That’s a recipe for disaster. The Founders came up with a Constitution for a reason. Public debate is not our problem. Any more than freedom of speech is our problem.

I wonder why?

/s

I'll concede, in the US, just as in everyplace else, we have a long list of issues with which we need to deal. However, things like public debate and freedom of speech are not present on that list. I, personally, would go one step further, and caution everyone to carefully consider the possible motives of anyone calling for the elimination of public debate and discourse in government.

Some interesting articles about how previously citizen votes were public and how it led to intimidation, and the push for secret ballots for citizens.

Bernie's ideas are very dangerous, because he offers simplistic, pat solutions to risks that are fundamental to politics itself (at the expense of the much more nuanced safeguards we've developed over the ages) while proposing to make the political state far more central to people's immediate lives and livelihoods than it has ever been before.

Getting politics out of civil society is much more important than getting money out of politics.

Of course. The vast majority of America needs "sound bites" of info. Wish this wasn't the case. But it's worked for decades.

>Money is just a tool. The resources and incentives that the money is being spent on already exist, and it's being used to further ambitions and goals that were always present. Getting "money out of politics" in a formalistic way will just lead to corrupt ambitions being facilitated via some other means.

You're not wrong. But there is a happy medium. Super PACs/Citizens United....this is what he's targeting. Those are dangerous. They are not in the interest of all American people. They benefit the few.

And we cannot have hypocrites at every level. The insider trading that occurs due to politician privilege is insane. But not Bernie, his actions match his words. He lives by his principles. That cannot be said for many politicians.

>Bernie's ideas are very dangerous, because he offers simplistic, pat solutions to risks that are fundamental to politics itself (at the expense of the much more nuanced safeguards we've developed over the ages)

Is that's how things have played our for the folks in Vermont? I grew up in that area. I've watched his policies shape the landscape for decades. But his policies aren't why he's a great candidate.

While his policies are a big part of his platform, what really resonates with a lot of people is his unwavering commitment to first principles values like fairness, equality, social justice, and democracy. These principles drive his entire political career, and they shape his policy proposals, but they also make him stand out in a political landscape where many politicians change their stance based on what's politically expedient or donor-friendly.

Bernie's character and consistency are arguably just as important as his policies in defining who he is as a politician.

>while proposing to make the political state far more central to people's immediate lives and livelihoods than it has ever been before.

This is a concern of mine as well. It's the ultimate balancing act. Provide just enough support for folks that they still hold agency in their life. As Fred Rogers put it, "There's a world of difference between insisting on someone's doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it."

And this is part of the problem. Citizens United was a bog standard first amendment ruling that has been targeted by an aggressive misinformation campaign by a faction that wants the unprecedented power to censor political discourse, and people are eating up the misinformation.

> While his policies are a big part of his platform, what really resonates with a lot of people is his unwavering commitment to first principles values like fairness, equality, social justice, and democracy.

But again, his "commitment" is in the form of talk. The reality of the policy positions he does advance is to set us up for the exact opposite of all of those things. I don't know whether he's a well-intentioned fool or a deceptive manipulator, but either way, the consequences are the same. He's just a mirror image of Trump, using vague emotional appeals to win power, then horribly misusing that power.

> Provide just enough support for folks that they still hold agency in their life. As Fred Rogers put it, "There's a world of difference between insisting on someone's doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it."

Absolutely correct. And the problem here is that "insisting on someone's doing something" is the fundamental nature of the political state, while "establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it" is the task of a dynamic and pluralistic civil society, in all its forms.

The more we allow the assertion of political power to solve problems that ought rightly be solved by bottom-up activity in civil society, the more we set ourselves up to be the victims of abuse (especially as the well-intentioned people who created the system of political dependence are superseded first by indifferent functionaries, and then by corrupt powermongers).

Cheers!

I hear what you are saying. But again, his policies have had measurable benefits to his constituents in Vermont. With a track record going back decades. I understand you might not have first hand experience with this as I did. But to discredit years of his work saying it's all talk is a little tongue in cheek.

At the end of the day I think we both know it'll always be an attempt to pick the "least evil."

And "Make America Great Again" is as well, but over 70 million people rallied behind it

If there's any evidence of a decline, it's definitely found in the extent to which people are both (a) looking to federal politics to solve their local and personal problems for them, and (b) supporting incompetent sloganeers as the people they want managing federal politics.

