Perhaps the media should return to the fairness doctrine of "equal time" as well. It should be obvious that whoever controls the media could use that control to influence an election, especially for a political quid pro qou, The same logic would apply in a different way for those who control housing such as in a homeless community by forcing residents to participate in a political demonstration or else face ouster.

FYI, Alschuler's letter link at http://www.seattle.gov/ethics/Meetings/2019-08-13/Item3b%20Alschuler%20submission.pdf doesn't work.

Does anyone believe that the iPhone babies will grasp consequences?
Ever asked something for something IN REAL TIME? They do not comprehend what "In Real Time" means.
You have to work much harder, Leslie.

I thought LB was a reporter. The courts have ruled time and again that PACS are Free Speech. As a “writer”, he should be Pro Free Speech. Even if donations are “Targeted”. They’re considered Speech under the law.

@5 - You missed the step where you explain why anybody is obliged to agree with the courts.

@5

A stacked Supreme Court in 2012 opened up our elections, any elections on our soil, to the highest bidder worldwide. When votes are a yes or a no, and you can buy your elected officials yes or no and pay off the media to publish your candidate's face and talking points, you effectively stack the deck in your favor every time. And when you give priority to foreign oligarchs, you lose national autonomy and even control of your military and national interests.

This article is real and strong af, unlike your Redcoat duckspeaking dumbass advocating for taxation without representation.

Yeah, it’s about time the SEIU and Nick Hanauer were put on a leash. Personally I thank Amazon for working to protect us from the current council.

This is legalized bribery. Official actions will be taken which will justify these corporate expenditures. I'd lay my be on some zoning decisions that Amazon finds onerous. Unfortunately the supreme court has made it all but impossible to prove a quid pro quo unless you're as stupid as Trump and actually lay out the deal.

If PACs were the existential threat you pretend they are, Hillary would be in the White House. Her Super PAC spending topped Trump's by $204.4M to $79.3M while her total backing topped Trumps by $1.4B to $957.6M.

I am also sick as hell of you unthinking politics hipsters thinking you know anything at all about 'the law' because you made a quick buck designing a user interface for your next Nip Alert Pet Rock app that does absolutely nothing to advance the human condition.

You cite laws and rights, and think nothing of common sense or justice. Right now these GOP Armed Forces committee stooges who were simply not appointed to the Intelligence Committee (which has GOP members in there already) decided they would make a mockery of due procedure and NATIONAL SECURITY witness testimony because the general public cannot just walk into a hearing on matters of national intelligence, and these double standard shitheads can readily procure any substantive details from that testimony from their Republican colleagues in the intelligence community. Trump's equally corrupted band of thugs is taking the fall for their kind and obstructing justice in plain sight.

What are the laws in North Korea? What is Sharia law? Why do we have the ability to make new laws and change them in the first place? Is a law just? Is it effective? Critical thinking, people. Think in multiple variables. Follow the money. Dare to be smart. Or keep mindlessly valuing your shiny baubles and fiat currency, the delusion that your personal worth is tied to an arbitrary collective delusion to the universal currency sitting at $1, other than your decisions, actions, and character. Nobody gives a fuck about your self-assured gilded delusion; money can't by class and compassion, unlike corruption, comfort, and complacency.

@10: Don't forget to add in the 100 grand or so that Russian trolls spent on Facebook ads across the political spectrum. That much cash surely tipped the scales somewhere.

@12, clearly alleged Russian trolls is where you want to put your money at

https://vimeo.com/259300731

https://youtu.be/Iyv905Q2omU

@11 That's all fine I guess, but it's been about 30 years since the phrase "fiat currency" replaced "fluoridated water" as the official marker for Paranoid Conspiracy Disorder in the DSM III revision.

So next time, ixnay on the Ederal-Fey Eserve-Rey, if you catch my drift, eh?

@12, @13 Glavset's victories aren't rooted in the money they spend on Facebook ads, they're rooted in the salaries they pay snotty suburban St. Petersburg zoomers to make sad frog cartoons and bark "Benghazi!" on command.

And they're getting a hell of a bargain, too.

@16

What I mean by fiat currency (DSM diagnoses notwithstanding) is that in the unthinkable case or serious war and trade embargoes, your pound, pence, yen, yuan, pesos, and markets in general will be beholden to whatever country holds gold bullion and Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) from the IMF; fiat and blockchain and everything else based on fiat will lose leverage. China and Russia have been stockpiling gold for this purpose, and that is also why Putin strong-armed Maduro into shipping him his gold when we played our last Cold War fillibustering hand under Bolton and the Oliver North/Eric Prince mercenary lords. But you don't have to take my word for it.

