Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
Dems should shut it down ... but won't. They could force Republicans to sign whatever legislation they want, they just need 2 voted to win ... but the Dems are weak. We need a better class of liberal politicians.
Democratic representatives make more money in donations when there are more Republicans around making noise …
We need to fix the way we donate money to candidates 
Honestly it should not even be legal to donate to politicians at all. There should only be publicly funded elections. Earn enough signatures to end up on a ballot, you get a budget that goes to helping you campaign, audited to ensure that it only gets used for purposes directly related to campaigning.
Well, all i am saying is that i can take a tax free gift of 100,000 USD per year, but i still have to inform the IRS who gave it to me and when. If I have to do that as a private citizen, politicians should have to do something similar with campaign donations, so i agree
There's no practical way to do this.
There's nothing stopping people of influence (the wealthy, social media influencers, etc.) from endorsing a candidate on their own. Attempting to do so would violate free speech rights. And gee, which candidates do you think they're going to endorse? The ones who pay them.
It would open the floodgates to even worse corruption than we see now.
There’s nothing stopping people of influence (the wealthy, social media influencers, etc.) from endorsing a candidate on their own.
Nice straw-man. That isn't what they said at all. They said nothing about endorsements. They are talking about publicly funding elections in influencers. Since you brought it up though, free speech can and is limited when there is a compelling argument that the speech in question is harmful to the public good. Disallowing social media influencers from promoting candidates would no more violate free speech rights than banning churches from doing so does.
And what do you think publicly funded elections will lead to?
Everybody in a competition is going to want a leg up, beyond what is allowed by the publicly funded elections. They're going to take every edge that they can get. Which means they're going to look for social media influencers or other wealthy people to "independently" endorse them. They'll be looking for the Elon Musks of the world to "independently" do the work that they're prohibited from doing. And this doesn't even count the ones that will legitimately endorse a candidate on their own. Either way, it'll literally be a race to see who can rack up the most celebrity endorsements to get around campaign rules one way or the other.
And no, you cannot restrict free speech the way you described. "Harmful to the public good" means not yelling fire in a crowded theater. When you start going down the road of censoring political speech by claiming it's "harmful to the public good", that's blatant censorship of speech. It's a violation of free speech, free expression, free press, and the right to petition government. You are literally advocating censorship of political opinions. What do you think Trump would do with a rule like that? Any non-MAGA opinion would automatically be classified as "harmful to the public good".
Disallowing social media influencers from promoting candidates would no more violate free speech rights than banning churches from doing so does.
First, I challenge you to step into just about any church and see how well that "banning churches from doing so" works in practice. Give me about 30 seconds to do a youtube search for megachurch pastors who do that on the daily. Those rules are about as strictly enforced as jaywalking.
And with that said, the fact that you do not know the difference between the ban on political speech in churches (for what little that's even worth) and banning a private citizen (which is all a social media influencer is) from doing so. How do you even define "social media influencer"? Is it just the Logan Pauls and Mr. Beasts of the world? If I, a complete nobody, made a bunch of anti-Trump speeches that just happen to go viral and get millions of views, am I suddenly a social media influencer that is no longer allowed to make those speeches? Give me a definition for "social media influencer", and I'll give you 10 ways that a political candidate will get around those rules on day one.
I think your concerns are valid assuming you stop there, but there's definitely a lot more that can be done on top of campaign finance reform to make politics more egalitarian and protected from corporate interests.
Once upon a time in the US, the FCC enforced the Fairness Doctrine, which required any radio or TV broadcaster to represent bipartisan or nonpartisan views on given topics if they wanted to discuss politics. Not to say that it didn't come with its own set of problems, but Reagan did away with that in the 80's and we've seen a right-leaning slant in radio and TV ever since.
Just spitballing here, but a similar model with campaign finance in mind could do a lot to level the playing field. First, do away with corporate personhood. Then make it so that if a broadcaster or advertiser wants to show political ads, they must obtain a special designation which comes with its own stipulations: limit the quantity/duration of ads any one campaign can purchase, require that they distribute any qualifying candidate's ads without bias, charge a flat rate for ads for all candidates, and all political ads must be divided up along regular intervals throughout the day.
Despite corporate personhood, it is possible—common, even—for corporations to be limited in what they can or cannot say. Limiting corporate speech for public good (HIPAA in the US, for example) shouldn't be something objectionable.
Probably not perfect, but also probably much much better than how things are today with so much corporate-controlled politics.
Just spitballing here, but a similar model with campaign finance in mind could do a lot to level the playing field. First, do away with corporate personhood. Then make it so that if a broadcaster or advertiser wants to show political ads, they must obtain a special designation which comes with its own stipulations: limit the quantity/duration of ads any one campaign can purchase, require that they distribute any qualifying candidate’s ads without bias, charge a flat rate for ads for all candidates, and all political ads must be divided up along regular intervals throughout the day.
I agree with all of this. But part of the problem is that exactly none of this applies to social media. You couldn't apply this to social media even if you wanted to. And that's where a lot of people get their news and information today. Your suggestion absolutely should be applied to traditional media like CNN and Fox News. But how could you possibly apply that to Youtube? Twitter? Facebook? How does that apply to those who choose to (or "choose to") advocate for their preferred candidates independently? These are the people that politicians will be chasing, which will give wealthy social media influencers more political pull than they have now. You could be making the problem worse.
Yes, but ... the people that would make these changes are the ones that benefit from how they work now. We need another branch of government, one with no power over normal citizens, but able to investigate corruption in politicians.
