USA now officially a Plutocracy, huzzah! Effect on SL?

Are you volunteering to transcribe the 183 pages into text format and host a site for it?

Someone eventually will but if you can do it faster.

What I linked was the original bill starting in 1974. Follow the links you see how the law became what it is now............a mess. Yes, that is what was tossed out. But that is what the law became because it was a bad law to begin with. Too many holes in it to survive. It's gone now...........and the "older" reform is likely to meet the same fate if not for any other reason than it's just a bad law.

No matter how you want to twist it you cannot limit ANY FORM of legitamate free speech in this country.............like it or not that's the way it is. Hell, I hate the fact that someone can create a statue of Christ and spread defication on it..........but it's been determined to be a form of free speech. It's unconstitutional for anyone to create a law forbiding it. There's no arguing..........it's the law.

Haha.

I just figured .txt would have been automatic for them, but now in this day an age, PDF is best for 'universal' purposes and format retention...i suppose.

What i would really love to do is fast forward 4-6 weeks to an academic break down of the case the focus of arguments from the Solicitor General and, the Justices questions, majority opinion, various dissents, etc.. Just like the good ol days in school.

Calling any particular kind of speech "legitimate" begs the very question of what kind of speech is and is not protected under the First Amendment and under what circumstances. Not all speech is afforded absolute unqualified protection under the First Amendment, and that includes political speech. There are plenty of limitations on speech passed by legislation or imposed by executive order which have been upheld by the courts.

I'm not sure exacty what you mean but you can copy the text in a pdf file and paste into a text editor. I think you may be able to do a Save As in text format as well.

I have a feeling I'm misunderstanding what you are wanting but I figured I'd say that anyway in case it's useful.

The format comes out a bit choppy if you do that though. Footers (of which there is an abundance in Supreme Court opinions) get smooshed into the main text, words get smooshed together, and paragraphs often get chopped up in midword from one page to another. It's generally not very reader friendly for a format which is already not particularly reader friendly to most people.

Well, no. If the question I had asked had been "does any big union ever contribute to political campaigns?" then, yes, that WOULD have been an answer.

But that's not a question I ever asked, and Briana didn't successfully field the questions I did ask Chris.







What sentence or sentences of mine led you to believe that the point of my argument was that an individual can't give as much money as can a corporation? I'm curious.

Of course I never made such an argument and such an argument isn't close to being my point, which is: taking away existing limits for campaign contributions---from corporations in this case, but in my view from ANY source---is a very bad idea. Or bad, anyway, if you happen to think there's some virtue in democracy.

That is a highly unethical practice in my opinion*.

But you know: human beings WILL behave unethically if it will serve their interests and they think they can get away with it.

Fact.






(Which is the reason 'libertarianism' would work only if you happened to get a population full of saints. But that's another thread!)


*I wasn't clear on whether your position here is that there are only two possible choices: let corporations give in unlimited amounts, OR let corporations coerce donations from employees....?

Could you expand on your claim a little further?

That's quite a broad claim!

What's your source?

*sigh* Yeah. It happens.

I'm rather disappointed that the Reflexive Progressive-Bashing seems to have obscured the questions I'm genuinely interested in: namely, what all you think about the likely effects of this new situation (that corporations can now make clear to candidates that they will spend ANYTHING necessary to get their Interests Represented) on SL.

Do you know, the word had that same association for me, and I DID flirt with the idea of posting a pic of Mickey's mutt. But I figured it might bring about massive spending by the Walt Disney Company to elect legislators who would outlaw Internet forums.



edit: corporation name correction

You seem to ask many questions that can or could be quite ambiguous, vague or taken to mean almost anything you choose. You have stated that you think it's a bad idea that the US Constitution has been interpeted in a way you obviously don't agree with. You've made statements (actually asked questions) about large corporations contributing to political campaigns, you included large unions contributing with the distinct tone that they do not contribute as much as corporations..............that is probably not true (you see I have no statistics on that......and I bet you don't either). But now unions and corporations can now openly contribute as much as they want..........that's what is protected in our Constitution. Both sides are on equal ground..........like it was before the McCain Feingold bill. You don't like it...........sorry, you loose anyway.

Your mention of individuals being able to contribute was equating their contributions to corporations. Unless you are Bill Gates or some other personally extremely wealthy person you, as an individual, can not match any corporation. That's a pretty stupid argument to throw out.......but you did.

And yes in my view I think it's a good thing the law has been overturned. I think it was a bad law in the first place. And, I DO VALUE my democracy (which in reality is not a democracy in the mold of the Roman democracy of Ceasar's era........Representive Democracy there's a difference).

I notice that no one has any answer for any of this; all they have is the usual set of attempts to distract, with the usual means, plus 'hey, unions and Tina Fey rule the American political system!!!!!' absurdities.

Can you quote a few specific examples that support your claim? (The actual sentences, please.)

