Comments

3

@2 Money is not speech.

You can go right ahead and post any political opinion you like on Facebook. Nobody is stopping you. You can send an anonymous political letter to your local newspaper, and they can publish it. This is all completely 100% legal in WA. Knock yourself out.

But when silver crosses you palm, you must report the purchase to the state. This is no different from any other monetary transaction-- sellers of pretty much anything must keep records, and supply those records to the state on request.

5

I really can't tell if Ferguson wears a piece or if he just has a really dorky hairstyle

6

@4 You've gone quite a bit more abstract in the second post, haven't you? You started at 2 talking about anonymous speech. But now its about speech in general and totalitarian states and so forth. And I don't blame you because a principled stand for anonymous "speech" (where speech is defined as buying political advertising) is a much heavier lift.

Like Scalia said, all those years ago, the Constitution is not a suicide pact.

8

Seems to me the real story here is why the PDC's Executive Director, Peter Lavallee, thought that the proposed hand-slap-and-pocket-change settlement was a good idea in the first place. Something smells damn fishy there.

10

Corporations aren't people.
And money is not speech.

11

@10 -- you make a lousy Fascist.

12

@7 Ah yes. Since there's a slight chance that a law that's been on the books for 45 years might possibly be struck down at some point in the distant future, at least according to some guy on the internet, that law should only be lightly and selectively enforced. What's the name of this legal doctrine, again? My latin is a little rusty.

Citizens United has no bearing on Washington's disclosure requirements. State law does not prevent anyone from spending money on political communication, in any amount. It simply requires that the names of the buyers in these transactions be recorded, and released on request.

14

Go, AG SuperBob, GO!!!!

16

@4: NO, it would not. We don't have to have a system in which billionaires can pay unlimited amounts of money to buy elections to avoid ending up in a police state. Nothing large anonymous donations pay for ever actually protects us from tyranny. To believe otherwise is to live under the delusion that the wealthy, and ONLY the wealthy, support the idea of freedom, and to hold with the delusion that freedom can only come if there is great wealth next to great poverty.

17

Interesting


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