posted
I find this interesting : Norway bans political ads on TV, in order to increase freedom of speech. The reasoning is that broadcast time is so expensive that only wealthy groups would get their message through. (And, incidentally, the US is usually held up as a horrible example of just this happening.) Do you think a similar measure might help in stopping the influence of lobby groups and campaign contributors on American politics? Would it be possible to get past the courts? (On the face of it, it does limit speech.) It must be admitted that it is not obvious whether this would scale properly; Norway is, after all, a little smaller than the US. It is at least possible that only television can really cover such a large nation.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
National ad time is prohibitively expensive. Regional ad time, much less so.
Personally, I assume every commercial I see is trying to sell me something. Political commercials fit that description just as well as insurance commercials.
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posted
I don't think it'd be possible to get that past the courts, and I'm not even sure that I'd want it to. The precedence that could set would be dangerous. I do think, however, that TV ads will become, if not obsolete, of much less importance in future elections because of (gasp) the net. Why should candidates continue to pay large amounts of money for primetime access when they can let people download the same commercials?
quote:I would argue that the expenditure of money is a use of speech.
I'm not sure that argument is defensible, Tom. If use of money is speech, why are people limited in how much they can contribute to a candidate? Free speech is about the transmission of information, not funds. Granted, funds are coming to be represented more and more as pure information, but I think there's still a valid line to be drawn there.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I think you also have to take into account the size of the country. Norway would be much easier to travel and get in touch with many of the people during a campaign. Could you imagine if a you had to try to do that in a campaign here?
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posted
I hate that this is true, but in America, if it's not on TV, it is below the radar of the majority of the population.
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:posted by TomDavidson: I would argue that [contribution] limits are unconstitutional and counterproductive.
Do you think that private interests don't actually have too much control over government, and that abolishing the limits wouldn't further this control? Or is that you think we should do it for consistancy's sake? Or, more likely, some other reason that I haven't thought of yet? I don't think I've ever really heard this argument from someone who wasn't in office. I'd love for you to elaborate more.
quote:posted by King of Men: So much the better, then. The ignorant part of the population wouldn't vote at all.
quote:Do you think that private interests don't actually have too much control over government, and that abolishing the limits wouldn't further this control? Or is that you think we should do it for consistancy's sake? Or, more likely, some other reason that I haven't thought of yet? I don't think I've ever really heard this argument from someone who wasn't in office. I'd love for you to elaborate more.
Direct donations isn't the only way to support a Party/Candidate by spending money. Bipartisan News Media is a good example. And in return, if elected, that Party/Candidate can offer tax breaks/changes/etc in return.
Similiarly, this can be done with any number of voters offering financial support or any other form of support, and the Party/Candidate again offers whatever in return. Limiting direct contributions doesn't control this.
[ May 31, 2006, 08:49 AM: Message edited by: cheiros do ender ]
Posts: 1138 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Problem 1: determining what is political. How do you do this? Right now, if I bought an ad on Nov 1 saying "we desperately need policy X now" that would be OK. If my ad said, "we desperately need policy X now. Candidate Y supports policy X. Vote for candidate Y!" I would be in violation of the law.
The line-drawing that must be done between political and non-political is too hard and too subject to abuse.
Problem 2: If the First Amendment doesn't mean I can tell people who I want them to vote for, then it doesn't really mean much of anything.
Oh sure, I can tell people individually. I can tell them on my web site. But I can't use the most effective medium available to express my idea.
Oh, incidentally, news media can still make endorsements. John Stewart or Rush Limbaugh can still effectively reach their audience. The only people who can't do so are those who don't already control some aspect of the media.
Problem 3: An individual right to free expression is meaningless if individuals can't aggregate their expression in groups. This is the purpose of the assembly clause - to be able to rally the resources of many people in support of a single idea. This is the problem with restricting organizations - 523s, PACs, or parties. It means that those who individually have large sums of money can do things that collections of people can't.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I'm wondering if campaigns run without TV ads, but attempting to reach the same number of people, wouldn't be even more expensive.
Also the advantage of incumbents in getting to write letters to constituents at taxpayer expense simply as part of their job would massively more important if TV ads weren't such a large part of most campaigns.