Can you quote the exact sentence or sentences in which, you claim, I 'threw out' that argument?

(No. You cannot.)

It's an intriguing problem. True representative democracy requires something approaching a level playing field, but on the other hand you can't have people 'running' just to get the cash.

No compromise would please everyone. Even so, it may be the only hope for lessening corruption.

I agree with this.

But I think this new SCOTUS decision makes it LESS likely that an unbiased press will oversee campaign contributions, not MORE likely (for the reason that if large corporations have more power to influence elections, then those elected will willingly pass laws that limit the possibilities for oversight of corporations.)

First off, let me just say how interesting -- speaking particularly as a Canadian -- this all is.

I'm not, to be honest, sure how this might all impact upon SL, but I do think that, in essence, the political and cultural conditions that this ruling may engender already exist WITHIN SL. SL is already a plutocracy; money already "talks" here far more loudly than anything else. LL is, after all, a profit-earning corporation, and it value those individuals and ideas that will contribute best to making still more money.

This is all very apposite, given a quasi-conversation I've been involved in within the Undying Thread, with regard to LL's trumpeting in its blogs of a mock-up of a conference by Dow Chemical created by a company that used SL as a means of preparing for said conference. In LL's terms, the story is a triumph: SL proves to be an invaluable tool for corporations! The intent, of course, is to convince other corporations to do the same.

There are a number of issues involved here, but the most pertinent one is this: why does a temporary sim, not even open to SL residents, get the fully glossy treatment in the SL blogs, when thousands of other worthwhile groups and places in-world do not? Well, obviously, because money talks. And loudly.

In-world, there is an enormous amount of power wielded by land owners, from land barons all the way down to individual sim owners. An indication of this is the fact that the so-called "Community Partnership Program" is not, in fact, for "communities" at all, but for individual land owners: it is literally impossible to become directly involved in this programme unless one owns a substantial amount of land.

In terms of resident-LL relationships, I need only point, I'm sure, to the Zindra/Adult Content debacle to demonstrate that not all voices are "equal" within SL. Anyone here get invited to a Brown Bag lunch session? I sure didn't. LL's attempts to "consult" with the larger resident community were not merely inadequate: they were insulting. But you can be sure that those with the most money invested in LL were given an opportunity to provide THEIR input.

Want to see what a state that equates the weight of one's opinions with the amount of money backing those opinions up looks like? Just look around you, folks.

there is a very distinct difference between a union and a corporation such as walmart....

a unions fund are generated directly by it's members, who each have individual voting rights on the the disbursement of funds to political campaigns.

a corporations funds are generated by consumers, voting rights rarely come with their employees stock options (the one that do offer these, generally offer voting options, or market options, but not both, and never mind investiture, to maneuver employees away from voting). higher turnover also works to ensure that employee voices do not affect corporate decisions, which are generally made from the top.

while either can force people out if they don't vote the way management believes they should, it's only a feasible option for corporations when taken in scale, and you may have noted that chains like walmart are extremely anti-union for this among other reasons... as a union would dampen this effect for them.

so, no, I don't personally believe that corporations necessarily reflect their employee stockholders voting interests, nor cater to them, making them a much different animal than a union or a cooperative, in which it's contributors both directly fund, and directly decide where those funds go.

and yes I've simplified some of the politics in those comparisons, but I think it conveys the general culture.

SEIU gave Obama $33 Million. Was the USA an official Plutocracy then? Or just now because corps can too?

Ponsonby - you evidently have not done the research about Unions. The Unions political speech was not limited like corporations. Unions could still at election time, run advertisements supporting candidates while corps could not. Now, corps can run advertisements right up to the election without any hindrance, just like Unions.

And how do you feel about SEIU giving a presidential candidate $33 million dollars. Do you think the President feels he owes them something in return?

OH BULLSHIT.
I don't like election fraud.
I don't like the policies supported by ACORN.
I don't like illegal aliens voting.
I don't like people giving advice on underage girls working as prostitutes.

Doesn't have a damn thing to do with your skin color.

Edit:
I do love how you slip back into the progressive playbook and pull out the tactic of calling any opponent who won't bow before you a racist. But guess what! That doesn't work against me. I have been called worse by better men than you.

What do you think most corporations are? They are groups of people pooling money.

Capitalism and wealth are the engines that drive freedom. Demoarcy has nothing to do with freedom, in the long run demoarcy is destructive to freedom.

You can yell fire in a crowded theater if the damn thing is on fire.

Last i checked "colored" went out as being acceptable when "negro" came in as being acceptable.

Asking my husband, and he says both are crap.

Just sayin...

oh, and ACORN is a shit shady partisan organization living off tax payer money.

Under the law they are.

I agree, we need to change how corporations operate. But when you say one group of people can't speak because they make a profit and a group that doesn't make a profit can, you are making some people unequal under the law.