1. undo citizens united entirely, we wasted $1 Billion on this nonsense and media corporations are going to fight to keep all those $$$
2. fix voting irregularities, allow voting registration 48 hours before election, and give ample resources for voting to make the wait time 1 hour or less
Be careful what you wish for. The problem with trying to undo Citizen's United is that it's often oversimplified as "corporations are people", but the decision was (to quote Wikipedia) "that it was unconstitutional to ban free speech through the limitation of independent communications by corporations, associations, and unions". Under those terms, that would include The New York Times, MSNBC, AARP, and the SEIU with regard to candidate and ballot measure endorsements.
$1B was spend in independent groups and $5B by the candidates and parties. By comparison, Americans spend $7B / year on potato chips.
Yep, we need to see proportional representation. That's the only way for new parties to get a foothold in politics and increase competition, forcing all the parties to do what the people want. Things are very different from when the US's political system was created. New technology has made it possible to communicate over long distances, meaning a party might get 10 percent support nationwide, but not get any seats in Congress.
Wouldn't overturning the Supreme Court require a constitutional amendment? I don't think Congress can just write a law to overturn a Supreme Court decision.
Either way, Congress needs to bring about the change (unless you plan on getting 2/3 the states to hold a convening convention) and Citizens United only lets rich congressmen keep anyone that isn't also rich or well supported from playing the game.
> Wouldn't overturning the Supreme Court require a constitutional amendment? I don't think Congress can just write a law to overturn a Supreme Court decision.
You can write a new law that tries a different approach, or tweak and address the Court's stated concerns in the original law.
If it's based on the 1st Amendment, then an constitutional amendment would be necessary. But if it's based on law passed by Congress, then Congress can repeal or amend the language of the law the decision was based on.
The internet: Where the government is Orwellian and despotic for going after people for illegally downloading movies, but a champion of democracy when it tries to ban the showing of a political movie.
The internet: where anonymous speech is an inextricable part of free speech when complaining about drug enforcement on reddit, but an unnecessary uncumberance on democracy when releasing a movie criticising a Presidential candidate.
The opinion I have seen is that it is perfectly fine to release the movie anonymously on the internet. Buying prime time advertisement on TV or other impractical, in the sense it is impractical to expect the vast majority of people, to avoid formes of advertisement should not always be protected. Rule of thumb seems to be easy to opt out is protected and the hard to opt out it is the more it makes sense to make sure there is funding transparency.
Free speech is limited, such as yelling fire in a crowded area(theater is the classic example I believe). Free speech is not guaranteed under all circumstance where the negative consequences are extreme.
Sure, but they are more then likely to get that news from some other media source since it is so common and important.
I would have found it more productive if a well written article explaining now that the election has been called how Obama reelection will effect the technical industry was linked.
Yes, but you don't really see the ~200 other countries' election/decision results on here. Why does the US get special treatment? (It's a serious question, so please don't downvote me.)
I agree the post did not follow the guide lines and it would have been possible to achieve the same result and link to a better article explaining the impact Obama will have on the tech industry.
The US get special treatment for the same reason that many people consider the US President to be the most powerful person in the world. The US President's decisions effect the whole world on a scale which is considerable larger then the leaders of many of the other ~200 countries for better or worse.
One could say there's a lot of content on this site that isn't intellectually stimulating.
> Off-Topic: If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I recall seeing a top voted article about a somewhat recently deceased CEO on the front page. I'd hardly consider that On-Topic according to that sentence.
Just like a real democracy, just because you don't agree with popular opinion doesn't invalidate it.
Because HN uses a story upvote system, even if you took down off topic "mainstream" news like this over and over, people would keep massively upvoting new instances to the top, because the general thought process is "I wanna go see what HN thinks about trending topic X!" and they upvote the first instance of it they see, and make it otherwise.
Even worse in my opinion is that the poster is incentivized to post quickly encouraging the poster to post the first story covering topics like this rather then taking the time to find a well written and insightful article.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Here's the thing about that... The World does not have Americas interests as a priority. The World would love the US to have a weak, ineffectual leader. America should seriously consider why The World is so smitten.
>>The World does not have Americas interests as a priority.
No we do. We do have your interests as a priority. Please don't make a mess of the world economy. Be happy and let us be too.
>>The World would love the US to have a weak, ineffectual leader.
Exact opposite, we desire somebody who is strong. Strong enough not to go to wars, every time your nation got bored.
>>America should seriously consider why The World is so smitten.
Two wars, their national infrastructure smashed to dust. The whole world economy screwed. Sanctions of whatever country refuses to be your yes men. This pattern repeated over decades. How do you expect all those people to react. Honor and welcome you with garlands and request you to destroy more of their future?
So either the rest of the world is badly mis-informed about America, or it tells you something significant about the state of American politics right now... I know what I think. Either way, it's interesting.
1. undo citizens united entirely, we wasted $1 Billion on this nonsense and media corporations are going to fight to keep all those $$$
2. fix voting irregularities, allow voting registration 48 hours before election, and give ample resources for voting to make the wait time 1 hour or less