TV does have unfavorable influences on politics -- like the fact that how a candidate looks can have a much greater impact than it would've otherwise. I don't think the advertisement of candidates is that bad, though.
I figure most people tune the ads out. There are probably very few people who just believe the messages uncritically. I'm not all that concerned about the subliminal side of things or how candidates are "packaged" with various images (hero, neighborly, tough on crime, etc.) I suppose that stuff works, but there's so much out there and it's so muddled together in most campaigns I figure it just doesn't affect people all that much.
I know there have been studies and I think the goal of all the TV ads is really to implant a person's name in the subconscious of undecided voters. I'm not sure it actually works.
The things I really wonder about with political TV ads are:
1) Do the ads work to gain name recognition?
2) Does the audience remember key points from the message?
3) Do they believe the key points as describing real attributes of the candidate in question?
4) Does any of it affect their decision in the voting booth?
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Right now, if I bought an ad on Nov 1 saying "we desperately need policy X now" that would be OK. If my ad said, "we desperately need policy X now. Candidate Y supports policy X. Vote for candidate Y!" I would be in violation of the law.
I see ads like that all the time. Are they all paid for by the candidate (or his PAC)?
quote:If the First Amendment doesn't mean I can tell people who I want them to vote for, then it doesn't really mean much of anything.
This is very true. I think there is a line to be drawn though, between the free exchange of ideas and the free exchange of possessions. The nature of money blurs that line quite a bit.
quote:An individual right to free expression is meaningless if individuals can't aggregate their expression in groups. This is the purpose of the assembly clause - to be able to rally the resources of many people in support of a single idea.
To be frank, this sounds like an argument in favor of donation limits. If people can only give so much, they have to band together to get anything accomplished. Person A, who's a billionaire, and person B, who's (only) a millionaire, have the same political power if the most each can give is $2000. This reading leads me to suspect I just don't understand what you're saying there. When you talk about "restricting organizations," do you mean restricting how much money donors can give those groups, what those groups can do with that money? Also, what's a 523?
Cheiros,
quote:Direct donations isn't the only way to support a Party/Candidate by spending money. Bipartisan News Media is a good example. And in return, if elected, that Party/Candidate can offer tax breaks/changes/etc in return.
Similiarly, this can be done with any number of voters offering financial support or any other form of support, and the Party/Candidate again offers whatever in return. Limiting direct contributions won't control this.
You're talking about the situation as it is now, with limits in place, yes? Do you mean to say, "limiting direct contributions [doesn't] control this"? That just says to me that the regulations in place are innefective and we should either be changing their nature or their strength.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Person A, who's a billionaire, and person B, who's (only) a millionaire, have the same political power if the most each can give is $2000.
I have to admit that I find this statement incredibly naive.
If your goal is to limit the political power of the wealthy through legislated restrictions, you will never succeed.Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Tom, if that is the case, how do we then boost the political power of the not-wealthy to compete with the wealthy? Or is that not seen as worthwhile? Are you in the "it can't be fixed, so don't bother" camp (which might actually be a valid solution, I will admit)?
posted
In other words, no law alone will ever achieve absolute control over how people spend their money. Even income taxes need to be enforced. The question is, do you believe all the different measures laid down to enforce that maximum contribution, in just direct donations, to a Candidate's campaign is worth the cost to individual freedoms?
Posts: 1138 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Bokonon, the rich are only rich because they offer a service or product that the poorer majority want. So, first, the group rallies together with unlimited financing powers (within what they have), and second, they boycott the products or services the richer person(s) is/are providing. The latter is of course impossible in the case of natural monopolies, and some not-so-natural monopolies in the hands of the rich, which is why we don't allow them to exist as much as possible.
If the idea of the majority in this situation isn't capable of rallying enough support from enough people with enough money, it probably isn't that great an idea.
Think of the Union Movement.
Posts: 1138 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Well, I have a slightly different (and probably more sinister sounding) idea of how most wealth is generated, and in general I don't see national politics as so simple a supply/demand curve. Abstracting it as far as you have (and you aren't entirely inaccurate, IMO), leads to the belief that the solutions are/can be as simple as the perceived abstraction.