@18 Shhh, shhh, IxNay! Gold buggery has been a marker since the very first edition!

Fed, fiat, gold, bitcoin, petrodollar, "money out of thin air," "Bretton Woods"... if you find yourself using any words or phrases like that, do yourself a favor and delete the whole sentence.

If you don't knock it off, they're going to prescribe the horse tranquilizers and you won't be good to anyone for anything other than sealing envelopes.

@18

.>

<.<

Sorry, had to scan the area for any Reptilian bodysnatchers with my third eye opened by galactic dissociative anesthetics, now prescribed by your local psychiatrist. Read all about it in my latest book, now for sale on Amazon Prime, along with this country.

Personally, I find the entire concept of Supper PACS disturbing.

People should be allowed to dine in peace, and not be disturbed by the Zombie Venture Capitalists trying to destroy our society.

For get gold, what we need to gather are sheep.

Lester never once mentions that Super PAC expenditures must be independent, and therefore not coordinated with any candidate’s campaign. If I want to spend my own money promoting or attacking any candidate, well, it’s my money and I can do that. So long as I never coordinate my spending with the candidate’s campaign, it can’t count as a campaign contribution.

Likewise, The Stranger can publish post after post after post supporting certain candidates, and trashing others. That also costs money (IT costs, plus whatever writers there get for pay these days), but if owners of The Stranger want to pay for it, it’s their money.

It’s pretty amusing to see one of these labeled as contributing to an “appearance of corruption,” and the other not.

@24. The concern is less independence and more who gets to buy what speech, how much, and call in the bought favors whenever it suits them over the general public; unless you level the playing field to $5,000.00 across the board. Of course, then they simply have to launder the money, cover their tracks better, and Better Call Saul the lobbyist for their pork rider sliders, but at least then they do their dirty work in private and with due cloak and dagger. Not this FUBAR farce tying our intelligence agencies' bootlaces together.

@24 Just because there's no signed, written contract doesn't mean there's no nod-and-wink understanding in place, you nitwit. Go back to your corner and think again about why "appearance of" is the standard being used before you bring back that dumb "independent of the campaign and totally not coordinated, pinky swear" argument.

People can and rightly do accuse The Stranger of corruption all the time, because the paper is beholden to its advertisers. Several of The Stranger's longtime advertisers in the restaurant biz were given editorial space in the paper to campaign against $15/hr. Readers were not pleased. Hopefully whatever legislation is cooked up would apply to that case as well.

And yes, I agree that editorials on politicians should always include disclosure of the amounts spent on advertising in the paper (or other outlet) by all candidates in the relevant race, and disallowed entirely if the balance of payments tips too far in the direction of the candidate favored in the piece.

If that ends up having a "chilling effect on the ability of candidates to place ads in mass media," well by God, wouldn't that be a blessing. It's beyond time we reopened the idea of regulating commercial advertising for political purposes in this country, and maybe took a peek at how some other democratic nations handle it.

@26: If you have evidence of a crime, report it. (Conspiracy to break a law is itself a crime, you know, and can be punished as well.)

As for dictating to The Stranger what editorials it can publish, your willingness to overturn centuries of American constitutional jurisprudence is touching. Surely your ends are so pure, so noble, so perfectly good and incorruptible, with no possibility of unintended consequences, as always to justify such means.

Meanwhile, my actual point was The Stranger’s rank hypocrisy, in declaring other persons’ speech as producing “the appearance of corruption,” while The Stranger’s own behavior, differing only in degree, isn’t even mentioned.

@27 1974 isn't quite "centuries" of "American constitutional jurisprudence," little buddy.

Did you read the article, or just skim it? I realize Lester's usual slumming-dilettante reports are unreadable, but this time he's managed to leverage access to the Black family attorney to bring us some pretty solid (if overlong) reporting on the legal history involved here.

Kinda makes me wonder how much longer our young Lester is going to continue his little bohemian underground-journalist stint before he inevitably heads off to law school.

@28: I think you’ll find freedom of the press (e.g. The Stranger, in this case) has a lot longer pedigree than just within our lifetimes, champ. I was referring to your own bad idea, in the third paragraph of @26, about “disallowing” editorials (with which I most certainly did not agree, despite your misunderstanding of what I plainly wrote @24).

And yes, Lester went to greater lengths of research than usual for a non-cannabis post, but asking the family attorney tends to get an answer the client likes to hear, especially when there’s no consequence to the attorney’s retainer fee. Lester clearly wanted grounds to support the blatant censorship being advocated by CMs who themselves rightly fear public criticism. That is simply not a wise choice of advocacy for any writer.

@28

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGgiasHFtwU