More Money Should Not Equal More Speech

Groups like the Federalist Society claim that while money isn’t technically speech, it does enable speech, so restricting spending of money for speech disables speech, paving the way for the landmark Citizen’s United vs. FEC case in 2010 whereby the Supreme Court ruled that corporations could spend unlimited sums of money on political campaigns.

In this week's 51/49 segment, James examines the corruptive influence money has on politics a decade after the historic Citizen's United ruling, and answers the question: if it costs money to engage in free speech, is speech really free?

According to OpenSecrets.com, we are in the midst of the most expensive election cycle in history, almost 11 billion dollars spent in 2020 compared with about half that amount in 2016, with about 3/4 of that coming from large individual donors, PACs or dark money sources.

In California, companies like Uber and Lyft are spending over $180 million to pass Proposition 22, which would define app-based transportation and delivery drivers as independent contractors. (51/49 segment about Proposition 22: https://youtu.be/8JkTgX3ri_Q)

So in reality, if the amount of speech is tied to the amount of money, one has access to, people with more money are then going to be the only ones who are heard and the ones who end up getting to decide everything.

0:00 Introduction
0:35 Is Money Speech?
2:13 The Relationship Between Money and Corruption in Politics
3:58 Examples of Money's Corruptive Influence on Politics
6:17 Democrats and Republicans are Equally Corrupt

51/49 with James Li - Commentary on business, politics, and the other things (from an independent perspective)

Follow James on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamesccli/

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