I would also submit that even the most populist of causes that have succeeded, did so in no small part due to the help of some members of the "rich". I may be a bit jaded from one-too-many readings of 1984 though.
quote:Person A, who's a billionaire, and person B, who's (only) a millionaire, have the same political power if the most each can give is $2000.
I have to admit that I find this statement incredibly naive.
If your goal is to limit the political power of the wealthy through legislated restrictions, you will never succeed.
Actually, it was an oversimplification. It made sense while I was writing, but I see the problem now. I disagree however, that limiting the political power of the wealthy is impossible. It's more a question to me of how much limiting is useful/constitutional/ethical.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:What exactly do you mean by the "Union Movement".
You do have Union's in the US, right? In Australia, one of our two major federal parties is the Labor Party, which was formed primarily to push for worker's rights like minimum wage, the 38 hour week, sick leave, and so on.
Since Henry Ford, an American, pioneered of a lot of these ideas, I guess I just wrongly assumed either the Democratics or Republicans (or both?) would have also pushed for it in the US. If not, how did you get those rights exactly?
quote:If your goal is to limit the political power of the wealthy through legislated restrictions, you will never succeed.
Actually, Tom, the way I see it at least, the protection against monopolies does this quite well.
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posted
I think it would make sense to remove most restrictions on campaign spending, but to also make extensive public funds available that can only be used if a campaign accepts certain restrictions.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Here are a couple of articles about how we handle this sort of thing here in Canada. It differs from Norway in that political parties are allowed to run ads (though with defined spending limits), and third parties are also allowed to run ads (with vastly lower spending limits on a per-riding basis).
The second link has another link to this article from back in 2000. It's a bit oudated, of course, but it goes into some of the differences in intent and philosophy between the Canadian and American electoral systems with respect to financing and spending.
This snippet is relevant:
quote:Like all of the courts before it, the Supreme Court agreed that the impugned third-party spending restrictions were violations of the fundamental freedoms of speech and association. But it found the restrictions to be justifiable as part of a regulatory scheme designed to promote the objective of fairness within a democratic, electoral process. The Court quoted approvingly the words of Professor Peter Aucoin, who served as the Quebec government’s expert witness: “The purpose of spending limits in an election or a referenda [sic] campaign is to promote fairness as a primary value or objective of the democratic process.”[44]
And herein lies the significance of the decision. Parsing this purpose, the Court stated that in providing for the control and the use of money, and thereby minimizing the impact on the referendum process of its uneven distribution among the members of the society, the legislation was egalitarian, and had the effect of keeping debate open and inspiring public confidence that the process is not dominated by the “power of money.”[45]
What about the fundamental freedoms of expression and association? The court’s attempt to balance them against the fairness objective surfaced in its rejection of the severe restrictions that Quebec placed on third-party spending in referendum campaigns.[46] Ironically, the court recommended that the Quebec government consider the federal provisions — the $1000 spending limit for third parties that was recommended by the royal commission, adopted by the federal government, and dismissed by the Alberta Court of Appeal. Indeed, the court went to the trouble of citing in full the provisions of the Canada Elections Act that limit the advertising expenses of third parties to $1000.
My second link above has some more up-to-date information:
quote:A controversial aspect of federal election laws is the limits placed on private individuals and groups who are not running in the election but who wish to advertise in support of or against specific candidates or parties. Amendments made to the Elections Act in May 2000 placed a $3,000 limit on "third party" spending in each constituency and $150,000 for a national advertising campaign. These limits are to be re-indexed annually and in the 2005-6 fiscal year stand at #3441 and $172,050 respectively. More details can be found in Elections Canada's FAQ on third party advertising, as well as their Election Handbook for Third Parties. Anyone who spends over $500 in election advertising has to register with Elections Canada.
There are two main justifications for the third-party limits. The first is to protect the spending limits on political parties and candidates; otherwise, parallel campaigns could be conducted by groups allied to particular parties. The other is to protect individual candidates from being targeted by expensive ad campaigns to which they could not respond because of both their own limited funds or the spending limits imposed on candidates. For example, see "Business Group Raising $25,000 for Ad Campaign to Oust Tory MP Elsie Wayne" National Post, October 28, 2000.
