Home » Understanding the significance of McCutcheon: campaign finance and the history of free speech protection

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Understanding the significance of <i>McCutcheon</i>: campaign finance and the history of free speech protection — 7 Comments

  1. “By focusing on the social interest in democratic self-government, Brandeis attempted to differentiate freedom of speech from individualist rights such as liberty of contract and other traditional assertions of natural rights against the government.”

    op. cit.

    Bernstein, I think, missed it: Brandeis was writing within the living memory of the 1896 presidential election exposed as being bought and paid for by the robber barons. The street talk was that Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan all kicked in massive financial resources behind McKinley — and side-tracked Teddy Roosevelt into the VP slot — where he could do no harm.

    “Republican campaign manager Mark Hanna pioneered many modern campaign techniques, facilitated by a $3.5 million budget. He outspent Bryan by a factor of five”

    “The McKinley campaign invented a new form of campaign financing that has dominated American politics ever since. Instead of asking office holders [ ie Post Office management and line troops et.al. Ed] to return a cut of their pay, Hanna went to financiers and industrialists [starting with the three big boys Ed] and made a business proposition. He explained that Bryan would win if nothing happened,[ie without big bucks Ed] and that the McKinley team had a winning counterattack that would be very expensive. He then would ask them how much it was worth to the business not to have Bryan as president. He suggested an amount and was happy to take a check. Hanna had moved beyond partisanship and campaign rhetoric to a businessman’s thinking about how to achieve a desired result.[an absurd Wiki bombast: the players were die hard Republicans going way back. Carnegie actually was Lincoln’s personal telegrapher, for a time, during the war! IIRC, he handled the Gettysburg transmissions, and much more. Ed] He raised $3.5 million. [massively weighted to the big three. Ed.] Hanna brought in banker Charles G. Dawes to run the Chicago office and spend about $2 million in the critical region”

    Wiki (cited with caution)

    {Dawes is the only Nobel Peace Prize winner to have penned a #1 pop tune… now an American standard: “Melody in A Major” aka “It’s All in the Game.”}

    In the parlance of the Court, corporations, per se, were not deemed to have a social interest. As artificial beings, corporations were deemed to have strictly economic interests.

    THAT’S the significance of the term. The Justice is pushing for an un-repressed expression of the HUMAN interest.

    Bernstein is taking off at an angle.

  2. Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity (11). It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual

    Benito Mussolini – The Doctrine of Fascism

  3. The Left and the Demoncrat founding members are just another political party right? Bipartsanship, diversity, and making compromises with the moral majority is what America is built on, right?

  4. All you can do is resist and find connections with like minded others. If we are free in our hearts and minds all they can do is kill us, they can not take our desire for liberty. F&#* ’em. We may be approaching a time when each of us must decide; acquiesce to the will of the mindless mob or be willing to go down dying… hopefully taking down a few of the mob in the process.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPwkDF5AxQM

  5. Finished with dinner, the wife is reading, and I’m nursing a third glass of wine, and yes, I know about the man named White Death…. over 500 kills if I remember correctly. I’m nowhere near that good, but I can still hit a dinner plate sized target at 400 yards with open sights with one of my Mausers. The other Mauser is scoped and that will take me out to 800+ yards. Be relentless in the pursuit of liberty and dignity, and do not fear death. We were all born to die.

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