Supreme Court screws the pooch yet again, unlimited campaign money funnelling to self

[Fugus]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...cid=uxbndlbing

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in his challenge of a campaign finance law limiting the use of post-election funds to reimburse candidates who lend large sums to their own campaigns.

The court in a 6-3 decision ruled that the regulation in question "burdens core political speech without proper justification." The majority was also unconvinced by the Biden administration's argument that the regulation helps avoid the appearance of political corruption in government.

The decision split the conservative-majority court along ideological lines, with liberal justices arguing in dissent.

"The theory of the legislation is easy to grasp. Political contributions that will line a candidate's own pockets, given after his election to office, pose a special danger of corruption," read the dissent from Justice Elena Kagan.

Without the rule, "The politician is happy; the donors are happy. The only loser is the public. It inevitably suffers from government corruption," wrote Kagan, who was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

The regulation, from a section of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, barred campaigns from using more than $250,000 in post-election funds to repay a candidate's loans to fund those campaigns. Any amount above that can only be repaid with pre-election funds within a 20-day window after the election.

Cruz had loaned $260,000 to his successful 2018 campaign against Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke. Twenty days after that election, $10,000 of Cruz's personal loan remained unpaid.

The senator, who had purposefully gone above the quarter-million-dollar limit to prompt a legal challenge against the regulation, argued that the 20-year-old rule violated his free speech rights. A federal district court sided with Cruz, ruling that the law discourages "the personal financing of campaign speech."

The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that the law raises the risk that some candidates may not recoup their loans after an election. That "in turn may deter some candidates from loaning money to their campaigns when they otherwise would, reducing the amount of political speech," Roberts wrote.

"By inhibiting a candidate from using this critical source of campaign funding, [the regulation] raises a barrier to entry — thus abridging political speech," Roberts wrote.

He also wrote that there is "pretty meager" evidence available to support the argument that the regulation is necessary to prevent possible political corruption.

In her dissent, Kagan wrote that the majority's decision to strike down the regulation is "hard to fathom."

The limits on repaying large campaign loans with post-election donations are intended to target "both corruption and the appearance of corruption of the quid pro quo kind," Kagan wrote, because the donations in question "personally enrich those already elected to office."

"In allowing those payments to go forward unrestrained, today's decision can only bring this country's political system into further disrepute," Kagan wrote.

If these people were correct about their religion, they would burn by their own standards....

The mess future generations will have to clean up gets bigger and bigger. Hopefully when the GOP is finally removed from power the snap back will be massive.

[Edge-]

Man, won't anyone step up to pass comprehensive campaign finance and electoral reform to eliminate, or at least diminish/equalize, the corrupting influence of money in politics?

Nobody? While they all complain about how much of their time is spent dialing donors and fundraising? Damn man, that's rough. It's a shame that those with money get to have a lot more political speech than the rest of us.

[Milchshake]

Awww it's like 2016 was a referendum on the Supreme Court ... part eleventy.

Some lady wanted to talk about Roe and campaign finance reform, but she was "cringe".
These people also said that emails and the TPP were the real issues of 2016.

[Fugus]

Awww it's like 2016 was a referendum on the Supreme Court ... part eleventy.

Some lady wanted to talk about Roe and campaign finance reform, but she was "cringe".
These people also said that emails and the TPP were the real issues of 2016.

Yeah... If only Clinton hadn't let her pride get the better of her and hadn't ran off her own voters, we wouldn't be here. But no, she had to metaphorically backhand her own voters in the face and think they would fall in line because she helped to elevate Trump to give her the most damaged person to run against then only to lose to her own patsy....

If only Clinton had shown her voters more respect...

We can drop this blaming the voters any day now, you can repeat it 1,000 times and you will be wrong 1,000 times and won't do anything relevant to the threads in any of those instances.

[Elegiac]

Yeah... If only Clinton hadn't let her pride get the better of her

Pot, kettle. Your reasoning still boils down to "she hurt my fee fees and I value my fee fees over the wellbeing of women and minorities."

It's a democratic system, habibi, the buck stops with the voters. You can stop trying to justify your mistakes any day now.

And to add some more irony:

So, you need to vote, you need to get your friends to vote, and the moment they start complaining ask them if they voted and when they say they didn't tell them to shut the fuck up until they are willing to vote to do something about it but they have no right to complain if they aren't willing to do something about it and to stop expecting enough other people to vote to bail them out for their apathy.