This law was challenged during the 2000 election, by Stephen Harper when he headed up the National Citizens Coalition, on the grounds that the law is an unconstitutional limit on the freedom of expression and of the voters' rights to be fully informed of all points of view. The Alberta Queen's Bench issued an injunction lifting the third party spending limits pending a full hearing, and the injunction was upheld by the Alberta Court of Appeal. However, the Supreme Court of Canada lifted the injunction on November 10, and the limits were in force during the rest of the campaign.
In May 2004 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on another Harper case and decided that the existing spending limits were in fact constitutional. So, the 2004 general election will be conducted with the following indexed spending limits for third parties in place: $3,378 in an individual riding and $168,900 nationally.
Incidentally, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper is now our Prime Minister.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
As a side note, I have never understood how people can be influenced by political TV ads. I don't think I've ever seen one that made me want to vote for the person being sold in the ad - although sometimes it has made me NOT want to vote for them. They usually have almost zero substance to them.
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posted
I don't believe that "limiting the political power of the wealthy" is a noble or ethical thing to do. What makes it any different that limiting the political power of the eloquant, or the well-connected, or the <insert group here>? Although I do understand the frustration, I don't think that manipulating freedom of speech is the way to address it.
And as for Norway's assertion that limiting speech leads to freedom of speech, it seems pretty Orwellian to me (two 1984 references in one thread. sweet). I would say that banning political ads is a way of guaranteeing freedom from speech, rather than freedom of speech. Which, considering my opinion of most political ads, might not be such a bad thing after all.
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posted
Tres: yet it is apparent there are people influenced by them, so while your impressions of the ads may or may not be correct, they're largely irrelevant.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:What makes it any different that limiting the political power of the eloquant, or the well-connected, or the <insert group here>?
The ability to access a wide audience is one of the main distinguishing factors, I think.
One clarification to my previous post: the rules I outlined only apply during election campaigns. I should have made that explicit.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
I think the point of political TV ads is to draw attention to the Candidates wider campaign, and the Candidate themself. I doubt they expect anyone to vote for them solely because of a 30 second ad campaign, or a billboard, etc.
Anyone know what I'm thinking of to do with shoppers who buy things on the spur of the moment because of flashy labelling, because famous people endorse them, and so on.
posted
What really annoyed me in the last Canadian election (early 2006) was that the major parties didn't release their platforms until a week or two before the election. Instead they announced policy snippets and ran "look at our great record" or "look at the other guy's scandals" ads. Even the debates had to be conducted without the full party platforms, which allowed the party leaders to equivocate on various points.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Originally posted by twinky: The ability to access a wide audience is one of the main distinguishing factors, I think.
That doesn't do it for me. Large audiences are not solely commanded by money. If I had a famous friend, let's say Brad Pitt, and got him to volunteer to hit the campaign trail with me, and so got large audiences everywhere I went, is that unethical? Should we ban people with famous friends from running for political office because they have an unfair advantage?
I guess the whole "fairness" thing irks me. I noticed it in the court's findings you quoted originally, that freedom of speech can be limited because the result is greater "fairness." Who gets to decide where "fair" lies? I think it's fair that we all enjoy the same fundamental freedoms (including speech).
It's not that I'm a big libertarian or anything, and like I said I understand and can empathize with the frustration of feeling like politics is controlled by money, I just don't think the answer is to limit fundamental rights in some misguided effort to engineer "fairness" in the system.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:What makes it any different that limiting the political power of the eloquant, or the well-connected, or the <insert group here>?
Indeed, what makes it different from limiting the power of the physically strong, which we do through having laws against intimidation and assault? Or the unscrupulous and cunning, which we attempt to do by laws against fraud and insider trading? Limits on the power of a group are not of themselves a bad thing. It is certainly possible for them to be bad, as in limiting the power of blacks though poll taxes; but you have to do it case by case. For that matter, the power of the wealthy is already lmited by laws against bribing people to vote; you would think this would be likewise free speech, yes?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Large audiences are not solely commanded by money.