We need a better class of liberal politicians.
That's called "leftist."
And when it's shut down, we should have a general strike. And the condition for ending the shutdown should be the immediate defunding and permanent removal of DOGE. And Trump should be made to wear a clown suit with a sign around his neck saying PUTIN'S BITCH.
(A boy can dream).
We need a better class of liberal politicians.
We need social democrats or people to the left of them. And most of all, people with backbone.
Unfortunately, we have the results of "vote blue no matter who" instead.
The flip side is that if the Dems shut it down, the republicans will use that as a scapegoat for all their failures and, truth be damned, their base will eat it up. It's not an enviable position.
Republicans have the majority. It's Republicans who are blocking the spending bill. This has nothing to do with Democrats other than attempt by the mainstream media to make it seem like it will be Democrats fault.
The average voter won’t know that. They will see the upcoming recession and they will be told it was caused by Biden and dems government shutdown so that is what they will believe.
And the GOP will have a scapegoat for their recession and be able to continue crashing the economy without getting any blame.
So it doesn't matter either way. If recession is avoided they will say it was because of Trump, if recession happens they will say it was because of Democrats.
There's absolutely no reason to help Republicans.
If you’re fucked for agreeing, and equally fucked amongst the same populace for disagreeing, there’s not a lot of downsides going for the “shut it down” plan.
Wait a sec. We know the GqP doesn't care if the government burns, because that just hurts the poors, but the rest of government has things to do and provides essential services.
You want the Dems to burn it too, like some brinkmanship?
Shut it down
🙏
I fully expect Dems to capitulate
That’s because 2/3 are in fact republicans in a thin veneer.
So few?
100%. Even with everything going on they will bend the knee and give MAGAts what they ask for for the umpteenth time.
"We got Collins to agree to maybe not do a genocide of all gay people! Democracy is saved! Collins knows that handshakes are sacred."
Democratic leadership is coming out swinging on this one, telling their caucus that any member of the party that attempts to block this bill will be primaried.
In these unprecedented times it is an absolute necessity that democrats join with republicans to ensure their agenda moves forward. Americans want a congress that works again. Any member that dares to hold this great nation hostage to score cheap political points will meet with the full fury of the DNC.
When asked if they were at all concerned about the policies they would be enabling they responded
Our donors don’t pay us to worry about policies. We will not be held hostage by small dollar donors any longer. The only thing more dangerous to our democracy than the specter of fascism would be us breaking a single norm or polite convention.
When told that trump recently threatened to round up democratic lawmakers and execute them for the good of the nation leadership had this to say.
While we certainly disagree with their plans, we will hold our heads up high knowing that we had the integrity to pass the spending necessary to keep the gears of government turning.
At that point democratic leadership had to leave with one senior leader saying “I need to get back to dialing for dollars” and another stating that they “had to pressure more members to censure Al Greene for his despicable display of barbarism, shouting out the president, is there no decency anymore”
I hate that I genuinely can’t tell if this is satire or not. The quoted parts at least.
I was gonna put an /s on it but I thought it was more fun to leave it ambiguous.
The quotes are not real (except the “we won’t be held hostage by small dollar donors” is a paraphrasing of something that recently came out of some dnc think tank about what to do going forward)
Yea it was the “small dollar donors” part that threw me off.
Well done, you :)
Dude, I was so confused because I really wondered if theyf had capitulated that far backwards. The money part though, I started sniffing something funny.
Fully had me in the first half
Also if you say this over in sh.it justworks politics you'll probably get banned, so this might just be early!
That's because satire is well and truly dead
Satire is alive and doing quite well. It has entirely usurped reality.
Gee, what is the GOP offering for that Dem support?
Nothing that they're going to honor.
You know, I had a gut reaction to your post, "If it's in the law they have to honor it!"
But then I remembered what timeline we're in. The one where congress and the courts have abdicated themselves to the Executive Branch. The one where there is nothing to stop the Republicans in congress from making promises, putting them into the budget, Trump flatly denying it (aka Impoundment), and congress and the courts not pushing back.
It can 100% happen and we have the evidence and precedent now to prove it.
You know, I had a gut reaction to your post, “If it’s in the law they have to honor it!”
But then I remembered what timeline we’re in.
I've had to do this a lot. If I had a nickel for every time on Lemmy alone that I've had to argue with someone because they keep saying "Trump can't do that! There are laws against it!", refusing to understand that the very people responsible for enforcing those laws have been spending the past 6 weeks saying "Oh, yes. Yes he can."
Laws are irrelevant if there is nobody willing or able to enforce them.
Absolutely no way it's gonna happen but the best play I could think of for this situation would be for Dems to not support it and then go on a social media tirade about how they did everything they could to stop a government shutdown. You know, do their best to make the other side look bad by slandering them with lies like how they wanted to cut all funding to public schools or something else ridiculous. Over 99% of people aren't gonna read the damn bill anyways and will probably take what is said at face value because of not reading it, as sad as it sounds.
Absolutely not gonna happen because the only US politician with any amount of spine I know of at this point is Bernie Sanders, but would be fun to see.
democrats will help them.
They will cuz they suck. But they shouldn't.
Do to chump what the Repubs did to Obama. Go full Mitch McConnell. Stop everything you can. Help with absolutely nothing.
they'll get it.
Unlike the Republicans, the democrats have double digit numbers of people who will flip flop and cross the isle, even in a time like this.
Shut the bitch down.
Use the billions FElon saved! You don't need funding.
Shut the bitch down!! We need to tank fast, clean house, and climb out!
Why should they?