[Ghost of Cow]

Yeah... If only Clinton hadn't let her pride get the better of her and hadn't ran off her own voters, we wouldn't be here. But no, she had to metaphorically backhand her own voters in the face and think they would fall in line because she helped to elevate Trump to give her the most damaged person to run against then only to lose to her own patsy....

If only Clinton had shown her voters more respect...

Oh for fucks sake.

This is why the shitheads win. They'll back anyone that the GOP puts in front of them no matter what, meanwhile we're over here wringing our hands about how, "Well Hillary just doesn't inspire me...I don't know if I should vote...."

We can drop this blaming the voters any day now, you can repeat it 1,000 times and you will be wrong 1,000 times and won't do anything relevant to the threads in any of those instances.

Naw, I'll definitely blame some voters.

[Fugus]

Pot, kettle. Your reasoning still boils down to "she hurt my fee fees and I value my fee fees over the wellbeing of women and minorities."

It's a democratic system, habibi, the buck stops with the voters. You can stop trying to justify your mistakes any day now.

You keep trying to hold Clinton to a lower standard than we hold Democrats, so you can hang that up.

When it comes to Republicans, we have talked plenty of times over the years about how if a Republican comes out against racism or bigotry in any real way that they will snub their voters and run them off. Those voters are monsters who deserved to be snubbed and ran off but you openly admit that doing that isn't the fault of the voter who refused to vote for them, it would be on the politician for turning their back on those monstrous voters.

Stop holding Clinton to a lower standard than even that. Her actions ran her voters off, her actions ran off my vote. Not Trump, not the GOP, not Russia, not Sanders, Clinton's actions personally.

Unless you are saying that Clinton had zero part in this:
https://fortune.com/2016/07/24/wasse...nton-campaign/

Because that was the final straw for me.

So, said it before, can said it again. No amount of white knighting for Clinton will have her fuck you any harder than she did in 2016, so stop trying. It won't change the results of that election but making the mistake she made may very well cost future elections if they try and repeat it hoping for a different outcome.

[Elegiac]

You keep trying to hold Clinton to a lower standard

I'm not holding Clinton to any standard or talking about her at all, actually.

I'm holding you and the other Bernie Bros to the standard of "this is a FPTP electoral system and your decision had direct and dire consequences for women and minorities".

[Fugus]

Now, we can actually get back into the topic at hand instead of trying to re-litigate a previous election.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not holding Clinton to any standard or talking about her at all, actually.

I'm holding you and the other Bernie Bros to the standard of "this is a FPTP electoral system and your decision had direct and dire consequences for women and minorities".

So you are saying it was MY fault that Clinton did this?
https://fortune.com/2016/07/24/wasse...nton-campaign/

[cubby]

Man, won't anyone step up to pass comprehensive campaign finance and electoral reform to eliminate, or at least diminish/equalize, the corrupting influence of money in politics?

Nobody? While they all complain about how much of their time is spent dialing donors and fundraising? Damn man, that's rough. It's a shame that those with money get to have a lot more political speech than the rest of us.

They can't anymore. Citizens United and subsequent rulings have made campaign contributions effectively a First Amendment protected "speech".

[Elegiac]

So you are saying it was MY fault that Clinton did this?
https://fortune.com/2016/07/24/wasse...nton-campaign/

I'm saying it's your fault for deciding that mattered more than denying the GOP access to the White House and by extension, the Supreme Court.

[Ghost of Cow]

Now, we can actually get back into the topic at hand instead of trying to re-litigate a previous election.

You do understand the cause and effect here, right?

[Elegiac]

You do understand the cause and effect here, right?

"I would have given a shit about the rights of women and minorities if only Hillary hadn't been so uppity."'

[Fugus]

I'm saying it's your fault for deciding that mattered more than denying the GOP access to the White House and by extension, the Supreme Court.

So you are saying that Clinton is not to blame for running off her voters? That my personal actions were more important to election than her own?

Not that her ego was so over the top that she felt she could flip her voters the bird and they would vote for her anyways because she succeeded in putting a gun to their head?

Sorry, but my actions were dependent on her actions and ultimately the buck stops with her and her actions. She is the reason she lost but you guys keep acting like it wasn't her fault if only those damn voters had fallen in line like a friggin Scooby Doo villain.