That's true, but in this case it seems to me to be a question of degree -- which is why, in Canada, third-party advertising spending during election campaigns was limited, not banned.
quote:I guess the whole "fairness" thing irks me. I noticed it in the court's findings you quoted originally, that freedom of speech can be limited because the result is greater "fairness." Who gets to decide where "fair" lies?
A combination of the government, the courts, and the people (insofar as the three are distinct), through the processes that are in place to make such determinations. That seems to me to be more or less what happened as our campaign finance regulations developed over the last 40 years.
quote:It's not that I'm a big libertarian or anything, and like I said I understand and can empathize with the frustration of feeling like politics is controlled by money, I just don't think the answer is to limit fundamental rights in some misguided effort to engineer "fairness" in the system.
Well, what do you think the answer is? Is there one, if spending limits are as gross a violation of freedom of speech as you're suggesting?
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
cheiros, the unions, while now joined to the hip of a party (the Democratic Party), generally speaking, started as entities not having anything to do with political parties. They were largely created, I believe, out of a response to early "organized" strikes and the like, which led to violence against the workers, including violence from the government itself. They had to fight for any true legal standing, and even now have all sorts of weird (IMO) restrictions and regulations that in some ways causes unions to be a detriment to workers, rather than the general help they have been. ---
Senoj, I see it like this: in Spider-Man the saying was "With great power comes great responsibility". Well, in our system, we have no way to enforce the latter, therefore we should be wary of of providing ways for the former to be expressed in it's fullest.
posted
Bok, what exactly is the point of striking?
The Teacher's Union here do it at least once a year, almost as if to say,
"Well we hadn't thought of this during our last strike, so we're just going to put off teaching you/yourkids for a while until we get it this time. Oh, and yes we expect to get paid for the days we strike and not teach your kids."
This wouldn't be so bad if they didn't do it so damn often, or maybe if they were thoughtful enough to do it during school holidays.
The only other time I've noticed any serious Union action was also in the public sector here, with Railline workers complaining about heat limits they'd agreed to in their last strike, and further demanding full pay from I think about thirty days they striked instead of working, as well as huge bonuses, which they all got for putting off our new trainline by over a month and inflating the budget for the project entirely.
So I'm quite pissed off at Unions at the moment.
Posts: 1138 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Well, at the times of the aforementioned strikes, they were miners and other industrial workers at the turn of the 20th century. There were no safety regulations, and wages were kept low, hours were kept long. When the workers decided to combine to force concessions, the national guard was brought in to break up the strike.
IMO, it sounds like you have a very myopic view of unions, and should check out what some of them did historically.
-Bok
EDIT: Here are some links. The first is about strikes in general (with a US focus). The other provides an example of a strike riot (with blame on both sides), including the conditions that the workers worked in.
I understand there's always a balance of rights. In your examples I would say there's a clear ordering of rights: I have a right to safety in my person and possessions, which outweighs your right to project power as you see fit (in most circumstances). In this case, I'm suggesting that the clear ordering of rights (to me) is counter the suggested limitations of free speech, because I value speech fairly highly as a right, and value the right of political hopefuls to equal-sized audiences fairly lowly.
Twinky-
I don't know that the problem has an answer. Just because I'm dissatisfied with this system doesn't mean that I think another system will improve things. That's a cop-out. I'll try to think up something better.
How about drastically reducing the powers of centralized governments, which would push interest away from national politics and more to local politics where tv ads wouldn't dominate the voting populace to the same degree?
On a more feasible level, we as individuals can write television stations that carry political ads, saying things like, "When any political ad comes on your channel I change the station and seldom change back. You're losing audience by running these ads." We can also support less wealth-biased advertising media, like the internet. We can individually move beyond ads and support candidates on issues, which will decrease the perceived benefits to political candidates of mass advertising. None of these are power moves, but they are all significant ways in my mind that we can affect change without pushing for speech-limiting legislation.
Bok-
Perhaps where I part company with you is in that I don't feel that (non-broadcast) television commericals are "providing ways" for the wealthy to exercise their power. If they want to buy up ad time from a private company to push content to private television sets, I don't see that I, as a citizen, am providing them anything (except, potentially, an audience).
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:I see ads like that all the time. Are they all paid for by the candidate (or his PAC)?
