sure I'm quoting people exactly right.

I mixed you and bearfartinthewoods up, perhaps. Lighten up. It's not that big of a deal. When you said "none at all" I thought you were saying the opposite of what you meant. It was an easy mistake to make.

[AP]

47. please also note that this last post wasn't addressed to you, dsc.

So, really, relax.

[dsc]

48. You mention two people, in this thread,

who disagree with you. If you don't mean me, then whom do you mean? and yes I want a name and a citation. No excuses, no BS. Either back up what you said, retract what you said, or name this other person you mean.

[AP]

50. Still, argument too silly to spend this much time on.

If people need to see what it was that people specifically disagreed about, they merely need to read the thread.

[dsc]

51. gee

what a nice tactic. Make up a post, get called on it, and then refuse to do anything about it. I don't consider what you did silly.

[AP]

52. What's funny is that, on a VERY QUICK review of your posts

I see that you were merely being contrarian without taking a firm position until you were forced to clear up some very vague statments (no limits or hight limits) and to clear up things were easy to misinterpret (HRC), and even those clarifications weren't totally clear.

So you're criticizing me for drawing an inference from your contrariness.

Why so contrary if you agreed with me?

Is it unreasonable for me to assume that such contrariness implied disagreement?

[dsc]

49. If you are going to ascribe words to people

and that is what you did to both me and Bear, then you need to take the time to look up the posts. BTW it isn't that hard as the posts are linked. You have to click your mouse maybe 5 times. Is that really too much to ask?

[dsc]

5. but there are other political parties

and presumedly they play by the same FEC rules. In addition both the NAACP and the HRC do run political ads which are also under FEC rules. I am not sure this can be so blythly dismissed. I also wouldn't want to be a single, 30+ military person who gave money to Dean in early 2003 or late 2002. There would be relatively few, from the military's viewpoint, positive things to draw from that.

[bearfartinthewoods]

6. good pont..anyone want to say the greens don't want to radically change thin

change things?

[AP]

7. Donating money to a candidate doesn't make you a member of a party.

It doesn't even make you a member of the NAACP if you give them money (and many people and organizations do give them money).

It was their member lists they were protecting, not their donor lists, right?

And the NAACP never ran a political candidate ever, I presume. And had they, they would have been required to reveal donors.

You're comparing apples and oranges, and I suspect that this discussion is going to discourage people from donating to democrats.

[dsc]

9. It costs money to belong to the NAACP

last time I checked. I know it costs money to belong to the HRC. Those would qualify as donations.

On edit. I just checked and Dean's new orginization takes the exact same info from contributers for the exact same reason. They do permit a limit of 5k instead of 2k but other than that the rules appear to be the same. Again, I don't know the exact answer to this problem but I do think that for any person, any place, at any time to be able to determine who gave money to what causes is a problem.

[AP]

10. You've seen the NAACP commercials on TV? Those are donations,

and they come from everywhere -- and judging from the demographics of the shows they advertise on -- they come from lots of white people who have no participation beyond donating.

If Alabama wanted to know which white people from NYC donated money to the NAACP, they're crazy and wasting their time. What they wanted to know was who were the active participants who showed up at meetings and planned boycotts, etc.

Let's not confuse an active member on the member rolls, and someone from accorss the country responding to an office collection out of liberal white guilt.

Really, donating money to a major party candidate is hardly an act of subversion (especially if it's a candidate like Edwards Dean or Clark!). Only .001% of Americans donate money, right? And what does that group represent? Radical revolutionaries? Hah! I wish!! It represents, generally, people who are overwhelmingly white and make double the average salary in America.

You think Americans are going to start targeting those people for retribution? Right.

[dsc]

11. When I taught school in Mississippi

I think that had I given money to the HRC and my district found out, I would have been fired. Would such behavior be common, no. Would it happen, maybe.

[AP]

12. Recently, a Miss'ian DU'er wrote about picking her kid up at school and

having a conversation with other parents who were all talking about voting Dem in the fall.

How do you get from where you were to that point? Not by treating political opinion like it's a secret, and not be acting like we're electing democrats to be president of our secret club.

[dsc]

14. as you pointed out there is an immense difference between the DNC

and the HRC. Virtually the entire school I worked at voted Democratic since all of the students and well over 2/3 of the employees were African Americans. But virtually no one who was from Mississippi who worked at that school could be called even decent toward gays. Again, I am not at all sure that these rules only apply to Democrats and Republicans. In point of fact I took the trouble to look, and provide a citation of, an organization which has the very same reporting requirements and isn't one of those parties. If you don't believe me go to www.democracyforamerica.com and go to contribute. If you look at the pdf of the donation form it clearly states that contributions over $200 are subject to reporting requirements.

[AP]

16. I thought you meant you donated to Hillary Rodham Clinton. If you dontated

to the HRC, or the KKK, I don't know how that's the equivalent of giving money to a candidate at all, as you say.

Democracy for America is a political organization that will give the money you give them to candidates running for office, as you know. And, I think we all agree that we should know who's paying for candidates to run for office.

The more information we have about politics the better.

[dsc]

27. When I gave money to the likes of the HRC

and to other activist groups I certainly did so with the idea that they would affect public policy, no less than why I gave money to Dean. Full disclosure, finances and Dean's flame out preclude me from reaching the $200 threshold so I am not on any list. But, the principle remains. I have no problem with the governmnent knowing who is giving what money and to whom. I have no real problem with them releasing some of that information to the public. I have a big problem with them doing so in the way they did here. I see no public purpose in having addresses and maps to donors' houses on the internet for all to see. The only thing this does is have a chilling effect for some people who may have otherwise given money. In a Presidential campaign $200 is not a lot of money and buys no influence at all. Yet a person giving that amount is treated like one of Bush's pioneers. The pioneer is likely immmune from pressure and lives in a gated community. The $200 giver isn't likely to be in that position.

[AP]

39. This is a silly argument.

I mean this whole debate is silly.

If people don't see the virtue of not having secret donations in a democracy, I really don't see the point in my continuing to try to explain it.