I wonder if Josie Carothers (letters, Jan. 29 Press) has actually read the recent Supreme Court free speech decision. I have. It lets labor unions off the hook as well as corporations. It lets the Sierra Club and Acorn, as well as Monsanto, talk about candidates.
The narrow cause being decided was the Federal Election Commission’s censorship of Hillary, the Movie, during the last presidential election campaign. In the first hearing before the court, the Federal Election Commission had argued that McCain-Feingold even gave them the right to censor books. The court then ordered a re-hearing on the broader issue of government control of speech during an election campaign. The present decision was the result, largely lost in the concerns over Haiti and Brown’s election in Massachusetts.
If Carothers wishes to regulate oligarchy in all of its forms, I am with her. If she wants to fix it so that those nasty corporations and those equally nasty unions cannot subvert elections in districts where they really aren’t present as part of the economic fabric, I am with her. Only two things are required:
- Reinstate ordinary rules of libel and slander during the last 30 or 60 days of an election campaign, rather than to give wild statements a free ride under the “public person” rule.
- Make it illegal and difficult for a person or institution not domiciled in a district to make a significant financial move for or against a particular candidate for office in that district.
A third thing might help—namely an effective prohibition on the device of “Citizens for XXX” as cover for big-time political contributions from anyone.
In the town of Harvard, elections for the office of selectman have run $4 to $5 per vote for a number of years now. By that standard, the $500 million, plus or minus, that it costs to elect a president is reasonable.
The money has to come from somewhere. We are entitled to know where it comes from if the bucks are big, but to censor books and the use of other mass media for political discourse is, was, and always will be, unconstitutional.
Robert Lerner
Fayetteville, NY