Pay them each a million bucks a year, for fuck's sake. That's $535 million dollars -- but remember we immediately get a lot of that back in taxes. Fuck, round it up to a billion dollars to include the cost of the agency to watch them. A whole team for each congress-critter. Half of the salaries go into escrow and the escrow money gets paid out after they leave office. And they can't work for 5 years after they leave office -- none of that indirect bribery where "cooperative" congresspeople get cushy jobs at the companies they helped during their tenure on capitol hill.

That's still only like a tenth of a percent of the total US Government budget.

Anybody who thinks that this won't improve the functioning of our government by at least 0.14% is welcome to tell me why.

The Citizens United ruling had essentially noting to do with "money in politics" and was just a bog standard first amendment ruling against a federal agency attempting to read the power to regulate political speech into a statute that had been passed a mere eight years earlier.

Contrary to the misinformation spread through the media, the court did not rule that "money is speech", but ruled almost exactly the opposite: it was the FEC that was attempting to argue that "speech is money" -- that using resources to speak in a way that might persuade voters was equivalent to donating those resources directly to a candidate -- and therefore they had the right to restrict the publication of "electioneering communications". The court ruled that no, speech is not money, and is protected by the first amendment under all circumstances.

So the ruling put things back the way they were in 1995, before the FEC had ever gotten the idea that they had the power to censor speech.

The Citizens United ruling didn’t just clarify the FEC’s authority, it fundamentally reshaped the landscape of American politics by allowing unlimited corporate and union spending on elections, which critics argue disproportionately amplifies the influence of wealth. While the Court didn’t explicitly equate money with speech, its decision enabled the flow of money into the political system in a way that is effectively treated as free speech under the First Amendment. Far from "restoring the status quo," Citizens United created a system where the wealthy can now spend unlimited amounts of money to sway elections, a shift that has drastically altered democratic representation.

The court did the exact opposite, and repudiated the attempt by the FEC to equate money with speech.

The FEC were effectively arguing that "speech is money" and that their authority to regulate campaign donations allowed them to censor the direct expression of political opinions by organizations that weren't associated with candidates in any way, under the theory that the expenditure of resources in a way that might influence voters' opinions is equivalent to directly donating the monetary value of those resources to whichever candidates might benefit from shifts in opinion.

Prior to the FEC's attempted enforcement of the 2002 BCRA, this wasn't even an issue at question -- the right of individuals and organizations alike to express their own opinions with their own resources was never in doubt.

There was no century old precedent at stake at all. The case, and the ruling, was about the FEC attempting to use a 2002 statute to censor the release of a movie in 2008, invoking a concept ("electioneering communication") that did not exist at all prior to the 21st century.

What I meant was that before this case ....there were a variety of limits and checks regarding money in politics from a variety of sources... and especially regarding corporate donations.... And after the case was ruled this way... money flowed in a way that it hasnt in 100 years prior. Any attempt to deny this is just criminal.

Your facts are just straight-up wrong.

I can, however, see the some of the unintended consequences of regulatory interventions in other countries. For example, Germany's ban on nuclear power made them dependent on Russian oil imports, inadvertently propping up Putin's regime.

This sounds like you are observing much of that, and then dismissing the results as superficial appearances.

Dismissing regulation here would be like dismissing a comparison of a correlation between laws against murder and a low murder rate and a correlation between no laws against murder and a high murder rate.

The reality is there is a hint of truth in everything. We must be careful to assign cause where correlation exists.

Let's use Vermont's gun laws for example. Over the last 40 years, the state's approach to firearms has been quite permissive, with relatively few restrictions, but it still maintains a reputation for having one of the lowest gun violence rates in the country. Vermont is one of the few states in the U.S. where people can carry a concealed weapon without a permit. So is it regulation that prevents the gun violence, as many would lead you to believe, or is it a combination of factors. Factors like social stability, cultural attitudes toward guns, and the state's strong focus on community engagement. Those all contribute to the relative lack of gun violence, rather than simply the laws themselves.

But speaking from experience, when we are deep into ego development years (think teens), I would have absolutely killed someone if it wasn't for murder laws. But today, what holds me back is empathy, and not the law.

That was true for decades, but over the past 15 years, 28 more states have adopted Vermont-style permitless concealed carry laws, so it's now a majority of states that allow this.

But someone has to seed them