So, you can blame the voters till we are both old and dead and you will still die on this one being wrong, it wasn't the voters job to follow her, it was her job to at least not run us off.

And again, you are holding her to a lower standard than we hold Republicans as we have before openly admitted if the GOP candidate states coming out against Racism and Bigotry, they lose voters which is an admission right there that it would be on the candidate for running them off, even if it is for the right reasons.

And really, you guys keep derailing threads with your fantasies on this topic won't change the past, it just derails the topic.

- - - Updated - - -

You do understand the cause and effect here, right?

Cause: Clinton snubs her voters.
Effect: Clinton loses voters she snubbed.

Cause: Clinton loses voters she snubbed.
Effect: Clinton loses election due to loss of votes in strategic areas.

Proper conclusion: Clinton shouldn't have ran her voters off thinking she had an easy win and they had no choice or weren't needed.
Conclusion drawn: Clinton would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you kids and your dog!

[Ausr]

Oh for fucks sake.

This is why the shitheads win. They'll back anyone that the GOP puts in front of them no matter what, meanwhile we're over here wringing our hands about how, "Well Hillary just doesn't inspire me...I don't know if I should vote...."



Naw, I'll definitely blame some voters.

This 100%. Reason why Democrats tend to lose is because of exactly that. The party has no balls to just fall in line and get things done like their Republican counterparts.

[Elegiac]

So you are saying that Clinton is not to blame for running off her voters?

You keep repeating this, and it remains a strawman because I'm not talking about Clinton's campaign or "holding her to X standard".

I am presuming that you are a functional adult capable of making their own decisions and, at the end of the day, you responsible for those decisions - and you made the decision that "not being taken for granted" was more important than protecting the rights and liberties of your fellow man. "But she was haughty" "but she was corrupt" "but the DNC" are all irrelevant because American elections are zero sum, and as bad as the Democrats might be behaving in a particular circumstance it is still several orders of magnitude better than the alternative.

"Hillary forced me not to vote for her" is a puerile take. Grow up.

[unfilteredJW]

Guy that helped poke holes in roof complains about water damage.

[Fugus]

You keep repeating this, and it remains a strawman because I'm not talking about Clinton's campaign or "holding her to X standard".

I am presuming that you are a functional adult capable of making their own decisions and, at the end of the day, you responsible for those decisions - and you made the decision that "not being taken for granted" was more important than protecting the rights and liberties of your fellow man. "But she was haughty" "but she was corrupt" "but the DNC" are all irrelevant because American elections are zero sum, and as bad as the Democrats might be behaving in a particular circumstance it is still several orders of magnitude better than the alternative.

It's not a strawman and never was. That's what you keep getting wrong. I keep mentioning it because I was willing to hold my nose and vote for her originally till it was HER actions that cross the line. And you keep pretending like her actions didn't matter that it could have been friggin Epstein and we should have voted for her to keep the D in power (No pun intended).

As I said, I will gladly accept my 3% of the blame that can be lumped on the entirety of the voting base, but at the end of the day, the failure falls at her feet, not mine.

If a chain of events causes something to fail, you don't blame the last link in that chain for not bailing them all out, you blame the majority of the causes of the entire events.

The main causes of that whole thing include Clinton working to elevate Trump, Clinton treating her voters like she owned them, the DNC running a candidate they knew was hated and the GOP knew for almost a decade was coming and spent the entire time vilifying her but "It was her turn" so they went with it anyways, Russia helping Trump and what's his name who helped Russia and Trump releasing the leaked DNC emails while withholding the RNC emails he also obtained, the Comey announcing reopening an investigation into Clinton right as it all started. The voters not falling in line doesn't come close to any of those and generally is just a way to try and blame others for not bailing her out.

Now, we can stop this any time now, it is not giving anything or relevance to the actual thread itself.

[Elegiac]

As I said, I will gladly accept my 3% of the blame that can be lumped on the entirety of the voting base

As long as you acknowledge your culpability, habibi.

[Fugus]

As long as you acknowledge your culpability, habibi.

lol, not sure what the Habibi part is, but as I said, I willingly accept my 3% blame and while I hate what Trump did and what has happened but I don't regret my vote, I regret her actions which impacted my vote. I have been saying I accept my 3% blame since that election happened.