17 Jul 2012, 2:51 pm
Purple, our freedom of speech is constrained by social and economic factors. Thus, anonymous speech can be necessary component of free speech for those who cannot speak because of adverse consequences. With regard to disclosure and anonymous political contributors, the real problem is with the Citizens United decision itself. Disclosure laws are a band-aid solution and probably wouldn’t have much of an impact (unless contributions were from China!)
Citizens United violates the democratic value of one man, one vote. Yes, there have always been businesses and individuals who have disproportionate influence, but now we have legalized it and made it easy. Adelman says he will spend 100 million dollars--how many votes will that get Romney, 1 million , 500,000? In any case, Adelman now is obtaining legally the influence of perhaps hundreds of thousand of votes, far more than his single vote. A democracy has to be able to come up with sensible rules to preserve the one man, one vote principle. Citizens United took that ability away and it undercuts faith in democracy when everyone can see that their vote pales in comparison to the effect that Adelman has on an election
Danivon, in California employers have the right to fire without cause (of course they are constrained from not discriminating, but otherwise they have free rein). Courts in California ( until about 20 or 30 years when the California Supreme Court got rid of it) used to imply what was called the implied warranty of good faith and fair dealing in employee-employer relationships (to deal with the fact that employees do not have equal power with employers). In practice, this mean that once someone had worked for a company for a while (5, 10 years) that it was difficult to fire them without good cause. I think that any civilized society would protect against an employer arbitrarily firing an employee who has invested much time and effort into a company only to discarded like they were nothing when it suited the employer
Citizens United violates the democratic value of one man, one vote. Yes, there have always been businesses and individuals who have disproportionate influence, but now we have legalized it and made it easy. Adelman says he will spend 100 million dollars--how many votes will that get Romney, 1 million , 500,000? In any case, Adelman now is obtaining legally the influence of perhaps hundreds of thousand of votes, far more than his single vote. A democracy has to be able to come up with sensible rules to preserve the one man, one vote principle. Citizens United took that ability away and it undercuts faith in democracy when everyone can see that their vote pales in comparison to the effect that Adelman has on an election
Danivon, in California employers have the right to fire without cause (of course they are constrained from not discriminating, but otherwise they have free rein). Courts in California ( until about 20 or 30 years when the California Supreme Court got rid of it) used to imply what was called the implied warranty of good faith and fair dealing in employee-employer relationships (to deal with the fact that employees do not have equal power with employers). In practice, this mean that once someone had worked for a company for a while (5, 10 years) that it was difficult to fire them without good cause. I think that any civilized society would protect against an employer arbitrarily firing an employee who has invested much time and effort into a company only to discarded like they were nothing when it suited the employer