I misspoke - I was basing it off a recollection of the bill at some point prior to passage. Wikipedia sums it up like this:
quote:In addition, the bill aimed to curtail so called "issue ads" by banning the use of corporate or union money to pay for broadcast advertising that identifies a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary or nominating convention, or 60 days of a general election. Any ads within those periods that identify a federal candidate must be paid for with regulated, hard money or with contributions exclusively made by individual donors.
What I described was proposed and was defeated. There are current proposals based on dissatisfaction with 527s, but I don't think any bills as such are even under consideration.
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posted
Oh, I'm all for boycotts based on principle, but paid strikes are rarely, if ever, justified, IMO. You're not really doing any sort altruism if you strike with no-one to replace you, meaning they pretty much have to agree to your terms provided they're cheaper and more efficient than training someone else to do your job for you.
Would I be right in guessing most employees were easier, cheaper and more efficient to replace way back in 1914? I'm not specifically referring to this case of a whole 1,200 miners, but you get what I mean, right?
Edited to add: I've decided I'm going to start my own Union at the start of the next Financial Year in July. My place of work has over 50 employees, and that's all you need anymore in Australia to start one.
And I'm also going to write some sort of essay/article explaining why I believe small scale independent Unions can work more efficiently than large scale ones.
[ May 31, 2006, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: cheiros do ender ]
Posts: 1138 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Senoj, that last one would be my favourite of all (knowledge of issues, platforms, et cetera), but of course it's also the hairiest problem, because it requires an engaged voter body. Our voter turnout has gradually been trending downward.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:"If your goal is to limit the political power of the wealthy through legislated restrictions, you will never succeed."
Actually, Tom, the way I see it at least, the protection against monopolies does this quite well.
Monopoly protection, when it succeeds, limits the wealth of the wealthy. That increased wealth frequently corresponds to increased political power also suggests that limiting wealth will limit political power.
quote:what makes it different from limiting the power of the physically strong, which we do through having laws against intimidation and assault?
Is it your contention that, like intimidation and assault, political speech is inherently harmful? If so, given that we prosecute weak people for assault, should we also prosecute poor people for taking out TV ads?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I don't think TV ads are equally harmful as assault, no. I do think they might be about as harmful as bribing voters. The point I was making is that there is a continuum; you cannot condemn a law merely because it curtails the freedom of some particular group, you have to look at whether the curtailment is reasonable. Limiting the freedom of strong people to impose their will is, I think, un-controversial; limiting the freedom of black people to vote is generally unacceptable except on the very fringe; limiting rich people's means of influencing the poor by bribes is ok with most people; TV ads are in the grey zone, where people argue either way.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Tres: yet it is apparent there are people influenced by them, so while your impressions of the ads may or may not be correct, they're largely irrelevant.
It's quite relevant! If people are being influenced by ads, yet I am correct in that it is giving them no substantial reason to be influenced by the ad, then the question is why are they being influenced? Why are voters swayed by scary music, or certain images, rather than the issues? Are these ads actually a form of speech, or are they just a form of manipulation?
Perhaps that indicates the real problem is not with the ads, but rather with how we approach elections. Do we really pay enough attention to what candidates are actually all about? Do we take a critical approach towards elections, or do we simply accept whatever the most negative depiction of a candidate is? It seems to me that if so many voters pay so little attention to candidates that such TV ads sway them, then our problems are way bigger than just too many TV ads. The solution is not to take away the ads, but rather to find a way to make voters more informed, so they don't have to rely on ads to form impressions about candidates. Voting should not be done on a whim. That's the wrong way to approach an election, I think.
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quote:Limiting the freedom of strong people to impose their will is, I think, un-controversial....
But that's not actually what we're limiting when we ban assault. When we ban assault, our stated goal is to prevent people from being assaulted; this has the incidental effect of making it harder for people to achieve power through strength. Is our stated goal here to ban TV advertising, or is our stated goal here to reduce the influence of the wealthy?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Tresopax, that was precisely my problem with the last Canadian election -- the parties waited so long to release their full platforms that there was no time for most people to review all of them thoroughly before the election. I would have liked at least another couple of weeks with them out in the public domain to look them over and discuss them, preferably something more like a couple of months.
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