[EL] ELB News and Commentary 3/24/12

[Paul Lehto]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Thomas J. Cares <Tom at tomcares.com> wrote:

>
> Setting aside the question of which rights corporations are entitled to, *perhaps
> *the public's right to hear any speech, regardless of who - or what -
> desires to speak it, should trump the potential harms of corruption and
> conflicts of interest. [...]
>
> (If I were to concede that I've 180ed on CU, my sentiment would be that,
> for civil libertarian reasons, government should be almost-entirely [FN 1]
> out of the business of restricting political speech, and, rather, get into
> the business of enabling an adequate amount of common-citizen-supported
> political speech through a voucher system of public campaign financing).
>

So long as The People as voters are in charge (as they must be in any free
democratic society), it is of the most fundamental importance that these
deciding voters have the opportunity to be broadly informed prior to
casting ballots.  If I read Thomas Cares correctly above, I believe he is
touching upon this most critical consideration, as it relates to the
ability of unlimited IEs to squeeze out other speech during
election-critical time frames, especially in the couple months prior to an
election, and especially on television, which has a finite amount of
advertising time available.   This de facto squeeze-out of other points of
view and opinions actually works to defeat the public's right to choice in
terms of what it wishes to hear, in favor of a model that amounts to the
public's duty to listen to the views of those spending the most money on
television ads.

In the face of excessive ads, I suspect Jim Bopp would simply say "change
the channel."  One might do exactly that, or might use the mute button, but
neither of these actions is at all likely to make the viewer a more
informed voter or even provide the potential for doing so, because the
"competing" views and opinions have been squeezed out.

Paul Lehto, J.D.

>
> *But, nevertheless, I see no equivocation in the extreme-silliness of
> arguing that CU leveled an important playing field for the likes of Exxon
> and Goldman Sachs in relation to the New York Times.*
> *
> *
> *
> *
> *
> *
> Thomas J. Cares
>
> --
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026 (cell)
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